# "Me" as a possessive.



## Loomis51

What particular region/dialect of England is responsible for using the word "me" as a possessive, as in the phrase: _I lost *me* hat_?


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## Rover_KE

I stand to be corrected, but I suspect that this occurs in casual speech pretty much throughout the country.

Rover


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## dembonz

It's typically thought of as Irish, and I think it's found in Scottish dialects as well. Hope this helps!


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## ewie

Rover_KE said:


> I stand to be corrected, but I suspect that this occurs in casual speech pretty much throughout the country.


Yes, I think the last time we discussed this (I can't find the thread) we came to the consensus that it's used _throughout _the British Isles* in informal speech.

_*i.e. in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland._


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## Rover_KE

Wouldn't a Scot say 'Ah've loast *ma* hat'?

Rover


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## Alxmrphi

Hi Rover, probably a Scot would say that, but yeah, definitely used in the NW as well. (me <object>)


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## Loomis51

Thanks for all the responses!

It's just that I have a particular friend who was born and spent her childhood in Surrey, but moved at at about the age of ten to Shropshire (West Midlands).

I have many English friends, yet she's the only one who speaks this way. I tried to ask her the very same question I'm asking you, but she couldn't provide an answer because she's not nearly as interested in such linguistic trivia as I am.


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## suzi br

I was just looking at a transcript today, the speaker was from Tyneside, and she used this.  We use it in Stoke on Trent, where I live, too.  Perhaps your "many English friends" are particularly wedded to Standard English!


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## panjandrum

I'm not sure if our usage is really _me _as a possessive.
It may simply be _my _pronounced as _mə_.
On the other hand, gimmemehat definitely has me in place of my.


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## ewie

Oh no, I don't think of it as 'using the word _me_ instead of _my_' at all ~ rather it's 'pronouncing _my _as [a shortened] _me_'.


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## Alxmrphi

ewie said:


> Oh no, I don't think of it as 'using the word _me_ instead of _my_' at all ~ rather it's 'pronouncing _my _as [a shortened] _me_'.



I thought this went without saying.

(for the non-natives: I thought this was so obvious that nobody needed to say it)
[edit] : I just realised how a foreigner might get confused by the first sentence so added the explanation


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## Arrius

In Cockney _my hat_ becomes *meyat*, and in the West Indies. "Come Mr Tallyman, tally *me* banana. Daylight come an' i wanna go home". In both cases _me _is used instead of _my_ and is not just a mispronunciation of _my_, just as both dialects have _them (dem) books_ instead of _those books_.


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## Alxmrphi

I wouldn't say it's a blanket dialect for certain areas, here in Liverpool there are about 50% of us that say "dis/dem/me" and the others which say "this/them/my", all mixed in around each other, there does seem to be a high correlation between more poorer and well-off areas though, maybe that's a possible reason............


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## Yôn

As others have already pointed at, it is more likely that what you hear as 'me' is simply 'my' with a pre-GVS pronunciation.  Dialectically there are numerous examples of words that vary regarding GVS, so this is far from a stertch of the imagination.

In that case, your question goes from one about grammar to one about phonology.  In other words, it becomes more fun.   I will look into it for sure, though, and see if I cannot find a history.


Jon


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## George French

Yôn said:


> As others have already pointed at, it is more likely that what you hear as 'me' is simply 'my' with a pre-GVS pronunciation. Dialectically there are numerous examples of words that vary regarding GVS, so this is far from a stertch of the imagination.
> 
> In that case, your question goes from one about grammar to one about phonology. In other words, it becomes more fun.  I will look into it for sure, though, and see if I cannot find a history.
> 
> Jon


 
It is definitely me, not a *mispronunciation of my*, many people write me as well. (UK-EN)

GF..


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## Alxmrphi

George French said:


> It is definitely me, not a *mispronunciation of my*, many people write me as well. (UK-EN)
> 
> GF..



 I agree, that's what my deleted post was about, I just thought everyone would disagree with me, so I removed it, but glad to see it's not just me that believes it.


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## timpeac

Yôn said:


> As others have already pointed at, it is more likely that what you hear as 'me' is simply 'my' with a pre-GVS pronunciation.


