HERE’S YOU A STORY

Jim Wood, a linguist and visiting lecturer at Yale University, has uncovered a new Syntactic Construction, as he calls it, from the Southern U.S. His discovery began with a blog titled “Here’s you a blog.” This blogger had first come across this grammatical quirk while traveling in Kentucky: a post office clerk had handed over a stamp featuring a dog, and said, “Here’s you a dog.” The phrase delighted the blogger, and she started using it to label pictures of dogs, until she realized she could apply it to other nouns – like her blog, which she titled “Here’s you a Blog”. When Wood first read that sentence, “it was a sharply ungrammatical sentence to me,” he says. He wanted to find out where it was used and in what forms. Wood and his colleagues determined it was mostly used in the South. When they looked for variations, though, they found an entirely unknown type of sentence. “Here’s you a —-” was also convoluted into “here’s me a …” and the question “where’s me a …?”
* As in, “Where’s me a English teacher?”
* Sounds like Jim Wood has discovered Ebonics for White People.
* This is almost Yoda Speak. “Here’s you a dog” is just one step away from “Here for you a dog is.”
* It’s “an entirely unknown type of sentence” except it’s so common a post office clerk uses it.
* Looks like the syntax has been completely repealed in the South. That’s a grammar, I say, that’s a grammar joke, son.
* Now, here’s you a song on (call letters).
* Hey, language changes. Otherwise we’d still write like Chaucer.
* Chaucer was born in 1343 so yes … that could be the most dated reference of all time.
* Have you read any of that old English stuff? It’s almost as garbled as today’s text messages.
* Uh oh. My computer just said, “Here’s you a mail” instead of “You’ve Got Mail.”
* See how fast it catches on?
* PHONE TOPIC: Is this the first you’ve heard of “Here’s you a —“? What other regionalisms are you aware of? Coke/pop/soda? Shaved ice/snow cone? Tennis shoes/sneakers? Paper bag/sack?