Piggy with a house

[owlfish]

For my own edification in the ways of foreign childrens' songs, I went to the local library baby and toddler singalong today. Fifty percent of the songs were unfamiliar to me. For another quarter, I knew the words, but not the tunes to which they were being sung.

And then there were moments like this, when what is probably - I hypothesize - a usual British Englishism I've been hearing for years stood out like a metaphorical sore thumb in what was an otherwise familiar sequence.

[Poll #1869024]

Comments

[eulistes.livejournal.com]

Wait! Which is which? My instinct was "stayed home", but my instincts tend to skew half British and half American thanks to my dad's British education, so I never know where a particular instinct is coming from.

[owlfish]

I was raised in the US with "stayed home". Today at the library in the UK, it was "stayed at home".

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't expect the difference to be regional - it's just a case of slowly-disappearing datives. Somewhere in that singer's song-handing-down past, someone's thought "hang on, that needs a preposition!"

[owlfish]

And I meant to also specify, I was assuming that the explanation for the difference was British English vs. American English in my experience but thought a poll might be the easiest way to check to be sure if that was the explanation; also, what responses from people from Canada, NZ, Australia etc. might be.

[eulistes.livejournal.com]

Heh, then I should probably stay out of it, having been raised in the suburban US by parents with Canadian and British backgrounds respectively. :D

Also, I love how people on both sides of this debate are arguing that the other possibility doesn't scan correctly.

[owlfish]

This is why I have long since given up asking people where their language use may be from - we're mostly too complicated for that! I browse for patterns based on what I happen to know/remember/notice about people, and thus might well miss what are actually relevant factors sometimes.

I kind of love that we're discussing scansion without anyone having gone so far as to write out the entirety of the version they're using. I only noticed the one difference at the library, but that doesn't mean everyone else here would say the rest of the piece as I learned to.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

For an 'at' to scan in that line, what in the world do the other lines sound like?

(US)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I think that they probably sound pretty much the same, but the lines you (that is, one, not you personally) compare are probably different. Theory:

UK:
AABB pattern
2x line with the rhythm of 'This little piggy went to' + 1 or 2 syllables
2x line with the rhythm of 'This little piggy had' + 1 or 2 syllables

US:
ABAB pattern, where A is a longer line and B is a line of 7 syllables with a rhyme or half-rhyme.

Just a thought, but it might explain why both sides are convinced theirs scans better - they're consciously or unconsciously expecting that line to match a different pattern. Or of course, it could just be a case of the version you're used to sounding better.