"you pays your money"

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 02:11 PM 8/15/2007, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: "you pays your money"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Aug 15, 2007, at 10:22 AM, 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).
>
>there are a number of these proverbs in folksy form that are deployed
>jocularly.  i happen to have stumbled on some others recently, with
>"them" or "them's/thems" as 3pl subjects (sometimes taking pl verbs,
>often taking the leveled sg forms, as in "you pays your money"):
>
>    them's the breaks
>    them's (is) fightin' words [many, many variants]
>    them's as can't, teach [several variants]
>    them's as has, gets [several variants]
>
>arnold
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

These are a part of our folk tradition, yes; but I wonder how many
"youngsters" are familiar with them?  (And I'm not impugning your age,
Scot!)  When I use such sayings in class, I increasingly get funny looks,
even from the native speakers.  "Ain't that the truth," "There ain't no
such animal," "Ain't no way" . . . .  I guess I'm supposed to be above all
that.  But, as Arnold says, they should be able to tell it isn't authentic
in me but is used for effect (what Gumperz, I think, calls "metaphoric
code-switching").  Our friend dinis, on the other hand, can apparently get
away with this more than I can, assuming leveling etc. are part of his
authentic childhood (and adult?) voice.

Beverly

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org