[Ads-l] I'm a < I'm going to

[Robin Hamilton]

... or apostrophes are eschewed because their use suggests that the term
transcribed is an incorrect contracted version of a longer and more correct
norm, whereas, of course, the shorter form is simply part of a particular speech
register.  Different registers, different norms.

Nae apostrophes whin yi come tae transcribe oor speech, ya bas!  ***

This was a rather serious issue in Glasgow in the sixties, long before
smartfones were a twinkle in Bill Gates' granny's eye.  And here was I thinking
that that particular war was over.

Robin

***  "ya bas!" -- A terminal syntactic phrase denoting emphasis, possibly from
the Spanish, but no one was ever sure, more probably linked to "basta = enough",
could be heard thereabouts thenwhen, usually in the form of either "Tongs, ya
bas!" or "Cumbie, ya bas!", depending on which religious grouping the utterer
adhered to.

R.

(Who has just antedated "wing=fly to" [London flash slang] by ten years from
1835 back to 1825, When All England Then Were Slanging It.  Or perhaps it will
appear on-line.  We'll know in two day's time.)

> 
>     On 10 October 2016 at 22:39 Tim Stewart <timoteostewart1977 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Surely apostrophes gradually disappear from these and similar lexical
> items
>     because it's extra keystrokes for tweeters and texters to include them.
> 
> 
>     - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> -
>     - - - - - - - - - - -
>     Read excerpts from the forthcoming *Dictionary of Christianese
>     <http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/>*
> 
> 
>     On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Flourish Klink <flourish.klink at gmail.com>
>     wrote:
> 
>     > That's strange—I use "imma," and have for years. Never occurred to me
>     > that
>     > it struck people as oddly spelled. I just mentally insert the break
>     > between
>     > "I'm" and "ma," which is what happens phonetically when I say it anyway.
>     > I'm-ma.
>     >
>     > On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 5:23 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>     >
>     > > On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Geoffrey Nathan
>     > > <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
>     > > wrote:
>     > >
>     > > > completely bizarre ... I don't buy this.
>     > >
>     > >
>     > > I agree.
>     > >
>     > >
>     > > --
>     > > -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
>     > >
>     > > ------------------------------------------------------------
>     > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>     > >
>     >
>     > ------------------------------------------------------------
>     > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>     >
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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