Talk:gonna

In English, when was it first attested? 81.68.255.36 10:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

As a native English speaker, I sometimes say "I'm gonna go to the mall.". Another "I'm gonna go to my friends house, whether you like it or not!". :P Zekecoma 04:14, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

This is still the future tense of a verb. ("I'm gonna GO.") If you don't put the "go" in, you don't use "gonna." (I'm going to the mall.) Kostaki mou (talk) 18:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Just out of random curiosity is Wiktionary rickrolling us in the definition? — This comment was unsigned.

Ha! I guess so, sort of, yeah. But I think it's O.K. . . . in fact, I think I'll make it more explicit. —Ruakh_TALK 01:19, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Classification

Am I alone in thinking this is practically an adverb? As shown in the comments above where it's used to modify the verb "go" to make it an action intended for the future. I personally hope that it's classified as such in the near future.

Also, someone has put this and "wanna" as "eye dialect", but on the page it specifies that such a use does not modify pronunciation, when "gonna" is definitely not pronounced "going to". cwbr77 (talk) 17:11, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

It's not an adverb. If it were an adverb, you'd say "I'm gonna eating" rather than "I'm gonna eat". Also "going to" is often pronounced like "gonna". --WikiTiki89 23:47, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I see what you mean about the classification. However, if "going to" is pronounced like "gonna", aren't you saying "gonna"? "Going to" is pronounced /ˈɡəʊɪŋ tuː/, so if that sound is not included in /ɡə.nə/, which I'm sure you'll agree it isn't, then it's not an eye dialect by definition. Not to forget to use a reference, may I direct your attention to this page: Wikipedia:Eye dialect — This unsigned comment was added by cwbr77 (talk • contribs).

What I meant is that when you are reading something like "Jack and Jill are going to go up the hill", you might pronounce "going to" as /ɡʌ.nə/. You ask, "if 'going to' is pronounced like 'gonna', aren't you saying 'gonna'?" You can look at it either way, but the fact remains that the pronunciation /ɡʌ.nə/ existed before the spelling "gonna". Whether that means we can call "gonna" an "eye-dialect spelling" is debatable. I don't think there is any consensus on Wiktionary as to what we can call "eye-dialect" and in fact I have been leaning toward the opinion that we shouldn't use the term "eye-dialect" for anything at all. --WikiTiki89 08:59, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree with everything you said there. I was trying to think of an example of an eye dialect I had actually read and I couldn't come up with a single one. I'm not sure it's actually used often enough to be a "thing". cwbr77 (talk) 18:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

You can read out any written words any way you want, of course. But gonna is not eye-dialect in my opinion. It is a spelling that reflects a particular pronunciation that is not the same as the standard pronunciation, or at least not the only common pronunciation of a word. That's what dialect spelling is for in the first place: reflect the way something is pronounced in a given dialect. It is only eye-dialect if you change the spelling although the dialect pronunciation is the same as the generally accepted pronunciation, e.g. girlz for girls. By contrast, the spelling gêls (or so) for a non-rhotic pronunciation of girls would not be eye-dialect but a legitimate indication of non-rhoticity as against rhotic dialects. So, if gonna is eye-dialect than any dialect spelling is eye-dialect, because you can always say: it was already pronounced this way with the traditional spelling. That's always true.Kolmiel (talk) 19:40, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

You said, "when you are reading something like 'Jack and Jill are going to go up the hill', you might pronounce 'going to' as /ɡʌ.nə/." I humbly disagree. When reading you would pronounce it /ˈɡəʊɪŋ tuː/. People read the words written when reading out loud (pronouncing them.) Someone may internalize for comprehension and then later orally change the words to "gonna," but not while reading and simultaneously pronouncing.

As a matter of fact, yes they do. Not necessarily, but quite often. Kostaki mou (talk) 21:45, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

When you read the word "colonel," don't you automatically pronounce it "kernel" and not "kol-uh-nul"? Kostaki mou (talk) 18:14, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

õ for AAVE

There's no õ in the English IPA linked or in any reference I could find for any dialect of English. Incorrect or is this someone's personal convention? SilverbackNet (talk) 09:55, 20 April 2019 (UTC)