Down yonder, a commenter writes:
I remember that while living in Germany with some other America
students, we were speaking English as some of us were going out to see
a movie. I asked, "Are you coming with?" and the Texans giggled saying
"Your German is showing." That’s because in German, the phrase is
"Kommst du mit?" and in English it is "Are you coming with us/me?"
(mit=with) No dangling prepositions I guess.
In response, I looked at them strangely and told them that, and
everyone I knew in Illinois, routinely said, "Are you coming with?"
which seemed to flabbergast the Texans.
The linguist among us pondered for a bit and eventually decided that
the reason I spoke differently was that the massive number of German
immigrants to the Midwest affected the way people spoke English.
I had an English teacher once insist that it was not proper to end
sentences with prepositions and went into this discussion of Latin,
prepositions in Latin, grammar, and how it was impossible for
prepositions to not have nouns after it. I then mentioned that in
German, prepositions routinely ended sentences. He then informed me
wrily that that was German, not English. I then responded that since
English was a Germanic language, it made more sense for it to follow
German than to use a strict definition of a Latin word that describes
Latin grammar for a non-Romantic language. He did not seem pleased.
I have no beef against ending sentences with a preposition. That commonly happens in English. But I have to admit (as a Texan) that sentences like "Are you coming with?" sound incomplete to me.
I first encountered sentences of this sort on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which often has Minnesota/Wisconsin influence because of where it was filmed.
When I first heard Pearl Forrester (Mary Jo Pehl), as she was about to enter a black hole, tell Mike Nelson: "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You’re coming with!", I thought it was a cute phrase deliberately exaggerated for commedic effect.
Maybe not.
Hmmm… I don’t believe in German expressions like that the “mit” is acting as a preposition. German has separable verbs, and mitkommen is one of them. It you were going to say “I will come with” it would actually be “Ich werde mitkommen” which would reveal the infinitive verb as actually being one word. In all honesty, though, I’m not sure how Germans view these parts of verb. Maybe they consider them prepositions attached to verbs, but I don’t remember learning that anywhere in class– we always just called them separable verbs.
I’m from southern Illinois, and my parents are both descended from German immigrants (several generations back). The sentence “Are you coming with?” sounds completely natural to me. I never realized that this phrase was a regional thing though, and I didn’t realize that it would sound strange in other parts of the country. Very interesting.
I’ve lived my whole life in central Illinois, and nobody I know says, “Coming with.” Apparently there are Illinoisians who annoyingly forget to indicate the object of “with,” but most Illinoisians don’t say, “coming with.” We say, “Do you want to come too?” or “Do you want to come with us?” or “Want to come along?”
Now, one interesting Illinois idiosyncrasy of speech comes from my grandmother, who lived all her life in northern Illinois. She used to pronounce “wash” with an “r” — “warsh” (wahrsh, not worsh). Thus, “Washington” became “Warshington.” And “gosh” become “garsh.” I used to love hearing her say, “Oh my garsh!” God rest her soul — or should I say, “Garsh rest her soul”?
I’m from S. Illinois, and the “warsh” dialect is rampant in and about the St. Louis area. I always thought it was just a St. Louis thing, but it must be typical in a larger area.
The “warsh” pronunciation is common in the extreme southeastern part of Illinois where I’m from too (right along the Ohio river).
Also,
Quote: “Apparently there are Illinoisians who annoyingly forget to indicate the object of ‘with’…”
You’ll find a lot of us annoying types in the southern part of the state 🙂 (unless that phrase has fallen out of favor in recent years since I’ve moved elsewhere). The use of “coming with?” might vary based on what part of Illinois you are in; I’m not sure. But growing up in rural southeastern Illinois in the ’70s and ’80s, I know that that phrase was fairly common.
Yeah, I didn’t encounter “coming with” until I was a teenager and met some folks from other parts of Illinois and the Midwest.
I also never heard of “front rooms” until I met my wife, who lived in Iowa until she was about 10, and then lived in southern Illinois. In my family, we had “living rooms” in our houses, not “front rooms.” But then maybe that was because our “front room” was used as mom’s “sewing room” for her alteration business. My wife and I are always annoying each other and confusing our kids with the “front room” vs. “living room” thing.
