Date:    Tue, 5 May 1998 17:37:28 -0500
<br>From:    Mike Salovesh <t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU>
<br>Subject: Re: go with
<br>
<br>charles fritz juengling wrote:
<br>
<br>> Check Dialect Notes vol 2 part 2 page 118.  This is found in the mouth of
<br>> nearly every Minnesotan.  It is attributed to German "Gehst du mit?' or
<br>> Norwegian "Vil du gaa med?"  I have never heard it anywhere outside of
<br>> Minnesota and my wife's family in Oregon.  However, my father-in-law is
<br>> from MN, so my wife's siblings must have gotten it from him.  I don't think
<br>> it's an Oregonism.  BTW, South African English also has 'go with' where it
<br>> is attributed to Dutch/Afrikaans 'meegaan.'  I had never heard of 'go with'
<br>> used outside MN or S Af (and my wife's family in Oregon) until the
<br>> reference to Trenton and Long Island.
<br>> I would never use it.
<br>
<br>My wife's speech has both "go with" and "come with".  I noted the usage
<br>when we first met (49 years ago!) and immediately attributed it to some
<br>kind of German influence.  (It may be that I was influenced by the fact
<br>that we were both taking German I, and were in the same class at the
<br>time.)
<br>
<br>Eventually, I asked her about where she picked up this expression.  She
<br>attributed it to her (distant in time) Pennsylvania Dutch relatives.
<br>That may have been true, but I always suspected some Minnesota influence
<br>there, too: she spent her first six or seven years in  Moorhead and St.
<br>Paul.  She didn't think it came from her grandmother, born in Germany.
<br>True enough, when I got to know her grandmother, I didn't notice either
<br>"go with", "come with", or any frank Germanisms in her speech.
<br>
<br>My wife's grandmother's distinctly un-German English is probably
<br>attributable to her experiences around World War I, when all kinds of
<br>funny things happened to German-derived expressions in U.S. speech.
<br>Historically, Germany was the origin of many (perhaps most) pre-1900
<br>immigrants to Chicago.  In a flurry of demonstrating pure American
<br>patriotism during WW I, thousands of Schmidts became Smiths; hamburgers
<br>were called victory burgers; frankfurters gave way to hot dogs; and on
<br>and on.  The same course of events led to the abandonment of bilingual
<br>ed in Chicago public schools, which until 1916 or 1917 graduated lots of
<br>students whose classes were conducted in German (or Polish or Yiddish,
<br>that I've heard about, and perhaps Italian, besides) all the way through
<br>8th grade.  (And, in those years, eighth grade was as far as many
<br>students ever went: truancy laws only went that far.)
<br>
<br>--  mike salovesh                               <salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu>
<br>    anthropology department
<br>    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!
<br>