Sometimes, but not necessarily. I hear it around here (South of England) as a strong [mi:], rather than a relaxed form of "my".


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## Loob

George French said:


> It is definitely me, not a *mispronunciation of my*, many people write me as well. (UK-EN)


I agree it's not a "mispronunciation" of _my._ I see it as an "alternative pronunciation" of _my -_ or at least it is when I use it


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## Yôn

Does this happen with any other pronouns?


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## timpeac

Yôn said:


> Does this happen with any other pronouns?


You mean as in "we saw us house" or something like that? No, I don't think so. However, I don't think that "me" being used in this way is either a reflex of standard "my" or a use of the object pronoun "me". I think that it's just a non-standard form of the possessive which has persisted that happens to be homophonous with the object pronoun form.


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## Loob

Yôn said:


> Does this happen with any other pronouns?


Does what happen, Yôn - attenuation of the vowel?  Certainly: pronunciation of "you" with schwa is an example


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah even in the plural form of '*you*' (generally 'youse/you's) with 'do' after it...

"What'*d'yz* want"


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## Yôn

timpeac said:


> You mean as in "we saw us house" or something like that? No, I don't think so. However, I don't think that "me" being used in this way is either a reflex of standard "my" or a use of the object pronoun "me". I think that it's just a non-standard form of the possessive which has persisted that happens to be homophonous with the object pronoun form.



I do not believe I ever offered the claim that it was a reflex of the standard, but rather that the standard and this non-standard form are reflexes of the same thing, having only taken slightly different steps on their way to their present forms.

That swapping of the objective/possessive forms does not happen with other pronouns suggests strongly that it is _not_ a grammatical phenomenon.

Jon



Loob said:


> Does what happen, Yôn - attenuation of the vowel?  Certainly: pronunciation of "you" with schwa is an example



I think the attenuation (if we can call it merely that) of the vowel is a different phenomenon from the topic of this thread.

Back to the OP: "using the word "me" as a possessive".  Perhaps Loomis will clarify, but I think that the question being presented is specifically related to the use of [i:] in place of [aɪ].  The use of [ə] is, as you've pointed out, not uncommon, particularly in unstressed words (such as possessive pronoun) and would not likely be noticed by an average speaker.

Of course, my earlier post was meant to address the former issue. If this thread, though, is going to address the latter, then it is hardly interesting enough to keep open - vowel laxing being ridiculously too common in English to investigate it as a fascination.  Hopefully Loomis will clear up the topic a bit.

Jon


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## Loob

Yôn said:


> I think that the question being presented is specifically related to the use of [i:] in place of [aɪ].


Actually, I think the pronunciation of "me" for "my" is most often with a schwi/i-schwa than with a full-blooded [i:] - though that evidently varies by region (see timpeac's post 18).

I agree with you that this is not a grammatical phenomenon


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## timpeac

Yôn said:


> I do not believe I ever offered the claim that it was a reflex of the standard, but rather that the standard and this non-standard form are reflexes of the same thing, having only taken slightly different steps on their way to their present forms.


Then we agree. Since I had to guess what you meant by "pre-GVS pronunciation" I wasn't sure.


Yôn said:


> That swapping of the objective/possessive forms does not happen with other pronouns suggests strongly that it is _not_ a grammatical phenomenon.
> 
> Jon


Yes that's what I was trying to say.


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## sound shift

I'm not so sure about this not being a grammatical phenomenon. In Derbyshire, some older speakers say /uz/, which resembles "us", in place of the possessive "our".


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## Loomis51

I suppose the only possible test would be to have a "_mə_" speaker read a printed such as _I lost my hat _aloud.

Should s/he continue to pronounce it _mə_, it would seem to indicate that it is indeed an alternative pronunciation. However should s/he now pronounce it _my, _it would seem that the _mə _is rather an alternative form of grammar.

I strongly suspect the latter, as when it comes to alternative/mispronounced words, unlike the word _my, _the word is typically a difficult one to pronounce, such as words containing a_ th _sound, explaining the common mispronunciation of words like _three_, _them_ or _father,_ as _tree_, _dem_ or _fahver_.


