In a message dated 2000/04/24 10:46:50 PM:
>> IMHO borrowing from Yiddish. Another possible borrowing: use of "a fruit"
>> for native form "a piece of fruit". "Have a fruit" now good English,
>> but a century ago ungrammatical.
>
>Not in my dialect. "Have some fruit" or "Have a [kind of fruit]"
ellipsis my father's style: just one word "fruit" then he shoves it in
person's face. Sometimes adds "Eat"... if he thinks you are to dumb or slow
(many yrs later I discovered that this gruffness was a Cantonese male thing.
You sometimes see it depicted in bad kung fu movies...hehe...)
zHANg