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I asked a question about the usage of a particular phrase:

In what regions or countries would this usage be considered correct, and where would it be considered incorrect?

I attempted to word the question so as to permit a reality- rather than opinion-based answer; I may or may not have been successful in that. But either way I feel like the theme of the question was emphatically on-topic at ELU, per the help page:

Questions on the following topics are welcomed here:

  • Word choice and usage
  • Grammar
  • Dialect differences

And it should not have been migrated to ELL. Note that ELL's "what is on-topic" page lists exactly the same bullet points as ELU's, minus "etymology." But from the meta.SE answer discussing migration:

Don't migrate for the sake of migration. We only migrate questions because they are not a good fit on the original site. It is perfectly possible for a question to be good fits [sic] on multiple sites, but that is not a reason to migrate it elsewhere, unless the OP specifically requests it. As a general rule, if someone asks a question here, and it's a good fit here, it should stay here.

My question was in no way about learning (I know what the phrase means) or correctness in general (the phrase is correct, in my dialect, and I know that fact). It was about regional variance and prevalence.

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    I agree 100%. Questions like that one should stay on ELU.
    – Eddie Kal
    Nov 11, 2021 at 7:17
  • 4
    Unless you want to conduct a survey yourself, you're not going to get useful answers to a dialectological question on a single sentence. As pointed out, the construction is normal in many places (all over North America, for instance), and grammatical everywhere. So what's the point of the question?
    – John Lawler
    Nov 11, 2021 at 21:35

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I think the question is fine here. Given the comments, it seems to be about a definite regional difference. And it's not a trivial-to-explain one at that, again going off the disagreement in the comments.

Similar question asking about where an expression is used: Using anymore in the positive

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The question has been returned from ELL and is now closed on ELU.

As it stands it's a list question, which is specifically discouraged because every answer would be equally valid.

In what regions or countries would this usage be considered correct, and where would it be considered incorrect?

You could try to make the question on-topic. "What makes X incorrect in Standard English, when it's fine in my dialect?" is a form of question which would appear to be OK.

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  • Who says it's incorrect? It's normal and widespread. That's why the question was voted down the first time. And it asks for information that is strictly opinion.
    – John Lawler
    Nov 16, 2021 at 17:21
  • It's certainly not normal and widespread in my country. But yes, the question is inappropriate for any site.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Nov 16, 2021 at 17:43
  • Agreed. List questions are almost the side B to Do my homework or Google this, would you? Except that the list research takes even more work, and none of the work is ours, but the OP's.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Nov 29, 2021 at 16:40

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