>>>> kids' parents in my neighborhood saying "He's going to go by Johnny's" meaning "go to"
>>>
>>>Grandma, is that you?
>>
>><g> Sound familiar? I never heard anyone say that after I left the old neighborhood, but in Cleveland in the 50s it was so common that changing that pattern was a really priority in English class, since many of the kids had picked it up from parents.
>>
>
>Yeah, along with "Frigidaire" instead of refridgerator and "Fords" instead of "Ford" (not sure how much of that was a Detroit thing vs a Polish thing).
My grandparents called it "the ice-box:" until the day they died <s> "pocket-book", "house-coat", "charge-a-plate" are pretty much out of usage now. We were more English than the queen but even my mother always referred to a head-scarf as a "babushka".
My grandfather always referred to a car as "the machine" ( he saw his first one when he was 20 years old ).
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
