"I feel you."

[William Salmon]

I remember hearing this in Texas through the 1990s. I wonder if there is
some influence from  _I hear you_, meaning "I understand you" or "I get
your point" or something like that.

WS


On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 10:48 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "I feel you."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > Inept or the latest? From Yahoo!
> >
> http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/7-ways-boost-energy-youre-struggling-big-time-201900862.html
> >
> > "Feeling tired more often than not? Girl, we feel you: A study from the
> Center
> > for Disease Control and
> > Prevention<
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/11/176936210/annals-of-the-obvious-women-way-more-tired-than-men
> >
> >  showed that women are typically more exhausted than men."
> >
> > Not "your pain," "you."
>
> Possibly inept, as a ham-handed appropriation of AAVE slang, but
> certainly not the latest. Green's Dictionary of Slang dates _feel_ 'to
> empathize with' back to 1967, with exx of affirmatory _I feel you_
> from 2000. (The latter can be found in hiphop lyrics since at least
> 1993, when Scarface's "Now I Feel Ya" was released.)
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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