At work we sell scrap pieces of a material called Tungsten Carbide to various people who take it and do what they will with it (one application, for instance, is the blades on the front of snowploughs). We collect it from customers, but also from our day-to-day operations. It’s fairly expensive stuff at this point, thanks to the Chinese, and because we’ve advertised on our website that we do indeed pay for scrap carbide and resell it, we quite often get people wanting to buy our collection in bulk.

So yesterday this guy calls up, and somehow ends up talking to me. He starts barraging me with questions, asking where we were, and, strangely, how far we were from the American/Canadian border.

But it’s not that he asked, it’s how. He said “you’s”, like I would say “use”. As in, “Are you’s far from the border?” (Answer: “Yes, we’s are.”)

I’ve honestly never heard anyone use that contraction before outside of, like, radio dramas and stuff. Maybe some American will happen along and clue me in; is this some sort of regional dialect or something?

Tags: questions