"you pays your money"

[Scot LaFaive]

I wonder if the form of the verb(s) here come from actual usage or just the
attempt to appear colloquial.


>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: "you pays your money"
>Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:12:05 -0400
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: "you pays your money"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 12:22 PM -0500 8/15/07, Scot LaFaive wrote:
> >While watching a Twilight Zone episode today I was struck by Rod
>Serling's
> >use of an ungrammatical form: "you pays your money, you takes your
>chances."
> >I thought this seemed out of the ordinary for him, so to Google I went.
> >Interestingly enough, this appears to be idiom of some usage. This person
> >claims to have an 1846 citation for it
> >(http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/37/messages/256.html).
> >
>
>I've always heard this as "You pays yer money, you takes yer choice".
>But the verb (dis)agreement is definitely part of it, along with the
>implicit form of the conditional.
>
>LH
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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