Date:  Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:59:55 -0500
From:  Larry Horn <laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU>
Subject: Re: All-America teams

Beverly Flanigan wrote,

>  "I vas dere, Charley"--wow, that's a real oldie, one my mother (b.
>  1906) used. Note that she, a Minnesotan, always said 'vas,' not 'was,'
>  and the 's' was unvoiced. (She was obviously imitating a phrase she'd
>  heard, but where did it come from?)

Actually, I only realized after reading my posted message that I had typed
"was" rather than the obviously correct "vas", which my mind's ear somehow
hears as an unstressed "fuss", German-style. And if anything the
second-person interrogative is (or was) even more frequent: "Vas [fuss]
you dere, Charley?"

Larry (not a native speaker of the relevant dialect, but a native hearer of
the expression)