[American English] mind you

[Saki6]

Mind you, it is a dangerous job. But if you're careful, everyone will be safe.

It is a pleasant house and, mind you, well built.

He is dead but, mind you, not forgotten.

Do Americans use the phrase "mind you"?

 

[GoesStation]

Yes, sometimes. The second and third examples are not natural.

 

[Saki6]

Do American English speakers use the phrase only at the beginning of a sentence?

 

[GoesStation]

I think it's most often used at the beginning of a sentence. The second and third of your sample sentences just don't use the expression right.

 

[Amigos4]

Do American English speakers use the phrase only at the beginning of a sentence?

No, the phrase does not 'only' have to be at the beginning of a sentence. It can appear elsewhere, as in: She is quite fancy, but mind you, she has got a lot of money to afford it.

 

[Saki6]

It is a pleasant house and, mind you, well built.

He is dead but, mind you, not forgotten.

I wonder why these two are not natural.

 

[Amigos4]

It is a pleasant house and, mind you, well built.

He is dead but, mind you, not forgotten.

I wonder why these two are not natural.

The phrase would be natural to a native speaker who hears and uses the phrase frequently. It is my understanding that 'mind you' is more natural in BrE than AmE.
As a native AmE speaker, I seldom use the phrase 'mind you' in my daily conversations. I tend to be direct by omitting words and phrases that I consider superfluous.

My preferences for your sentences: (a) It is a pleasant, well built house. (b) He is dead but not forgotten.

 

[GoesStation]

It is a pleasant house and, mind you, well built.

He is dead but, mind you, not forgotten.

I wonder why these two are not natural.

It doesn't work in the second because it means about the same thing as "but"; it's redundant.

We'd be more likely to use "mind you" in a sentence like the first to introduce something undesirable about the house: It's a pleasant house. Mind you, you can't get decent broadband out there.

 

[andrewg927]

It is a pleasant house and, mind you, well built.

He is dead but, mind you, not forgotten.

I wonder why these two are not natural.

"Mind you" is usually used to introduce a negative. "well built" is not a negative thing so it is not appropriate. I don't use "mind you" often at all in my conversations. Perhaps in writing but not in speech.

 

[Tdol]

Mind you works at the end of a sentence too. It can go in the middle, though I think this is less common.

 

[Phaedrus]

I wonder how "mind you" should be analyzed. Quirk et al. (1985) call it a comment clause. Beyond calling it a comment clause, what can we say? I was debating whether to deem it an imperative or a subjunctive(eque) statement like "Bless you," "Thank God," or "**** you." Like the latter statements, we can't use the reflexive (viz., "Take care of yourself"). "Bless you" doesn't mean "Bless yourself."

Upon further reflection, however, it does seem to me that "mind you" is an imperative. I suspect "you" works like "ye" in the King James "Haste ye"-style imperatives, which were used when the second-person pronoun inflected for case and number. In other words, I suspect that "mind you" works as "mind ye" would work if we could still use "ye." But, then, if that's so, we should also be able to drop the pronoun altogether. And, indeed, some folks do. From the COCA corpus:

". . . a quaint English village. Not a real English village , mind , but the kind in which Miss Marple might . . . ."
" 'Personally , mind , I find it shocking, really shocking,' she said."
"You'll have no trouble hearing news from home. Old news , mind , but news just the same."
"Oh, all right, it was a public lavatory. Quite sizable , mind , but even so."
"'Just a kiss of the whip , mind ,' Simenon told him; 'a reminder that he must not cross me'"
"We neglected the fireplace, the cooking, the goats. But , mind , they also had a feeling that something special was going to happen."

PS to R2: When searching COCA, one must use a space before and after a comma.

 

[GoesStation]

I agree that it's an imperative. It's a fixed phrase that preserves an otherwise obsolete syntax.

 

[Phaedrus]

I daresay the syntax of "hear ye"—as in "Hear ye, hear ye"—is parallel to that of "mind you."