I wanna look at some 'non-standard' spellings. I'm gonna surprise ya wiv some information about dem. I dunno about u but I thought these spellings were sorta new, from the sixties maybe. But I gotta tell ya, they've been around a long, long time. Ya might not believe me, but it must be true cos I read in it David Crystal's book, which I luv by the way, called The Story of English in 100 Words. He tells us when these words first made it into the dictionaries as 'alternative' spellings cos they were used so frequently:
- wanna - 1896
- gonna - 1913
- ya - 1941
- wiv - 1898
- dunno - 1842
- sorta - 1790 (yes, really!)
- gotta - 1924
- cos - 1828
- luv - 1898
And look at this:
An S A now I mean 2 write
2 U sweet K T JThe beginning of a poem called "An Essay to Miss Catherine Jay" by an anonymous author in 1875.
Great to see how the young people of today are reviving old spellings!
Johanna
