For some reason I think "try and" sounds less bossy than "try to". I use both.


Maybe it all isn't about the level of literacy, and more about personal preferences like that one.

Except for SteveDallas's example of "done my homework". Now that's just odd. Maybe that's a west coast thing.

Except that we live in Philadelphia!

"All the sudden" what?

I talk to a lot of people everyday and I'll just post them as I hear them.

"The car needs washed."
Seems to be a central PA thing.

You can add "loos" to the list. It's British slang for "toilets".

Pronunciations change but spellings are fossilized. Blood, flood. Great, steak, break. Vein, grey, they. There are ten or so different ways of pronouncing "ough". All these groups of words have changed their pronunciation but retained their archaic spellings.

English spelling is the linguistic equivalent of what you get when you don't cut the grass and prune the roses for a long time.

It's also a fairly standard construction in Scottish English.

And then there's this spelling of fish:
ghoti

bollocks ;)


as for aks/ask ... you'd be a marked target if you said ask in some areas of Detroit -it's not just an ignorant mispronunciation -it's dialect.

The story behind "ghoti."

I heard this sort of locution in the Navy all the time. Everywhere the Navy was.

I chalk it up to "elliptical construction."

Actually, in the area of PA I grew up in, you didn't wash a car, you warshed it. With whuter. Don't forget to check yer oal while yer at it.

Or should I say, while ya'll're at it.

I always check my earl. I do warsh my car... with wooder.

Lemmee ast ya this: jever go up the mall? Or down the shore?

Kul! I live in Kettering!!!

(I know, completely out of line with this thread---sorry!)


Here's a good Appalachian word combo: writin' stick

as in, "Kin I borruh yer writin' stick?"

other faves: vomick (vomit) and swolled (swollen)