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## Yôn

I have a feeling that this thread is now dealing with way more than one issue.

The pronunciation of 'my' as [mi:] is one issue; as [mə] is another issue; [d] for /ð/ is absolutely a different issue; and [ʌz] for 'our' is likely related, though that is a difficult thing to determine since the actual topic of the thread has yet to be fully agreed upon.

That is at least four different topics in one thread, and I think it has contributed to the communication breakdown. (I think some of us are talking about one thing, others about another.)  Perhaps we need to all just come out and say what we think is going on .

@Loomis:

It is a tricky thing to base you judgement on how people read words.  If [mə] is really a casual - non-standard - form, then there is nothing stopping a speaker from _reading_ it with a standard pronunciation, all the while using it in regular conversation with a non-standard pronunciation.  Reading tends to bring people out of their normal speach registers and into a more standard one.  In other words, reading tests are not good determiners of how folk really think about words.

@Sound shift:

This is VERY interesting.  However, it does not exclude this being a phonological phenomenon, since the similar pronunciations of 'me' and 'my' could lead to a coalescence of their functions, which could spread to other pronouns.  Something definitely worth looking more into.


Jon

I think I should add that I (and I suspect many others here as well) often pronounce 'my' as [mə], but would never pronounce it as [mi:].  This is why I see these as two separate issues.

Jon


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## Loomis51

I think what what panjadrum said kinda threw me off:



panjandrum said:


> I'm not sure if our usage is really _me _as a possessive.
> It may simply be _my _pronounced as _mə_.


 
So just to make sure we're speaking the same language: (pun intended) 

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

[mi:] = the sound _me_ as in the word _meet_ or _meal_,
[mai] = the sound _mi_ as in the word _mine_ or _mile_, and
[mə] = the sound _mo_ as in _mother_ or _money_.

It seems that all this time I've been under the mistaken impression that [mə] was the [mi:] sound I was originally referring to.

I just want to make sure I understand which sounds you're all referring to before asking a couple more questions.


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## panjandrum

Loomis51 said:


> I think what what panjadrum said kinda threw me off:
> So just to make sure we're speaking the same language: (pun intended)
> Please correct me if I'm wrong:
> ...
> [mə] = the sound _mo_ as in _mother_ or _money_.
> 
> It seems that all this time I've been under the mistaken impression that [mə] was the [mi:] sound I was originally referring to.
> ...


No.
The sound of m followed by either the normal schwa or the i-schwa is not the same as the sound in mother or money.  
It is the sound of [me] in metallurgy, metonymy,  - or other words where the me... syllable is unstressed.


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## pmqs

I would say that a lot of what has been said here is not generally found in the south.

I'll get my hat, for example, would, on average, take 'my' correctly.  Hat would probably lose the h though, on average.


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## Loob

panjandrum said:


> No.
> The sound of m followed by either the normal schwa or the i-schwa is not the same as the sound in mother or money.
> It is the sound of [me] in metallurgy, metonymy, - or other words where the me... syllable is unstressed.


I agree with panj.

I really think that what this thread boils down to is "is _my_ pronounced with an i-schwa* in some varieties of British English"? To which the answer is "yes, informally, in many varieties of British English".

If there is also a question: can _my_ be pronounced with a schwa, as in the final syllable of _mother,_ my answer is also "yes".
_____________
* the vowel sound of "hit", only more relaxed.


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## Loomis51

panjandrum said:


> No.
> The sound of m followed by either the normal schwa or the i-schwa is not the same as the sound in mother or money.
> It is the sound of [me] in metallurgy, metonymy, - or other words where the me... syllable is unstressed.


 
Fair enough. Either way I suppose I was being presumptuous in assuming that the _me_ sound I was referring to was the one I've heard exclusively by Britons, the [mi:] sound, and with no sort of schwa whatsoever.

The schwa you're referring to is not at all exclusive to BE. It's used throughout North America, but most commonly in the US South, such as in the phrase: _M'name's John, and this is m'friend Steve._

Sorry for the confusion.

