Some sentences in the beginning of movie "Forrest Gump"
In the beginning of movie "Forrest Gump", Gump said:
1. I wish I had shoes like that.
Why did Gump said "that"? Is it correct? And what about "I wish I had shoes like those?"
2. She said they was my magic shoes.
Why it's "they was" not "they were" nor "it was"?
These questions have puzzled me for a couple of years. I had asked some friends who learnt English, but they didn't know either. They said: "Maybe Gump is not smart"
Solution 1:
- Saying like that or like those are basically synonymous in this context. Saying like that is a shortening of something like "I wish I had shoes like you do", where the understood clause you do acts as the antecedent of "that".
- Here, Gump's grammar is simply incorrect from the perspective of standard English. This incorrectness is deliberate, however, as it illustrates both Gump's limited intelligence and the non-standard features of his Southern dialect.
Solution 2:
1 is debatable and 2 is clearly grammatically incorrect. Those kind of grammatical errors are perceived to be common amongst the rural uneducated, which is how they're trying to present and characterize Gump at the outset.