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I've always learnt at school that we have to say: "You were + (add something)" either if the "you" is actually one person or more. But sometimes I heard or read "You was + (add something)" especially in some video games.
I remember that I saw it in a custom mod on Final Fantasy 7 on PC for example. But I've even heard some people say it, but those people were friendly between them.
I can't remember the sentence from FF7, but the words of the sentence were pretty much mashed. An example here though: "You was behind us the whole time". That sentence was said by a nice, yet random guy from an online game, I asked him if that was correct to say that, he said yes (but I wanted to confirm that).
So I was wondering if that is correct? Or is it a kind of a common -I would say- speaking mistake?
Aynath
Posted 2016-07-07T09:01:08.323
Reputation: 106
2Oh I see... I will do some research about the dialects you mentioned. It's too bad that we weren't sensitized about that at school. Anyway, thank you for your answer :-) – Aynath – 2016-07-07T11:04:40.250
1It's a dialect, but it's also just plain wrong. You should never use this in formal speech or writing. Informally you can get away with it, but then, you can get away with a lot of things if you start talking about dialects. "You ain't using them words right" may be something you'd hear in a dialect, but it's still wrong (so very wrong). – JamieB – 2016-07-07T14:25:16.403
4@JamieB it's not "wrong"; it's merely non-standard. Different dialects of English are still perfectly valid constructions because they convey the necessary meaning. Look into AAE (African-American English) for more info, but any linguist worth their salt would tell you to leave opinionated prescriptivism out. Use "not standard" instead of "wrong" in the future, please. – Pierce Darragh – 2016-07-07T17:17:58.023
you was wrong is wrong in standard English eventhough it is used in cerain dialects – successive suspension – 2019-09-09T00:48:44.630