Just wondering though, if the _e_ in the word _metallurgy_ is pronounced as a schwa, meaning that the first syllable isn't the stressed syllable, which other syllable _do_ Britons stress in that word?


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## panjandrum

The pronunciation of metallurgy is way off topic.  Please ignore my example if it seems confusing.


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## Loob

Loomis51 said:


> Just wondering though, if the _e_ in the word _metallurgy_ is pronounced as a schwa, meaning that the first syllable isn't the stressed syllable, which other syllable _do_ Britons stress in that word?


We stress the second syllable, Loomis51


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## Forero

The /mi/ pronunciation of _my_ is common many rural parts of the South, especially in the mountains.  I pronounce _my_ without a diphthong, but the sound is a variety of long _i_, not /i/.

I think /mi/ for _my_, like /əm/ for _hem_/_them_ and /im/ for _him_, represents a more conservative pronunciation as well as being quicker to say itthan /mai/.


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## Yôn

Loomis51 said:
			
		

> I just want to make sure I understand which sounds you're all referring to before asking a couple more questions.



We are all referring to different sounds.  The origins of the different pronunciations are different.  It is up to *you* as the starter of the topic to clarify about which pronunciation you are inquiring.

Jon



Loomis51 said:


> The schwa you're referring to is not at all exclusive to BE. It's used throughout North America, but most commonly in the US South, such as in the phrase: _M'name's John, and this is m'friend Steve._



That is right on.  The laxed-monophthongized pronunciation of 'my' is extremely common, especially in rapid, casual speech.


Jon


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## Loomis51

[mi:].

Not [mə], not [mai].

[mi:].


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## Yôn

Forero said:


> I think /mi/ for _my_, like /əm/ for _hem_/_them_ and /im/ for _him_, represents a more conservative pronunciation as well as being quicker to say than /mai/.



'Conservative' is definitely the right word, since in all those examples, the alternate pronunciation mentioned represents the word at an earlier stage of the Standard form.

Jon



Loomis51 said:


> I'm referring strictly to [mi:].



Okay, excellent. 

In that case, then, I would definitely say that contrary to representing an _innovation_ (like [mə]), it represents a _retention_ of an older form, specifically of the word 'my' (originally 'mi' ± 'n') before undergoing the Great Vowel Shift, when it would have been (drum roll please)...: /mi:/ .


Jon


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## Loomis51

The "Great Vowel Shift"!

I'm no linguist, and I have no idea what this "Great Vowel Shift" (capitalized!) is that you're referring to, but it certainly sounds monumetal!

Are you sure it doesn't quite qualify as the "Glorious Vowel Shift" akin to the "Glorious Revolution"?

I suppose I'm just well over my head here as a non-linguist.

All I meant to ask is if the peculiarly BE [mi:] pronunciation of _my _was specific to any particular part of England.

The answer is clearly no. Its usage is apparently common throughout the British Isles, regardless of region.

The rest, though not adressing my original question, was fascinating nonetheless.

I now understand that a "dipthong" is more than an extremely skimpy bathing suit, and that a "shwa" is more than a bad pronunciation of the French word for "choice".

Thank you all.


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## Yôn

Loomis51 said:


> The "Great Vowel Shift"!
> 
> I'm no linguist, and I have no idea what this "Great Vowel Shift" (capitalized!) is that you're referring to, but it certainly sounds monumetal!



Along with the Germanic Consonant Shifts, the Great Vowel Shift is _*the most important*_ sound change in all the history of the English language.  The short version is that all long vowels move up, and the high ones become diphthongs.  [i:] is a front high vowel, so guess what?  With the GVS it becomes [aɪ].  So, [mi:] --> [maɪ].  BUT, the GVS did not apply equally in all dialects, especially non-standard ones, and there are many words throughout the English-speaking world that differ as to their degree of participation in the Shift.  This, I believe, is where the pronunciation of 'my' as [mi:] comes from.  It is simply a word that, in some dialects, did not undergo the GVS.  (Of course, that people may now spell it <me> is completely irrelevant.)

Jon


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## Scalloper

I'd put the pronunciation more as [mi], contrasting with the word "me", pronounced [mIi]. Although many people pronounce my as [mi], it would be very unusual to hear it where the word is stressed, as in "Oi! that's _me_ pint", where the word would more likely be pronounced [maI].


