[Ads-l] "Was you ever see...?"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Oct 28 15:48:17 UTC 2015


There is an English nonsense song making fun of the Welsh that bears the
chorus,

Was you ever see,
Was you ever see,
Was you ever see
Such a funny thing before?

I am told that no Welsh person ever uses this construction, and that it
doesn't resemble anything in the Welsh language.

I'm reminded of Walter Scott's representation of Highlanders speaking
English with "her" as a unisex pronoun, for which OED offers no explanation
even though they can trace it to the early 16th C.

Any ideas on either?

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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



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