Fricative voicing in *houses*
Meredith Dixon
dixonm at POBOX.COM
Wed May 10 00:27:28 UTC 2006
On Tue, 9 May 2006 16:21:37 -0400, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster: "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Fricative voicing in *houses*
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On the other hand, Wilson is playing pretty fast and loose with the
>labels BE and WE when he suggests that "I'm through verb+ing" is BE.
>For me, the "through" is not only native (I'm a WE speaker) but also
>carries a "sick-and-tired" connotation.
For me, and I'm also white, it can have a sick-and-tired connotation, but it
doesn't have to. I could say "Yes, I'm through with that" perfectly neutrally.
And I've certainly never said, "I'm done." In fact, in third grade I had a
teacher who used "I'm done", and I was sharply corrected by my mother when I
imitated her. Mother told me that "I'm done," wasn't good English and that only
lower-class people said it. (My apologies to anyone here who does. :))
I never heard anyone else say it when I was a child in Virginia, either.
I've heard it since said online by acquaintances from Iowa.
--
Meredith Dixon <dixonm at pobox.com>
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