Heard on The Judges: _for to_ VP (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Wilson Gray]

You never know!

I can't truly say that I've *never* heard it in "real life," so to
speak, since I had to have lived long enough to have learned that it
was "wrong," before I would have noticed it in my own or anyone else's
speech. But, by the time that I learned "Oh, Susannah" in the first
grade, "for to" already sounded strange. Indeed, the whole song was
pretty much nonsense, the same as a nursery rhyme. I thought that the
title was "Oh, Susie Anna," given that it "rhymed" with "Lou'siana,"
the standard pronunciation in E-TX BE (I learned the song in Saint
Louis) and, since I knew "banjo" as "bangjo," I had no idea what it
was - well, that didn't really matter, since "banjo" was meaningless
to me in whatever dialect - nor understood why anyone would have one,
whatever it was, on his knee.

-Wilson

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 1:30 AM, David Bowie <db.list at pmpkn.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: _for to_ VP (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>
>> Yes, it's, IMO, very old-timey. Hearing someone less than half my age
>> use it, when even my East-TX grandparents, born in the 19th century,
>> didn't use it, caught my ear, the way that seeing East-TX country
>> cousins pour coffee from the cup into the saucer and then drink it
>> from there caught my eye.
>
>> The speaker was from Youngstown, OH. But it wasn't necessariy the case
>> that she was a native of that relatively-Northern city.
>
>
> I don't know if i'm less than half your age, but i use 'for to'
> conversationally.
>
> David Bowie
>
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>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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