Whoops. I forgot to put my name on that last post.
Ditto Wisconsin on worsh and hanging prepositions.
One other interesting thing about the speech patterns of people where I grew up in southeastern Illinois: Some of them incorrectly pronounce the “s” in Illinois. In other words, they pronounce the last syllable in “Illinois” the same as the word “noise.” However, the “s” is supposed to be silent, and I always thought it was embarrassing that some people who grew up in Illinois don’t even pronounce it correctly.
And here’s one that is even more strange: Many people where I grew up refer to a driver’s license as “them” (don’t ask me why!). For example, I heard a conversation similar to the following when I was in high school:
“Did you get your driver’s license yet?”
“Yep, I got ’em yesterday.”
I have never heard this usage outside of two particular counties in southeastern Illinois, but it seems to be common in those two counties. I have always wondered where it came from — it never made any sense to me at all, since the word “license” is obviously singular.
About “front rooms”: Yeah, when I grew up, my family had a “living room” and a “family room,” but no “front room.” But my wife, who is from Chicago, uses the term “front room” all the time. So we are in a similar situation to what Jared described above, where we have a room in our house which I call the “living room” and which my wife calls the “front room.” Also, I would say that our house has two “bathrooms,” whereas my wife would be more likely to say that it has two “washrooms.”
“I have no beef against ending sentences with a preposition.”
Here in Cincinnati and the outlying area, people use “at” usually to ask the location of something/someone, as in “Do you where it’s at?” It used to bug the heck out of me and probably still does on some level (I’m an upstate NY transplant).
Another quirk around here is adding the possessive to the names of stores, e.g. “I bought it at Kroger’s” or “We went to Wal-Mart’s the other day.” I want to ask, “Kroger’s WHAT? Wal-Mart’s WHAT?” but I’m afraid I’d get a look like I have six heads. With six young children trailing behind me wherever I go, I already get planty of weird looks!
Paul, don’t you know that “license” is the plural of “licen”? And I think you meant to say, “warshrooms,” not, “washrooms.” 😉
Regarding “at,” Valerie, I feel your pain. My wife says, “Where is it at?” when she could save herself the trouble and say, “Where is it?”
And by the way, yes, I do have to bite my tongue a lot to keep me from correcting my wife’s grammar. These nitpicky things aren’t as important as marital peace, to be sure.
LOL!!! 🙂
I guess Disney’s Goofy (“Gawrsh!”) is German. Or are Uncle Walt’s Midwestern roots showing?
The biggest thing that I’ve noticed in native German speakers is their tendency to use the verb “make” a lot.
When my family moved from NJ to southern Indiana (eons ago) I was very confused about the expression “It don’t make me no never mind anyways”… It seemed like an awfully long-winded way of saying “I don’t care”
I also grit my teeth when I hear “It/he/she needs washed” Needs to be washed or needs washing…I hear this everywhere.
Ditto on “I seen it”, “I seen him do it” Especially from moderately educated folks. I hear this in central California a lot which is so homogenous that it makes finding the origins very difficult.
My wife is from Long Island NY and she says “I want to *drawr* a picture”, but she has to “clean out the chest-a-*draws*” Go figure….
I wonder if the “warsh” thing is actually more generational than regional. My grandmother speaks that way, and she grew up in rural Louisiana (though she has lived in Denver now for nearly 50 years). My husband’s grandmother and great-grandmother speak similarly (and they’re from different sides of the family), and they are both native Texans. Off topic, but for some reason I’m reminded of this: isn’t it strange how all grandmothers’ handwriting looks quite similar? It’s like they were all taught cursive by the same teacher!
Regarding “front rooms”: I just completed a U.S. Geography course and my professor liked to show us slides of the homes typical to various regions. I wonder if the terminology “front room” came about because a specific style of home was common in a certain region that typically had a family room/living room in the front of the house.
