"So I said to myself, 'Self...'"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:24 PM -0400 9/26/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>There's a snowclone of sorts that's often used to indicate a jokey
>interior monologue (or dialogue, actually): "So I said to myself,
>'Self...'" Here are Googlecounts for some variations:
>
>"so I said to myself, self"     1,480/493
>"so I says to myself, self"     3,240/169
>"so I say to myself, self"        996/114
>"so I thought to myself, self"  1,850/223
>"so I think to myself, self"      377/166
>"so I asked myself, self"         495/147
>"so I ask myself, self"           370/138
>
>(For each search string I give two numbers: the raw Googlecount, and then
>the count of what Google calls "the most relevant results" -- found by
>appending "&start=950" to the end of the URL to see what's left after
>Google has omitted "similar" entries.)
>
And there's the fuller version I'm familiar with,

"So I says to myself, 'Self', I says,..."

(I note that there are 129 raw hits of this version, but only 3 if
you try it with "proper" agreement--"So I say to myself, 'Self'', I
say..."   The jocular "dialect" form with "I says" definitely
predominates here, as it does in Ben's tabulation above.

larry