Re: Californian vowels [was Re: Liking German]

Quoting Joey Morlan <eodrakken@...>:

> Northern Californians under 23 definitely say "like" (and "y'know"
> and "whatever") in serious conversation.  I'm nineteen; in my
> own speech, "like" is most often found marking a number that
> I'm not certain of, or is only meant as an estimate.  "He must have
> been like, two years old during the Gulf War," I said today of a
> young teenager whose exact age I didn't know.
No, that's not just a Californianism.  I think it's a generational
thing.  It has a lot of various meanings, and has strayed far away
from being a hesitation phenomenon.  I mean, I don't even hesitate
when I use it sometimes.

> Also, I often hear "y'all" in the speech of black teenagers in or
> from Oakland, spoken as one syllable as it apparently is in the South.
> I've noticed that other Bay Area speakers tend to pronounce it with
> the glide, more "you-all".  And I've always heard it used as a plural,
> with "all of y'all" only used as an emphatic construction.
That is, FWIW, one of the tests to tell if it's grammaticalized
for you:  do you have to say "all of y'all"? I do, certainly.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III