Korean Job Discussion Forums

[T-J]

My Korean grammar teacher asked me about this today and I've yet to find a good answer.

"I says�" as opposed to "I said�" from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

I want to say it's a British English colloquialism, but I'm not sure.

Anyone shed some light on this?

[jinks]

I think your first instincts are right. Definitely British, working class colloquialism.
I says / I likes / I goes etc.

Kids who spoke like this when I was a kid wanted to sound like they were hard knocks from the nearby big port town, instead of the valley fringe dwellers they really were.

[bobbybigfoot]

Just slang/poor English.

I ain't ...
I seen ...

[thegadfly]

I don't think it is a purely British colloquialism (I have definitely heard it while in the US, among...er...untravelled? folks...), but explaining it as a colloquialism should cover it....

[whiteshoes]

[ytide]

It's a status-word. People use it to show their working-class credentials (whether they realize it or not), by using deliberately-wrong grammar, in the tradition of "ain't" and "all them folks over there work down at the plant" (should be "those"). "I says" is common enough in the USA, perhaps more common in Britain, IDK.

Consider if you heard someone say "One is what one eats" instead of "You are what you eat". That kind of use of 'one' is another status-word, but on the opposite end as "I says".

We in English like to think we don't have anything like the "anyung" vs "anyung haseyo" vs "anyung hashimneeka", but all languages have words and phrases that imply status, and "I says" is one for English.

[DaHu]

I've never heard anyone say "I says". I'm in the US.

[Fishead soup]

It's particularly popular with the lower class/mullet crowd in North America.

[MattAwesome]

it is poor verb conjugation. indeed common among uneducated folk.

[nathanrutledge]

Prescriptivist thugs, the lot of ya!

[Kaypea]

It makes me think of a working class, eastern US vernacular from the 1920's to the 1950's. I think the 3 Stooges used to say it, and characters in old gangster movies, and stuff. Bart Simpson used it on the phone during a short clip...

"And so I says to Mable, I says..." What kind of a name is Mable? Sounds old timey.

[smartwentcrazy]

Ebonics.

[brento1138]

I say, I say, I says it sounds more like that chicken from Looney Tunes.

[ytide]

[thegadfly]