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Please settle another Bet for me.

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    #32
    WhiteWashMan
    Registered Users Posts: 20,099 ✭✭✭✭WhiteWashMan


    who is

    or

    who are all

    but i will pass this over those clever boffins on the english forum.....


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    #33
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    oh dear god its "who is". Never, ever "who all". Tell me, which one were you betting on? I hope for your sake you're a "who is" supporter.


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    #34
    Sam Vimes
    Registered Users Posts: 21,611 ✭✭✭✭Sam Vimes


    hallelujah wrote:
    I've have studied English for years and am now employed as a teacher. "Who all" is perfectly fine and proper. Next.
    To be honest mate, I think you need a few more lessons


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    #35
    FlutterinBantam
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,575 ✭✭✭✭FlutterinBantam


    Never in my whole goddam* life did I hear someone say" Who all is going to the match" and I hope I never do:eek:


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    #36
    simu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,730 ✭✭✭✭simu


    "who all"?

    ???

    Is that used in some part of Ireland? If so, where? I've never heard it! It's definitely non-standard, anyway!


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    #37
    tbh
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,914 ✭✭✭✭tbh


    FlutterinBantam wrote:
    Never in my whole goddam* life did I hear someone say" Who all is going to the match" and I hope I never do:eek:

    It's a Donegal standard. "party tonight" "who's all going?"

    you better hope you don't run into any Donegal folks, bantam!!


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    #38
    Procrastinator
    Registered Users Posts: 79 ✭✭Procrastinator


    Pighead wrote:
    If you're speaking the queens English then its "Who Is". If you're using the uniquely wonderfully Irish slant on our neighbours language then "Who all is" is fine. Up with dialecting and slanging up the language.
    (By the way Pighead doesn't care if dialecting or slanging aren't words)


    Ok, this is a bugbear of mine.

    Irish English, or as some would have it, Hiberno-English is NOT a dialect of English. ie English used with differing vocabulary or pronunciation from the parent.

    Irish-English has TWO parents, two distinct languages.. English and Irish

    In linguistics it has what's called a diglottic history, so the roots of two languages can be heard there.

    This would account for Irish-English's unusual use of grammar, constructions that would be syntactically perfect if they were translated into Irish!

    It also, I suspect, accounts for the question at the heart of this post, the queried use of 'you all'; as Irish makes provision for a plural 'you'.

    So, Irish-English is remarkably flexible, and gives rise to more fluid and interesting linguistic constructions, than English would have done on its own.


    Short answer: there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as bad grammar, just inappropriate grammar for the context in which it's being used.

    sorry if I sound like an ass-h**e, but I feel sad when someone doubts their own grammar and then sometimes when others 'correct' them as to what the 'correct usage' is. There should only be correct usage for...conversation, or literature, or writing a formal letter, or programming, or whatever other style is being used.


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