Don't let's

Benjamin Barrett gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Tue Jan 15 22:18:24 UTC 2008


Since I'm the only one so far who has said this is ungrammatical,
perhaps I should provide more detail.

I think I'm the only one of the people responding who is from the West
Coast. AFAIK, I have heard this construction only two or three times in
my life, about thirty years ago. I think the main person I heard it from
was a child of Great Depression Alaska homesteaders.

I would therefore understand this to be a regional variation, but would
never generate this sentence and consider it to break MY rules of
grammar. BB

LanDi Liu wrote:
> Are there Americans who consider this construction to be grammatical in
> their dialect?  British/Australians who don't?
>
> I'm trying to verify whether "don't let's..." is more or less exclusively
> British.
>
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
>

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