Irregular Use Of The Word "Like"

Since most of the older relatives I grew up around were from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas or Missouri, I heard this expression throughout my first decade. But I always thought it was "how much do you lack"?

I might could be somebody's older relative from Texas and I say "like."   I picked it up as a child from my parents and grandparents, so it goes back a long time.   I will allow that I might have understood it wrong and I never have questioned it or tried to look it up, but it is still in fairly common use in my circles.

It was definitely like.   Around 1971 I worked in a print shop in OKC where this question was common.   "How many do you like?"   "About 200, then I can run your Bell Jewelry cards."

These were mainly southeastern Okies, from places like McAlester or Okmulgee.   The usage was not nearly as common around Enid or Ponca.

The hypercorrection was complete and reciprocal, because these folks used lack to mean like.   "I really lack Marlboras, but I'll smoke a Kool if I like anytheng better."

Another thing I noticed about these SE Okies: pin and pen were both pronounced pin, but they didn't feel the two words as homonyms.   Both were varieties of the same noun meaning long pointed thing, and were always distinguished as "strite pin" and "eenk pin".

Ron Draney said
Since most of the older relatives I grew up around were from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas or Missouri, I heard this expression throughout my first decade. But I always thought it was "how much do you lack"?

In translating Texan to Murrican, I thought a Texan would say "I lack my coffee black."