If you was

April 28, 2024 5:31 AM

In 'Seize the Day' by Saul Bellow, Dr.Tamkin says to Wilhelm, " If you was humble enough, you could go back." Why does he say ' was', not 'were'? What's the difference between these two if I could say 'was' ? Anyway his sentence doesn't look grammatically correct to me. Please help me.
posted by mizukko to Writing & Language (13 answers total)

The sentence is not gramatically correct. It's just a dialect thing, sometimes if a character is supposed to be uneducated or more "country" they speak like that. It also has an unfortunate association with African American characters.

I've not read the book personally but that's generally what's going on. Hopefully someone else will chime in.
posted by Alensin at 5:41 AM on April 28 [5 favorites]

This reminds me of eye dialect, although it’s different in that the spelling here isn’t what’s nonstandard. But that Wikipedia page might give you some ideas of why writers use the vernacular in their writing.
posted by eirias at 5:41 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

"Was" is not standard English usage in this sentence, but using "was" instead of "were" in this way is common in some vernacular versions of English. I'm not familiar with the book or the character, but I would guess that this usage of "was" is being used as a class or ethnic marker.

(This usage is a feature of stereotypical movie mobster talk - google "we was robbed.")
posted by mskyle at 5:43 AM on April 28 [3 favorites]

I haven't read the story, but googling the name of the character indicates that he has signs of being a fraud, including his dress and the way he smells. Using non-standard English is another signal.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:02 AM on April 28 [2 favorites]

Regional U.S. dialect? My dad talked like this. He was born and raised in North Carolina.
posted by Temeraria at 6:19 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

It also has an unfortunate association with African American characters.

That's specifically in the context of US literature (which is relevant to Bellow's story). But this usage is also very common in many dialects outside of the US; you'll often see it in British literature, for example, which is big on both regional and class-specific dialects.
posted by trig at 6:27 AM on April 28 [5 favorites]

Going by standard English grammar it ought to be "were" (it's subjunctive).

But in practice people use "was" pretty often, as in "If I was a rich" instead of "If I were rich". In spoken English you can often say "was" without anyone really noticing or minding even if it's not strictly speaking correct.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:14 AM on April 28 [2 favorites]

Were is the subjunctive mood. We don't use a lot of it in English, and we're not always consistent about using it, and people have been saying it's dying out for decades. In this case, to my ear, the speaker sounds rustic/uneducated, but there are plenty of instances where it would be correct to use were, but if a speaker used was instead it wouldn't sound incorrect to most Americans.
posted by shadygrove at 7:20 AM on April 28

I initially went to the subjunctive, too, and this is a case where the subjunctive is probably called for (unless this describes a situation where sometimes you were humble and went back and sometimes you were not humble and did not, in which case it would not be subjunctive), but note that the pronoun here is "you" so in standard English grammar it should be "were" even if it was* not the subjunctive.

When I thought it was a case where maybe it might sometimes be correct to use "was" (i.e. if the pronoun were "I") I thought it might be something done intentionally by the author to indicate that sometimes the person was humble enough...like humility was a mood not a trait, which might be theme or undercurrent of the story. But given that this should be "were" whether subjunctive or just past tense, I think the other posters are right that this is just a regional/dialect thing and meant to indicate something about the speakers regional origins or education/class.

*"was" not "were" because this IS a situation where sometimes it is subjunctive and sometimes (like now) not.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:28 AM on April 28 [3 favorites]

Best answer: But in practice people use "was" pretty often, as in "If I was a rich [man]" instead of "If I were rich". In spoken English you can often say "was" without anyone really noticing or minding even if it's not strictly speaking correct.

This is true for first and third-person singular subjects, but note that the subject in the quote is "you". "If I was" and "if he was" are fairly standard usages these days, though still generally advised against in formal contexts, but "if you was" has a second layer of non-standardness that you'd also get in non-conditional phrases, like "You was there yesterday".

I would tend to assume (maybe incorrectly, who knows) that someone who said "If you was humble enough" would also say things like "You wasn't humble enough yesterday". In other words, that this is less about their usage of the subjunctive/conditional and more a general feature of their speech. But again, who knows.
posted by trig at 7:31 AM on April 28 [7 favorites]

It's deliberately ungrammatical. Tommy Wilhelm is desperate for a helpful father figure, so he disregards signs that Tamkin is a fraud.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:31 AM on April 28 [7 favorites]

But it is ALSO regional dialect, particularly in "Far Appalachian" which covers from the Carolinas across through Southern Illinois.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:18 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

I'm ESL so I didn't even notice. But I would guess it's used as a class signifier.

I read Seize the Day and I don't think I ever detested an author and all characters in their book more.
posted by Ashenmote at 3:12 AM on April 30