‘We was’

[StripeyNighty]

Arghhh, is it just me noticing SO many people now saying/ typing ‘we was?!’

I’m on so many FB baby groups and I swear every person on there says ‘we was in the living room’ ‘we was scared’ etc. It absolutely drives me insane, why is is it so prevalent all of a sudden?

That one is horrendous. I read a recent response describing "Chester draws". Horrendous.

😂

And along the lines of ‘I text’ is ‘I am bias’. It suppose it sounds like that when spoken.

It’s not a dialect issue, it’s not a colloquialism, it’s shit grammar. It was the final straw when the head of KS1 at my DD’s school sprinkled it liberally throughout all her sentences. There is no excuse for a native speaker. What hope do the poor kids have when they’re picking up such incorrect language habits? Many don’t have parents at home who speak English. Sorry triggered!

My PIL speak just like this, and my husband drops back into the accent when speaking to them. I haven’t a clue what they are all saying and just smile and nod, hopefully at appropriate times!

Totally. But don't you dare point out incorrect grammar on Mumsnet else you'll be condemned as a pompous asshole.

Just a different way of pronouncing aint.

Drives me insane

I'm a Black Country girl, although I haven't lived there for about 40 years.
I heard it is the dialect that is closest to Middle English.

This reminds me of my dc's ENGLISH teacher, who (at a parents' evening) kept saying "LIKE" literally after every other word. I found it a bit shocking tbh.

To Be
Present: am/ is/ are
Past: was/ were

'We was' is a south of England thing.
'I were' is a north of England thing.
Both groups are getting a common irregular verb wrong which I find very disappointing as it is a clear failure of free state education in a way.
The verb 'to be' is much simpler than in other languages with only 3 words in the present tense and 2 in the past. Grrr.

I'm shuddering by proxy... 😁

You’re absolutely right. When we first got together, I remember trying to show off by giving my DH Gawain and the Green Knight in the original and telling him we had to understand this sort of thing on an English degree. I was gobsmacked when he could actually read and translate it much better than I could.

Pompous asshole and a pedantic one to boot... 😉

"I aren't" is also regional dialect- north east. (it's usage in that dialect came from the question tag "aren't I" also being used more often in that area than others.

His/he's - my phone often autocorrects those. And I most definitely know the difference.

It's not regional, it's just common.

or else.

What is?

Saying 'we was'

Middle English is really diverse - there was more dialectal variation than there is now. But a decade or so ago there was a well-publicised bit of research by Wendy Scase and her team, looking at a very important Middle English manuscript, which was probably made in the Black Country. Scase recorded lots of people with Black Country accents reading the Middle English, and found that they seemed to understand it better, and say it better, than anyone else.

OTOH, you can still hear features of other regional accents in other medieval texts. Not English, but the example I love is Scottish - in medieval texts, you get people writing 'quat' for 'what' 'quhy' for 'why'. It's that lovely whistling Scottish 'w' sound. In Julian of Norwich's writings, you can also hear features of Norfolk accent and grammar.

The one that grates on me is should/could/would OF!

SO feckin' annoying!!!!!

So if it isn’t poor grammar, why not write it as well?

It's used in Hull and some other parts, of Yorkshire (possibly Lancashire too) - but not in the North East/ Northumberland in my experience.

I used to work with a girl who wanted to go on holiday to a central European country, and would constantly say "I want to go Czech". Drove me up the wall.

It took me years of correcting to stop DS using F for th.

Fink was the most common.

He said he knew what was right but would spend all day at school with young teachers who did it and his brain just got confused.

It was a posh town too.