Thursday, July 14, 2016

third person singular - I Eats My Spinach



"I Eats My Spinach" is an old Popeye the sailor episode (1933). Shouldn't it be "I Eat My Spinach" instead? How come there's the 3rd person singular "s" there?


Reference: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024152/


And here the episode itself: https://vimeo.com/152216667



Answer



There is a pattern in some dialects of English called the Northern subject rule where the terminal -s is frequently added to present-tense verbs, particularly when describing habitual actions. This pattern particularly common in Newfoundland, but it's a non-standard practice and should be avoided by people who do not naturally speak these particular dialects.


Popeye's dialect isn't a precise match for anything in the real world, but it's similar what you'd hear from a working-class, early 20th-century resident of New England. I suspect that the writers who created Popeye were at least unconsciously aware of this Northern subject rule as being used by non-formally-educated sailors from the northern Atlantic coast of North America.




Edited: I'm linking a video I found of a couple of Newfoundland natives deliberately exaggerating their local accent. At about 1:05, you hear one of them saying:



"I likes the gravy; I sweats gravy in the mornings."




Then, at 4:25, he lists a bunch of other common uses, including I wants..., I needs..., I likes..., and I loves you. I'm pretty sure that both Popeye and Olive Oyl (his girlfriend) say "I loves you" to each other in the cartoons.


I know someone from Newfoundland who has mostly adapted to "standard" Canadian English grammar (though he still has quite a strong accent), but occasionally I hear him say something like, "I knows that."


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