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## Yôn

Scalloper said:


> I'd put the pronunciation more as [mi], contrasting with the word "me", pronounced [mIi].



Interesting.  The short vowel would explain the word's non-involvement in the GVS.




> Although many people pronounce my as [mi], it would be very unusual to hear it where the word is stressed, as in "Oi! that's _me_ pint", where the word would more likely be pronounced [maI].



Interesting indeed!  So, when the word becomes stressed, and the vowel likely then becomes long, one would almost have to conclude that the word then, by virtue of its length, is 'able' to undergo GVS.  If this were true, it would mean some sort of transformational system is at work in the speakers' heads that actually contains a rule similar to the rules found in the initial stages of GVS.  This is something very interesting indeed!!

Jon


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## Forero

Arrius said:


> In Cockney _my hat_ becomes *meyat*, and in the West Indies. "Come Mr Tallyman, tally *me* banana. Daylight come an' i wanna go home". In both cases _me _is used instead of _my_ and is not just a mispronunciation of _my_, just as both dialects have _them (dem) books_ instead of _those books_.


Whereas I see _d-_ for _th-_ as an innovation, the Old English demonstrative was _þa_, _þ__am_, _þ__æm_; and _them_ would be a natural descendent.  _Those_ was created to have the plural (almost) end in _s_.  And the third person plural personal pronoun was _hie_, _him_.  It was replaced by _they_, _them_ to prevent confusion with the singular in a sort of "Great Pronoun Shift".

I use _'em_ (dropping the _h_) as an unstressed form (my unstressed _him_ is something like _'eem_), but for stressed forms I use only the written standard's _them_ and _him_ (with the vowels we see in dictionaries).

It must be natural to have a separate set of unstressed forms since they do in other languages (French and Italian come to mind, e.g. Fr. _moi_ stressed, _me_ unstressed).

I don't personally use /mi/ for _my_, but lots of rural folks around me do, and people of my grandparents' generation.


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## Loomis51

Forero said:


> It must be natural to have a separate set of unstressed forms since they do in other languages (French and Italian come to mind, e.g. Fr. _moi_ stressed, _me_ unstressed).


 
I don't understand. The French _moi_ and _me _are two entirely different declensions of the first person singular, and not simply one stressed and one unstressed version of the same word, analogous to the unstressed _'em_ and the stressed _them _you seem to be comparing them to_._

But perhaps I'm completely misunderstanding what you're trying to say.



Forero said:


> I don't personally use /mi/ for _my_, but lots of rural folks around me do, and people of my grandparents' generation.


 
By /mi/ do you mean the _me_ sound as in the words _*me*et_ or _*me*ek_?

I must be misunderstanding that one too. I've spent time in the ruralest [sic] of rural Arkansas and have never once come across that usage. 

I'm confused.


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## Forero

In French, _me_ is never stressed. For example, French _me_ as indirect object (_me dis_) became _moi_ when stressed (_dis-moi_).  The Latin indirect object form was always _mihi_.

Similarly, English /mi/ as a possessive became /mai(n)/ when stressed. It is also to be noted that unstressed _the_, normally pronounced with a schwa, is in most places pronounced with /i/ before a vowel.  _A_(_n_), originally an unstressed form of _ane_/_one_, keeps the _n_ before a vowel and its own vowel remains a schwa.


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## ewie

I have always been given to understand (whatever _that_ means) that _em_ ~ usually written _'em_ ~ is a kind of *relic* of pre-'Viking' Old English _hem_ which, bizarrely, survives in most varieties of English ...

*rather than*

a truncated version (or 'mispronunciation', if you prefer) of _them._


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## Wilma_Sweden

Before reading this thread I believed that the /mi/ pronunciation was typical of the northern English dialects that have preserved some Scandinavian influence that don't appear in 'standard English', or in other words, that we should blame the Vikings for this usage. Now I'm not so sure...

At the moment I don't have any good collected source for Scandinavianisms in English dialects, so if anyone has any idea about this angle, please feel free to agree or disagree...

