Does anybody use English anymore? I spent long hours, days and years studying for an English degree, but nobody speaks it anymore. The grammarian in me sometimes gets annoyed by little slips overheard in conversation. As a writer, I always listen for inspiration. Sometimes what I hear makes me cringe.
The other day I heard three words–“Whey dey at?”–and my head rang with the grammar alarm. A group of women posed the question in what can best be described as urban patois. The difference between the correct usage (“Where are they?”) and what was said is not so much how three words are strung together, but in why the construction was so lazily loosed upon the world.
Of course it takes a second more to pronounce the word “where.” One can use the pronunciation “way” and drop the “r” or be thorough about it and say “wayer” and mean what they want to say. A dropped “th” dipthong and an unnecessary tag (at) later, and we see a question of three words turned into an oral disaster.
What would happen if the persons about whom they were inquiring were not “at” anyplace (not at the movies, at the store, at work)? Maybe the poor comrades were outside in the rain waiting in line for concert tickets. Maybe they were in a taxi, on vacation, or something else not involving being at anyplace (except, perhaps, at large and not where expected).
The difference between a “th” as in “they” and a “d” as in “dey” can place a person’s social status as surely as Eliza Doolittle’s colorful London slang did in My Fair Lady. Drawling, twanging and other unique language constructions (we “New Juh-seyans” know about the Jersey twang all too well) don’t matter as much when the sentences spoken with them are correct. Accents are easily forgiven, but mangled grammar will curl the edges of a Master’s degree every time.
I do hope those ladies found out whey dey partners had been. Just thinking about it makes my head spin.
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