Giving All to What Goes On
With the feeling that I am sinking in quicksand, I will try once again, with a little help from my friends, to explore the charming if unorthodox uses of the verb to go and the word all .
Curiously, this debate was started by my simple statement that the cuckoo bird goes “cuckoo,” a blameless usage that provoked a rebuke from a graduate student in biology on both biological and linguistic grounds.
I may have been mistaken, however, in doubting 22-year-old Darrin Navarro’s assurance that a young person would say went , not go , when the past tense was called for. I said I had never heard that nicety observed.
“Like Navarro,” writes Dave Moody of Glendale, “I have heard went instead of said with some frequency.” He also observes that the use of go for say is neither a failure to communicate or a fracture of the rules. “The verb to go is subtly different from the verb to say , including an additional concept: to say in my/his/her habitual manner of responding to such a situation.”
Moody also argues that all for goes as in “He is all, ‘I can’t help it,’ is “a neat way of saying, ‘At this point in the conversation he says a lot of things, the general thrust of all of which is his inability to desist from treating me in this objectionable manner.’ ” Moody says this is admirable.
Jim Robinson, a Latin teacher at Madison High School, San Diego, says that “when a teen occasionally employs the simple past tense went instead of go , I assure you it is more accident than calculation.” He argues that all has a larger function than goes or says . “It is used to describe feelings as well as to introduce quotations. . . . (It) seems to cover body language, emotions and opinions as well as sometimes mean say .”
Ruth Goldmann of Santa Paula says “intensity of feeling is communicated by all. It is not intended as a verb. ‘I’m all. . . .’ Every fiber of his/her being is entirely given over to what comes next in the actual communication.”
Sandy Okura, Grant High School English teacher, chastises me for not recognizing that all is not used as a verb. “In the given examples,” she says, “the verb of each sentence is a form of ‘be’ with the direct discourse being used rather creatively as a predicate adjective, much like, ‘I’m all flustered,’ or ‘He’s all excited.’ All ‘all’ is doing is being itself--acting as an adverb meaning wholly or altogether .”
I’m all, “Hooray for English teachers!”
Steve Dutcher of Fullerton observes that one must watch as well as listen to get the full import of all : “For example, I might hear one of my daughters and a friend talking in the next room. One of them will say, ‘When I told him, he was all. . . .’ At this point, if I don’t look around the corner to catch the facial expressions and hand gestures, I won’t know what the guy went (so to speak).”
In keeping with the times, Evelyn Rudie of the Santa Monica Playhouse suggests a bumper sticker, reminiscent of the Roman veni, vidi, vici. “I say, I go, I’m all!”
Eileen V. Hearn says she’s heard “he goes” and “he went” with equal frequency, and also “the perplexing ‘I’m all.’ But there’s another phrase altogether which you failed to mention: that is, the use of ‘like’ in the same manner as ‘all.’ As in, ‘When I read your column Monday, I’m like, “How could he leave that out?” ’ “
Wendy Hoffmann, 28, says go, all and went have been used instead of say for as long as she can remember. She says she might go as follows: “So she went, ‘The repairman can’t come ‘til next week,’ and I go, ‘Fine, then schedule me for an appointment,’ and I was trying to hear her, but Lauren’s all, ‘Mommy, I need more juice now!’ So I went, ‘Just a minute, Lauren.’ The woman’s all, ‘Hello? Hello?’ ”
Irvin Borders of San Diego points out that go has many uses: “We can go crazy, we can go nuts, we can go berserk, we can go bananas, we can go insane, we can go cuckoo. . . .”
To which I’m all, “You can go that again.”