Hey there, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, this is Sasha Hart from Olive Hill, Kentucky. It’s good to talk to you guys.
Hey, Sasha.
Hi, Sasha. How are you doing?
Hey, pretty good. So I am curious what your thoughts are on what I kind of thought was an Appalachian thing, but the phrase, how come, to ask why, it doesn’t make any sense to me. What’s your thoughts?
How come, meaning why.
Did you ever have a teacher warn you against using how come?
No, no one has ever even noticed that it exists.
Oh, I ask because sometimes it’s a favorite hobby horse of some prickly sticklers. There’s frowned upon by English teachers sometimes who prefer that people would use why instead of how come. Because how come tends to be informal.
It’s not the kind of thing you’re going to say, find in Supreme Court decisions, you know, or use in language when you’re speaking before, say, King Charles or something like that, you know.
But both of them have existed for a very long time. How come is an Americanism from the mid-1800s.
There’s some speculation that it’s a shortening of longer phrases, such as how comes it that, but the evidence is lacking. We don’t know that that’s what it’s from.
And there have been some attempts to connect how come to Irish and to Gullah, which is an African-influenced dialect of English from the Eastern seaboard. But those are also iffy, and not much work has been done since the middle of the 20th century to really get to the bottom of how, how come exists in American English.
Maybe it’s the idea of how did you come to that conclusion, but that’s the best I could do.
Yeah, that’s a pretty standard kind of process when we think about it. We try to extrapolate the how and the come and treat them as separate items and put in some other words to make it work.
But really, we have to treat them as a team. They are bridled together. They’re a pair. How come? And really, they are just another questioning. They go with when, what, where, why, how come.
How come together? We don’t break them apart. They operate as a unit. And that’s how they should be treated.
So the mistake is to take them as something other than as a unit. You will find how come used frequently across a wide spectrum of writers of all backgrounds, education levels, writing styles, all levels of formality, except for, of course, like I said, the most formal.
So it’s not like it’s used by ignorant people or people in only one part of the country. It’s not just Appalachian or anything like that. So how come is across the whole United States and into Canada.
I think it even popped up in the United Kingdom.
Well, very cool. I appreciate you guys brainstorming that with me. Thank you.
Sure, pleasure.
Yeah, well, thank you. We appreciate your questions. Call us again sometime, Sasha.
I’ll see what I can come up with, okay?
All right. Be well. Take care now. See you guys.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, on this show, we talk about what we say and how come we say it. So give us a call, 877-929-9673.
