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I was at my house and my mom asked me to get the washcloths. I went upstairs and yelled "Where are the washcloths at?". Then my dad "corrected" me by saying "where are the washcloths". I hear a lot of people around me add "at" to a sentence like this, as in "where's it at?' or "where'd you put it at?". Are these statements correct? If so, why? Was my statement grammatically correct? If so, why?

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  • Did your mother understand the question? I'm guessing she didn't have any trouble with it, and neither did your dad.
    – Robusto
    Commented Oct 8, 2022 at 3:49
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    It’s informal, colloquial, similar to the use of ain’t.
    – Jim
    Commented Oct 8, 2022 at 4:10
  • I imagine that you live in West Yorkshire or East Lancashire. The use of 'at' at the end of "Where" questions is a feature of the local dialects in that area. I also imagine that you may have moved to the area rather than having been born there and are acquiring the accent and dialect by assimilation. If you'd been born there you'd just use "Where's it at?" and never even notice that you were doing it.
    – BoldBen
    Commented Oct 8, 2022 at 7:11
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    @BoldBen David Foster Wallace notes in his Harper’s article harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/… that this construction is common in what he calls the Rural Midwest dialect; he defends it.
    – Xanne
    Commented Oct 8, 2022 at 8:12
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    It's all over the country, and it's more associated with socioeconomic class than with dialect area. Most people live in cities any more.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Oct 8, 2022 at 14:27

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