/Wilma


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## timpeac

Loomis51 said:


> I don't understand. The French _moi_ and _me _are two entirely different declensions of the first person singular, and not simply one stressed and one unstressed version of the same word, analogous to the unstressed _'em_ and the stressed _them _you seem to be comparing them to_._
> 
> But perhaps I'm completely misunderstanding what you're trying to say.


 Just to note, and fearing that these side discussion is getting a bit off-topic (given that discussion of languages other than English in this forum is fine as long as the main aim is to throw light on the English usage), that this isn't true. French _moi_ and _me_ are exactly two reflexes of the one Latin word ME both having developed in regular ways into French based on whether the ME was stressed in the sentence or not. The situation is directly analogous to English _'em_ and _them_.


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## timpeac

Wilma_Sweden said:


> Before reading this thread I believed that the /mi/ pronunciation was typical of the northern English dialects that have preserved some Scandinavian influence that don't appear in 'standard English', or in other words, that we should blame the Vikings for this usage. Now I'm not so sure...
> 
> At the moment I don't have any good collected source for Scandinavianisms in English dialects, so if anyone has any idea about this angle, please feel free to agree or disagree...
> 
> /Wilma


I would only disagree from the fact that I hear [mi] in the south, where Scandinavian influence didn't directly reach.

For a well-known example I can think of the pirate caricature saying "aha me hearties!" (typically in a caricatured south(western) accent).


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## Forero

The question is whether a real pirate (not one of the ones from Penzance) would change /mi/ "hearties" to /mai/ "hearties" upon being stressed (as in "Split me infinitives, you dogs! Not his hearties! My hearties!", or some such).  I'll guess there would have been a phonetic change.


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## timpeac

Forero said:


> The question is whether a real pirate (not one of the ones from Penzance) would change /mi/ "hearties" to /mai/ "hearties" upon being stressed (as in "Split me infinitives, you dogs! Not his hearties! My hearties!", or some such). I'll guess there would have been a phonetic change.


 I thought the question was whether someone would be likely to say [mi] at all. I think it highly likely that in many cases where someone could have an alternative pronunciation for "my" other that [mai] that in stressed instances it is more likely to be [mai].

I'm trying to say that in this (admittedly caricatured) accent the unstressed form is not [mə] but [mi].

To be fair though, I think I have forgotten where this all started now...


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## Forero

I think what we are saying is that the answer to the question of where in England the use of /mi/ for /mai/ began is "everywhere, and nowhere".  Everywhere because the pronunciation /mai/ developed where /mi/ had been before, not the other way round, and nowhere because, if we are correct, native speakers in modern England don't use /mi/ in stressed position (even including, as far as we know, early modern English speakers who spent their life on the high seas).


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## Loomis51

timpeac said:


> The situation is directly analogous to English _'em_ and _them_.


 
Perhaps referring to them as two different declensions wasn't quite correct, I'll have to give that one some thought, but I can't agree that the situation is in any way analogous to _'em_ and _them. _In the French case we have two _standard_ words, one meant to be used in one construction and the other meant to be used in another. That is not the case with _'em_ and _them. _The two are meant to be used in precisely the same construction as each other with _'em_ serving simply as a colloquial contraction of the word _them._


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## Forero

Hi, Loomis.

The fact is: Truth is stranger than fiction.

What is now standard English has its origins in Old English (Anglo-Saxon), just as what is now standard French has its origins in Latin.  And just as French is no longer the same language as Latin, English is no longer what it once was.

The pronunciation of _my_ in a way that sounds like _me_ is not a change to standard English that began in a particular place at a particular time but a pronunciation of _my_ that was used everywhere since before the modern pronunciation of _my_ came into existence, before there was a standard English, and is preserved to this day in many varieties of English.

So, your question is in a sense the "wrong" question.  To illustrate ...

A family in Utah that had used Spanish at home for generations was once asked why they insisted on speaking a foreign language.  They were also asked when it was that their ancestors had crossed the border from Mexico.

The real answer was that the family had learned Spanish as a second language in order to communicate with Europeans.  There first language at the time had been Ute, from which Utah gets its name.  They explained, "Our ancestors did not cross the border: the border crossed them."

