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[MikafromTopeka]

http://articles.boston.com/2009-08-02/bostonglobe/29252546_1_questions-scots-irish-origin

I SPENT LAST WEEK in Ohio, catching up with family, and the very day I arrived, my mother said something like this: “We get our fresh vegetables at Schild’s anymore.”

I might not have noticed it, but as it happens, I had just received an anxious e-mail on the subject of “positive anymore,” as the usage is called. “It struck me as very strange,” recalled John Fogle, who first heard it at college in Ohio, several decades ago, and it still sounds odd today. Worse yet, he said, “It seems to be gaining acceptance. Horrors

But there’s no need for Easterners like Fogle to be horrified. Positive anymore isn’t such a radical departure from the recognized-everywhere uses of anymore, with negatives (stated or implied) and in questions:

I can’t remember names anymore. (I once could.)

You rarely see this kind of heroism anymore. (You once did.)

Do you play hockey anymore? (You used to; do you still?)

Positive anymore also means “nowadays,” but it reverses the assumption about past behavior: “Anymore, I play a lot of tennis” says that you didn’t in the past, and now you do.

The usage has long been considered a feature of the US Midland dialect regions, spreading south and west with the migration of settlers. But Fogle’s suspicion, it seems, is correct: Positive anymore “appears to be spreading,” the American Heritage Dictionary says in a regional note.

Even if it’s new to your neighborhood, the usage is no upstart. According to a 1998 entry in the online Mavens’ Word-of-the-Day series, positive anymore dates to the 1850s in America, and it has been quite common since the 1930s. The usage “is also found in parts of Ireland, and some linguists have suggested that it is of Irish or Scots-Irish origin.” And it’s not a hick expression: “it is used by speakers of all educational levels.”

The tradition-minded Northeast, the Mavens’ report says, is the region most reluctant to adopt positive anymore. That’s not especially surprising. Still, you’d think the people who embraced “so don’t I” as an expression of enthusiastic agreement might find room in their hearts and vocabularies for another useful oddity.

. . .