Re: Gzarondan vindicated.
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, October 1, 2004, 5:59 |
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On Thursday, September 30, 2004, at 02:51 , John Cowan wrote:
> Henrik Theiling scripsit:
>
>> To go further, the words for 'this' and 'that' in spoken German are
>> also derived from the articles. They are 'der hier' (lit.: 'the here'
>> = 'this one') and 'der da' (lit.: 'the there' = 'that one').
>
> This is closely paralleled by the use of "this-here", "that-there",
> "these-here", "those-there", and "them-there" in nonstandard spoken
> American English.
Common enough this side of the Pond also.
> ("Them" for "those" is also a feature of those-there
> dialects.)
Very common over here!
[snip]
> In dialects that use "them" as a demonstrative, the alternative 3pl
> pronoun "'em" < ME, OE _hem_ is never used as a demonstrative, only as
> a pronoun:
>
> I seen 'em.
> I seen them men.
> *I seen 'em men.
All these features occur in RightPondia as well. I think all these
features go back a few centuries & were common in colloquial English
before colonists ventured across the Atlantic.
Ray
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