Yesterday night: Maybe a Joanism and not a Yorkism?
I had gotten two comments from friends in recent weeks about something I say that is, apparently, odd.
(I know, you’re shocked.)
It’s the phrase “yesterday night,” which I say in place of “last night.”
When I used it in an email to longtime reader Jo, she replied, “I think that is the first time I’ve ever seen that in writing. Since living here nearly ten years I see in print and hear so much word usage I’m not accustomed to – otherwise known as Yorkisms or Pennsyltuckianisms. Some I never used or stopped using myself during my more than fifty-year residency in a somewhat different cultural. Yours just seems so odd a phrase.”
Well, the weird thing was, my husband had pointed out the same thing to me only a few days prior to Jo’s note.
Am I alone? Is it weird to say “yesterday night”? I feel like if you can say “tomorrow night,” then it makes sense. (And, in fact, you don’t say “next night,” so why say “last night”?) There you go. I feel justified. I guess.
