Grammar Girl's "needs done" survey

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> with folksy dropped g

You mean "with the standard dropped g of Black English, Southern
English, Southwestern English, Western English, etc.," of course.

When you make a point of describing Obama's speech as "folksy," here,
you make it appear that you think that his use of "dropped g" is
unnatural or artificial, that he's merely faking it in order to appear
down with the common people or some such thing.

OTOH, if you had written "with gutless dropped g," implying an effort
on Obama's part not to appear to be too erudite, hence too uppity or
too biggity, lest he annoy any Republicans who may have condescended
to concern themselves with what he had to say, well, naturally, I'd
gladly cosign that.

--
-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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