For this old Popeye series, He always use the conjugation that is for the pronons (He and She). Eg: I remembers instead of I remember. Why does Popeye speak like that? Is it just a funny thing to make people laugh? Or Is it something with the grammar? Or Is it something related to how people spoke more than 50 years ago?
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He's talking a dialect rather than standard English, intended to show that he is uneducated. There are dialects which use verbs in that way, but I don't know whether Popeye's dialect is a real one, or one put together for the purposes of the show. – Colin Fine Jun 08 '19 at 15:11
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2Possible duplicate of I Eats My Spinach – Andrew Jun 08 '19 at 16:15
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"I remembers" is not specifically "for pronouns", it is simply th third-person form:
- He remembers the event.
- John remembers the event.
The character of Popeye the Sailor often mis-used third-person forms in the first person. This served as a speech tag to identify the character. I strongly suspect it was originally done to fit the stereotype of the common sailor as uneducated and crude of speech. I don't know of any authentic accounts of sailors using third-person forms in the first person, however. I suppose this was just invented by th writers. I believe it was also considered funny at the time.
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I wonder if this may not have been intended to suggest Appalachian English, but if so it is a very poor representation of that dialect. Apparently this is not accurate, Andrew's comment cites this answer to say that it is based on a Newfoundland dialect.
David Siegel
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This question has been asked before. It's actually a Newfoundland dialect, the primary port of call for American sailing in the 19th century. See https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/154523/i-eats-my-spinach for more details. – Andrew Jun 08 '19 at 16:15