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Down south your so-called false splitting is just a noteworthy attempt to correct the inconsistencies of book English, in example...
If I had my druthers,
I'd druther have my druthers
Than work any wheres at all
It ain't that I hates it,
I often contemplates it
while watchin' the rain drops fall
I sits there for hours,
developin' my powers
a figurin' how flowers gets tall
If I had my druthers
I'd druther have my druthers
than anything else at all.
Please note that using the phrase If I had had my rathers is clumsy and although the two hads are necessary for proper English the use of two hads is obviously redundant.
Now please note that the phrase I'd druther serves just as well and has had the added attribute of inspiring the song above from the broadway play Lil' Abner .
See?
Last edited by themilum; 09/15/07 03:36 PM.
Another false splitting is sport. The s is really part of the supposed prefix de- that got dropped. From French desport 'pleasure' > desporter 'to divert', cf. disport.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
A whole nother false conjunction, if there is such a thing, is "alot." It appeared in print about ten years ago, not in the sense of "to apportion," but in the sense of "much." It popped up first in e-mails -- hurry, hurry -- but then went public in a lame slogan on the billboards for a Cincinnati radio station: "If you miss a day, you miss alot."
Last edited by Sigmafoos; 09/17/07 10:26 AM.
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