Re: "chat to" not same as "meet with"? [was: Re: Synonymity of "nowadays" and positive "anymore"]

Donna Richoux wrote:

Robert Bannister <robban@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Many people have said there is no connection between American phraseology and German/Yiddish, but it is suspicious that the German construction is "sprechen mit" (speak with). 


I get so weary of this repeated accusation that American English was
somehow corrupted by German immigrants. We've had a hell of a lot of
immigrants from a hell of a lot of places, and they *learned* English,
they didn't alter its grammar. (Yes, you can find a dozen or so loan
words from each immigrant group.)

Heavens! I wasn't suggesting corruption, but a grammatical construction is going a bit farther than a loan word. I would suggest that linguistic influences come not simply from who was there, or even from their relative numbers, but from who was influential at the time - a newspaper editor, a politician, a well-known public speaker - and it would have been in an area most likely to influence other people's language, like a big city, almost certainly on the East Coast. It could have been Italian (or Polish, Russian, Swedish), but I don't see a lot of Italian borrowings in American, whereas there are a lot of them from Yiddish.


I wish I knew how to research this, because I would like to know if there are many examples
of speak/talk with in older English, eg in Shakespeare. 


You should bookmark Rhymezone's Shakespeare site.
  http://www.rhymezone.com/shakespeare/help/

Putting in <speak with> yields 89 hits, which is a lot, for them. It
begins:

     The king would speak with cornwall; the dear father   King Lear:
     II, iv
     Of very ill manner; he'll speak with you, will you or no.   Twelfth
     Night: I, v
     If your leisure served, I would speak with you.   Much Ado About
     Nothing: III, ii

Convinced?

Thanks for that. I have bookmarked it. I even remember some of the quotes. I wonder if the Bard made any distinction between the "with" and "to" usages, or if it was fairly random.

--
Rob Bannister
.