How long have people been saying,"where are you at?"?

It’s sort of a folksy way of saying what most people recognize as the proper way to express “Where are you?”

My father used to quote the Newfoundlanders he was stationed with during the Second World War as saying “Stay where you’re at, and I’ll come where you’re to!”

I’m guessing it has an older origin than most of us would guess.

I remember a cell phone comercial using that phrase around 2005. Don’t remember the company. It featured ahem urban actors and settings.

I sometimes hear, “Where you at?”, which grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard. I’d never heard that one until I’d moved south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Adding the unrequired “at” is improper grammar.

In New Orleans at least since the 80s it’s been “Where y’at?”

@kritiper Actually, I don’t think it’s improper grammar. Dangling prepositions are allowed in the English language.

Not in PROPER and correct English grammar they’re not! My mother was very well taught on the subject (and my father taught high school English) and she corrected us CONSTANTLY!!!

I agree with @drhat77 that it was popularized by the Boost Mobile ad campaign.

I think that expression has been used in the South since people were ‘at’ someplace.

According to the OED, since 1859:

1859 J. R. Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (ed. 2) , At is often used superfluously in the South and West, as in the question ‘Where is he at?’

@hearkat thank you so much I could not bring the name of the company to my head.

Talking about whether it is “proper grammar” because of the stranded preposition is missing the point. Yes, stranded prepositions are part of standard written English. But “Where are you at” is not. The Dictionary of American Regional English says it is a Southern and Midland regionalism. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage notes that it is also found in the UK. It’s a spoken idiom, and it’s completely harmless, but you probably shouldn’t use it in your essay.

I grew up in an English area of Montreal, Quebec. That expression was not commonly used there.

What about this sentence?

Q: Where do you stay?
A: I stay at Gangbang hotel.

You can see the question itself does not have a preposition at the end, but preposition is required when answering the question.

Well, probably longer than you think, because I had grade school teachers telling us it was wrong when I was a little kid, and we’re talking the 1950s now.

However, people around me didn’t say that. I never heard it in use until I went to college in the Midwest: “Where’s the key at?” “I don’t know where my jacket’s at.” “Where’s your class at?”

I do hear it more commonly now than I used to, but most people I know still don’t say it.

As @Jeruba says, I also remember it being discussed in the ‘50’s.

My high school teacher used to make a joke of it.

Q. Where’s (he, she, it) at?
A. Just before the “at”.