[Ads-l] Heard: "The thing is, is...

[Wilson Gray]

there's problems on both sides."

I would say,

"The thing is, is that there're problems on both sides."

It seems to me that black speakers use _that_ more often than white people
do. But, that's no more than a feeling and I have nothing to back up this
impression. My best "evidence," using the term loosely, is that, in R&B
songs of my day, singers allow _that_ to surface, even when the
non-deletion of _that_ destroys the rhythm of a line.

Further affiant sayeth not.

-- 
-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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