grammar - Singular you - "you was" or "you were"?



Lately I stumbled across a sentence where one person was talking to another person and used



But you was thinking about it!



I'v always used "But you were ..." in this case and assumed that it just was a mistake or a joke I didn't get (as a non-native speaker). However, I stumbled across a similar case again today! Were I living a lie?



An earlier question on EL&U, Historical usage of "was"/"were" with "you", asks about this usage during the American Civil War, whereas the current question is about contemporary usage. However, Peter Shor's answer to that question mentions contemporary usage.



Answer



It's impossible to answer this without context. Using "was" (when "were" would be the correct form) may be locally idiomatic, or ironic, or stylistic, or just poor English.


For example, a common idiomatic usage is:



We wuz robbed!
Also, we was robbed or we were robbed. We were cheated out of a victory; we were tricked or outsmarted. For example, That ball was inside the lines—we wuz robbed! This expression, with its attempt to render nonstandard speech, has been attributed to fight manager Joe Jacobs (1896–1940), who uttered it on June 21, 1932, after his client, Max Schmeling, had clearly out-boxed Jack Sharkey, only to have the heavy-weight title awarded to Sharkey. It is still used, most often in a sports context.



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