Which is the correct version?

Question

1. You was here last night too.2. You were here last night too.I would say the second one is the correct, but I heard the first one in the movie "Home Alone 2". So I am a little confused.

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

These are the correct forms for the past tense of "be":

I was
You were

He / she / it was
They were
We were

Children often make grammatical mistakes and so do uneducated people.
Some (nonstandard) dialects of English also use "you was."

CalifJim · Answer

anonymousI am a little confused.

Do not use dialog in movies, novels, or plays to learn a language, especially not English, which has so many varieties that include non-standard elements.

Remember that a writer has put these words into the mouths of the characters as a way of telling the audience what kind of characters they are. Characters in dramas are not usually ordinary people that we meet everyday. What would be the fun of seeing a movie with only ordinary characters? That means that these characters are not going to speak like ordinary everyday people either.

Whether we like it or not, people judge us by how we use language. For example, if the writer wants to represent someone who is less educated, that writer may purposely put non-standard grammar into the mouth of that character, knowing that the audience will judge the character for the language he uses and understand the character from this point of view.

Similarly, it would be ridiculous for an author to have a Polish immigrant speaking like the King of England or to have an upper-class Bostonian speaking like a member of the Mafia.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

anonymous I heard the first one in the movie "Home Alone 2"

That line was spoken by "Johnny", the caricature of a gangster thug in the fictitious movie-within-a-movie Angels with Even Filthier Souls, purported sequel to the equally fake Angels with Filthy Souls from the first Home Alone. Johnny's style of speech is formulaic in movies, plays and television, using bad grammar, malapropisms and non-standard diction such as "yous" for the plural of "you" to denote coarseness and lack of education. The formula is often taken to extremes, as it is here, for comic effect.

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