I'm not disputing this usage. But "'til there were you" just ties my mind in knots. It may be correct usage, but it is so alien to my experience I am having a hard time grasping it.
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Corrected grammar in song lyrics
- Thread starter dougjwray
- Start date
I think in that particular case, we can recognize an implied diminutive surrogate form and use 'was' with impunity.
I think "Until there was you" is actually correct. We're not talking about the past subjunctive case, speculation on what might be; we're talking about an historical fact: first there was no "you", and then there was "you". The whole "there was" or "there is" construction is a bit problematic grammatically as there's not a clear subject.
Let's modify that phrase a bit.
"Up until some time in the 1970s, there was a gentleman's agreement not to talk about the private lives of politicians". In this case, the predicate is "gentleman's agreement". Modified a bit further, we can say "the press avoided the private lives of politicians until there was a general agreement that this was fair game." Now I think that's pretty much exactly the same structure as "till there was you".
If one were to write "until there were you" it introduces a note of the contrafactual (and it's darn unclear).
Now on the other hand, "wish you were here" is also a correct construction, because it's contrafactual, you're not here, but I wish you were. It's subjunctive, present.
Yep!
The one that always gets me is when people type it's thinking that's the possessive form due to being taught that adding an apostrophe s to a word makes it possessive, when in actuality, what they are typing is it is because it's is a contraction of it is. The correct possessive form is its (no apostrophe). And there is no such word as its'.
Example:
We really love it's color is the same as typing We really love it is color. That's obviously the incorrect usage of it's.
The correct form is We really love its color.
It's going to be a warm day today is the same as typing It is going to be a warm day today. That is the correct usage of it's.
When writing the song "When We Was Fab", George Harrison originally wrote it as When We Were Fab. His good friend Jeff Lynne of ELO suggested he change Were to Was. George said okay. Gramatically, Were is the correct form. But in this particular case, Was is the better artistic choice (IMO).
Turnaround
Commercial User
devnulljp
Supporting Member
It's definitely a grammar screw up, confusing the intransitive verb "lie" with the transitive verb "lay"
Turnaround
Commercial User
"You were" is the only grammatically correct phrase, whether "you" refers to one person or multiple people
There is also some confusion about y'all. Y'all is usually considered to refer to a group of people, but in common usage can also be used when addressing an individual. All y'all is only plural and used in some circles to emphasize the size of the group being addressed. Ya'll is an abomination used by illiterate Yankees trying to be Southern.
No.
Y'all is ALWAYS plural. Period. It is nothing more or less than the contraction of "you all". Pretty much anyone born and bred below the Dixon line will fight that one out if it takes all year.
"All y'all" is simply an intensifier, meaning "each and every one, without exception, of you".
The singular y'all is a Yankee myth, probably generated by a use of what we might call "the implied plural".
If I walk into a store and ask the first clerk, "Do y'all carry Stihl chainsaws?", yes, I am addressing one individual person, but I don't mean "do you, Tom Smith the hardware store clerk, carry Stihl chainsaws?" If it were interpreted this way, he'd say "well, sometimes I carry them from the warehouse to the shelf." Of course not, what I mean is "Does this establishment, Johnson Hardware, as a collective group of employees, of which you are the individual representative I'm addressing at the moment, carry Stihl chainsaws?"
No southerner would assume I was talking about Tom Smith the hardware clerk. That this interpretation has been twisted around to generate the Yankee myth of the singular "y'all" almost beggars the imagination.
I'm also not going to rule out the possibility that somewhere, someone heard a southerner mis-speak and MAKE A MISTAKE and unintentionally address a singular person as "y'all". But that's what we call a MISTAKE. We all make mistakes in speech from time to time.
Once again, in four part harmony, with feeling this time,
"Y'all is plural!"
There is NO CONFUSION except amongst Yankees trying to sound Southern.
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Well, they're not here to argue with, but I have some bona fides too: my father was born in Erath County, my stepfather just outside Waco, my mother moved to Texas in 1947, my wife's father's side in east Texas since before the Civil War, her mother's side had some of the Old Three Hundred, and I can tell you none of all these people would ever have used y'all as a singular. Not would I, a born and bred Texan.
Language can be very localized. Back where I grew up in NW PA, "you guys" is the proper term fro dressing a group. Once I broadened my horizons in college, I learned about "youse" from my Philadelphia friends and "yinz" from my Pittsburgh friends. It's not too surprising that folks from the panhadle and high plains speak a different form of Texan.