So it would make more sense to ask where in England _my_ first came to be pronounced the modern way instead of the old way, or perhaps who first wrote _me_ for _my_ to imitate the old pronunciation after the new pronunciation had become common.

I hope this is making sense.


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## Loomis51

I completely agree. I never meant to imply that the usage of _my_ necessarily predated the usage of _me. _ 

The question:



Loomis51 said:


> What particular region/dialect of England is responsible for using the word "me" as a possessive, as in the phrase: _I lost *me* hat_?


 
was meant to be no different than, for example, the question:

"What particular regions/dialects of the English speaking world are responsible for including the letter "u" in words such as _colo*u*r_ or _hono*u*r_?"


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## Forero

So you are referring only to the written form _me_ as a possessive?


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## Loomis51

No, the spoken form.


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## mplsray

Loomis51 said:


> Perhaps referring to them as two different declensions wasn't quite correct, I'll have to give that one some thought, but I can't agree that the situation is in any way analogous to _'em_ and _them. _In the French case we have two _standard_ words, one meant to be used in one construction and the other meant to be used in another. That is not the case with _'em_ and _them. _The two are meant to be used in precisely the same construction as each other with _'em_ serving simply as a colloquial contraction of the word _them._


 
The Oxford English Dictionary etymology of _'em_ says:



> Originally the unstressed form of HEM, dat. and accus. 3rd pers. pl. The emphatic form of the pronoun was early superseded by THEM, but the unstressed form continued to be used, being regarded as an abbreviation of _them. _In north midland dialects _'em_ may have arisen from _them._


 
The OED etymology, that is, distinguishes between the _'em_ which is not an abbreviation of _them_ and the _'em _which is.

The situation reminds me of _'til,_ a spelling of _till_ which was originally based upon a false etymology.


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## Forero

Loomis51 said:


> I completely agree. I never meant to imply that the usage of _my_ necessarily predated the usage of _me._


And I never meant to suggest that.

What I and others are saying is that the standard pronunciation of _my_ is a relatively new pronunciation that did not extend to all sentences in all geographic locations. And the old pronunciation of _my_ is very similar to the modern pronunciation of _me_, so people who pronounce _my_ the old way sound to others as if they are using _me_ in place of _my_.

We are suggesting that your friend who grew up in Surrey is not actually replacing _my _with _me_ but pronouncing _my_ the older way instead of the standard way.

Does your friend ever pronounce _my_ the standard way, for example when putting stress on the word?


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## Loomis51

Forero said:


> What I and others are saying is that the standard pronunciation of _my_ is a relatively new pronunciation that did not extend to all sentences in all geographic locations. And the old pronunciation of _my_ is very similar to the modern pronunciation of _me_, so people who pronounce _my_ the old way sound to others as if they are using _me_ in place of _my_.
> 
> We are suggesting that your friend who grew up in Surrey is not actually replacing _my _with _me_ but pronouncing _my_ the older way instead of the standard way.


And I never meant to suggest otherwise.

All I asked was if this usage of _me_ to mean what pretty much every other English speaker expresses _as my_ is restricted to any particular dialects/regions of England.

It's just like my _colo*u*r/hono*u*r_ example. I recognize that those who include the _u _aren't _replacing_ or _respelling_ the AE words _color_ or _honor_, but are spelling the words the older way instead of the standard AE way.

You seem to be searching for hidden implications in my question that are simply not there.


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## Yôn

Loomis51 said:


> And I never meant to suggest otherwise.
> 
> All I asked was if this usage of _me_ to mean what pretty much every other English speaker expresses _as my_ is restricted to any particular dialects/regions of England.



The answer is: no, it occurs in many dialects and many regions, not all of which are even in England 

Jon


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## ewie

I could've sworn I said that way back in post #4


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## George French

Alex_Murphy said:


> I agree, that's what my deleted post was about, I just thought everyone would disagree with me, so I removed it, but glad to see it's not just me that believes it.


 
I do not believe it, I know it....

GF.. There is one hell of a difference between belief & knowledge!


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