Don't let's

[Joel S. Berson]

I'm from the East Coast, and it would violate my rules of grammar
also.  But I could do it without the second contraction, as in "Mom,
don't let us overeat on Thanksgiving."  However, this seems a
different sense of "let" than "don't let's".

Joel

At 1/15/2008 05:18 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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