menna

[Lynne Murphy]

Spotted in a former (recent) student's Facebook comments today:

You were menna come by the office this week

Found it amusing because I think of those kinds of contracted spellings
(gonna, hafta) as kind of (kinda) American...but 'meant to' is much more UK
than US in my experience (as opposed to 'supposed to').

Google 'research'

'You were menna' 1830 hits (not all relevant, but probably most).

'You was menna' 1230

'You wuz menna' 0

'I was menna' 25,600

BUT: just 'was menna' gives only 10,900, so maybe Google's having a bad day.

'I wuz menna'  8 (just "wuz menna" gives only 9)

Tried 'sposedta' as one word and got 2240, versus 'sposed ta' 707,000.


In case of any interest to anyone...amused me!

L




Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Director of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
Arts B348
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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