And finally, “come with” does sound very odd to these Texan ears. I have known one girl who used this phrase, but she was from up north somewhere.
It is said that Winston Churchill was criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition. He replied: “Then that is something that in the future I will not up with put!”
“come with” sounds awfully strange to this Iowan/Minnesnowtan.
Now, we do have a trace of the Scandinavian lilt in our accent, but only a trace. And ‘Ja’ is still ‘Ya,’ but you is ‘yuh’, spelled ‘ya’.
All schwas sound the same. Causes problems in spelling Latin words broughten into Inglish by the Brits a few hunderd years ago.
It’s a good thing we speak English around here, too bad the rest of ya don’t.
😉
Adam (up in the first comment) is quite right. In the sentence at issue (“Kommst du mit?”), “mit” is a separable verb prefix, not a preposition. The infinitive “mitkommen” might actually probably be best translated “to come along.”
Most of Illinois uses “go with” and “come with,” Chicago as well as the south. But there’s another Germanism heard in the area reaching from there up to Milwaukee: to “go over by.” As in “I’m going over by my aunt’s house to paint her front room.” Easily related to “it’s okay by me” (bei mir).
Therese Z is correct. I’m 3rd gen German w/ fam in the WI/IL/IN areas.
I am a Chicagoan who was born in Missouri. I have lived in both places long enough to be familiar with both of the dominant dialects. A few things are very clear to me. One is that there is a huge difference between the urban and rural accents in both Missouri and Illinois. I suspect this is true in most parts of the county. For example, downstate Illinois people have a dialect that is virtually indistinguishable from rural Missouri, i.e. anywhere outside of Kansas City, St. Louis or Columbia. There are certainly differences among people from Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City Missouri, but overall, they speak more similarly to each other than to the rural regions of either state. One example is saying “warsh” instead of wash, which is common in both downstate Illinois and rural Missouri. My mother was from rural Missouri and said “warsh.” It took me a while to realize how goofy that sounds.
The expression “come with” is something I never heard in Missouri, whereas it is very common in Chicago, although it is not used by all Chicagoans. I think it is common in the Upper Midwest in general, probably more so in Wisconsin than anywhere else. I remember when I first heard it, I thought it sounded very weird. But when I thought about, I realized it made perfect sense because the context almost always makes clear what the word after “with” would be if it were spoken, thus the pronoun in actually redundant. My wife still thinks it sounds stupid, but what does she know? She was raised in North Carolina and, even though her accent is pretty neutral, she is still having trouble remember to say “have gone” instead of “have went.”
Hope it’s okay to still reply here. I like doing random searches on the internet to find out what people are saying about the dialect in this area. I’m a third-generation German from Chicago (yes, ‘Chicawgo’) and a friend of mine not from the area occassionally points out when my speech starts reflecting my roots. A recent exclamation was “Haha, you said ‘come with’! That is so an Illinois-thing!” And I asked, a bit taken-aback, “Is that odd to say that?” I guess it is, but I never noticed.
Regarding the ‘front room’ (pronounced something like ‘fronchroom’), Cliff said–
“I wonder if the terminology “front room” came about because a specific style of home was common in a certain region that typically had a family room/living room in the front of the house.”
And I think he is correct. In the bungalow I live in, it is set up very much like that. The rooms are set up in a series of ‘blocks’. First there is a ‘living room’ as you call it, beyond that is a dining room, and in the back there is the kitchen. One door for each bedroom is off to the side of each of these rooms. As you can imagine, the building is long and narrow. The front room is at the front, thus it’s name. Driving just twenty miles south of here, the floorplans completely change, as does the terminology– people suddenly call the place they live in ‘houses’.
It was amusing to read through the rest of these comments though. I think the only thing I don’t do, or am not aware of myself doing, is referring to a driver’s license as ‘them’.
I am SO glad to finally find out about “come with?” I am 62 years old and never heard it until this year on tv. I first heard it on CSI Las Vegas and then on the movie Vantage Point and one other show. I lived most of my life in Mississippi. How about the phrase when you have to go buy groceries – I’m going to make groceries. Heard of that one?