- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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SMART TALK
by Dr. "Gabby" Macron
WISHT: At the Center for English as a First Language, we've been hunting the origin of this error for years. As with acrost and nucular, it's probably yet another instance of the speaker having the mouth in motion before the brain is in gear.
But at least we can have fun with our patients when they present this symptom of non-fluency. When one says something like, "I wisht I could win the lotto," we always reply, "When was that? I still do."
The patient looks baffled, whereupon we gently tell them we clearly heard "wished," which is past tense, whence our question.
That evening, over tankards of sarsaparilla, we staff have a chuckle, shake our heads, and order something stronger.
Sometimes it's even worse, as in "I wusht I could win the lotto," so that what they meant to be wish rhymes with "pushed." We're thankful this is less usual, wush and wusht usually being markers of very poorly educated Southern speakers, who, it might be surmised, hardly have a first language at all.
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