Up and down

[ladyofastolat]

I've been quiet lately. Blame being in the closing stages of a long fic (just finished ten minutes ago!) and discovering forums...

I had a debate with my parents at Christmas, and another one with people at work today, about when one says "up" or "down" with respect to directions - e.g. "I'm going down/up to town." "I'm just popping up/down the road for five minutes." "Go down/up the road for 100 yards, then turn left." We have concluded very little logic to it.

I think that a strong physical slope trumps other considerations on the small scale. From our house, it's a steep hill down all the way into the centre of Cowes, so of course we'd talk about going "down to Cowes." ("Daahn Caahz" is the local way of saying this.) If your road is slopey, I suspect "popping up the road" and "popping down the road" would have clear and distinct meanings. In the absence of a slope, it seems to be personal preference. Some people say they would always say "up", others would always say "down", and others opt out and say they'd say "along."

I think that a clear and obvious north-south thing trumps other considerations on the large scale. I'd say "we're going up to Newcastle" or "we're going up to Scotland." Once there, I'd probably talk about going "back down to the island". Would I use "up" and "down" if talking about going from Cornwall to Kent...?

North is "up north" and south is "down south", of course. But one always goes up to Oxford... which is in the south. Presumably Oxford is on the top of a very tall and thin pillar, so it's even more "up" than the north, despite being in the south.

I wonder if Americans see this differently from British people, what with the whole "downtown" thing. (My Dad knew an American who'd arrived at Cheltenham railway station - rather out of the town centre - who got taken by a bus driver in totally the wrong direction, due to said American and the bus driver having totally opposite interpretations of what "downtown" was.) Hmm... American towns are like funnels, that go down towards the centre. British towns must be like cones, with the centre at the top.

Comments

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

I've mostly abandoned the words for vertical movement with respect to largely horizontal changes of location. Maybe I would still use down south or up north.

Now, if you were to say "up the ski lift" or "down the ski run" that would make sense.

Of course, I do sometimes say "down to the shops" because there is a hill that I can freewheel all the way down, and have to pedal very hard to get up, so when I am riding my bicycle it does make sense.

Don't forget the H and V roads in Milton Keynes - yes, horizontal and vertical (approximately) on the map.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It always seems perverse to say 'up to Cambridge' when the place is so low and flat: 'up to Oxford' trips a little more happily off the tongue. Then again it is, or was, or at any rate was within a certain class, also conventional to say 'up to London' (or more likely 'up to Town'). Presumably all these use a hierarchical sense of 'up', to throw into the pot along with the north-south and the physical altitude senses.

Interesting post.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

If anything, Oxford felt a little bit "down" to me, perhaps it was down by the river and kept on flooding, while I went there from the heady heights of... er... Cheltenham, which felt "up" because of the whole being in the Cotswolds thing (or almost). While there, though, I still talked about "coming up" at the start of term and "going down" at the end.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

I tend to use the word "down" in reference to going somewhere. Or else "into." Most often I say, "I'm going into town..."

And I do think that part of the reason I say "down" is because of the word "downtown."

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I think I'd normally say "into", as well... but I think I'd be more likely to say "down" than "up." If I was walking to the local shop, I'd probably say "I'm just popping out to the shop", but I might also say "I'm popping down to the shop". I don't think I'd say "up."

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Presumably Oxford is on the top of a very tall and thin pillar

Ah, that'll be the ivory tower ;-)

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the ivory tower that floods! ;-)

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I've always understood up and down in this context to relate to the relative (percieved) importance between the two places travelled between. One goes up to the more important place and down to the less important place. Hence up to London and up to Oxford (unless going from London to Oxford). This ties in with the up and down lines on railways: the up line always goes towards London, the down line goes the other way.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I've always assumed this, too, re. the Oxford thing. I don't know if this can be applied on a smaller scale, though - e.g. to what one would say if popping out to the corner shop. I think I'd be more likely to say "I'm just going down to the shops" than to say "up", but I don't know if this is related to the fact that in all the places I lived when I was young, the local shops were physically "down" from our house.

[segh.livejournal.com]

I have a vague idea that one goes up to Oxford because it is the opposite of being sent down from the place. After all, Dr Spooner told a delinquent undergraduate to leave Oxford by the town drain.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I pretty much use 'up' to mean 'up on the map', i.e. north and 'down' to mean 'south'. I would also use 'into' as in "I'm going into town" if I was travelling to the town centre from the outskirts or the suburbs.

I always thought that when people talk about "going up to Oxford", they were either travelling from somewhere south of Oxford (as in "I'm a savvernah, so I gow ap to Oxford gavnor") or they were using it as a rather old-fashioned term for matriculation (as in "Sebastian went up to Oxford in the misty Autumn of '28"). When I was at that university, I would have said I was "going down to Oxford" if I was travelling from Wrexham or any point north of Oxford.

I don't think everyone would accept Oxford as being in the south either. I suspect Tolkien for example would have seen it as south midlands.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"I would have said I was "going down to Oxford" if I was travelling from Wrexham"

That would of course back up sigisgrim's theory about it reflecting the perceived importance of the place!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

My impression (or my faulty memory) is that "up" for arriving at Oxford, and "down" for leaving it were used fairly universally when I was there. "I'm coming up in 0th week next term." "When are you going down?" and so on.

If Oxford isn't south, that doesn't leave much of the country that is. It can't be much more than 50 miles from the south coast. Takes us an hour from Southampton, anyway.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Maybe all your friends were savvernahs...(give or take the odd noteable exception)


North / south is as much a cultural distinction as a geographic one. Geographically, Sheffield and Manchester are in the southern half of mainland Britain, but most people would consider them northern.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

During a gathering last year, several of us scrawled all over a rough map of Britain, marking out where "north" and "south" were. They ranged from "Durham is in the midlands and anything from Yorkshire downwards is south", to wild theories that had Cornwall as an isolated outpost of "the north." Everyone had very heart-felt justifications for their theories... and everyone totally disagreed.

My Mum (from Derby) loudly proclaims that Derby is in the north, because she wants it to be, even though she puts other counties on the same latitude as "Midlands." However, the Derby accent does have the short a sound (e.g. in "castle") that would generally be thought of as northern, so maybe she's right.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd think of the short 'a' sound as Standard English and the longer 'a' sound, as in "carso'" (note glottal stop) to be specifically south-eastern - the sort of thing you'd hear in Eastenders. (I said 'Standard English' rather than 'The Queen's English' as Her Majesty seems to have a very peculiar accent - "May husband end ey...")

Please explain the theory about Cornwall being an isolated outpost of the north. Isolated I can accept, outpost - maybe, although that word suggests to me an outpost of civilisation surrounded by barbarian lands, and I'd consider Cornwall to just be the barbarian lands - but northern? Don't quite see that...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I can't remember the Cornwall thing very well. It might have been part of Bacchus' theory, since I seem to remember his was quite unusual but strongly felt. I think - and I could have remembered it wrong - that "The North" got written all over the north of England, but also got written over Wales and Cornwall. It was something to do with building materials and settlement styles, or something - something like "the south" has soft-looking villages and modern-looking cities, while "the north" has hard-pressed villages clinging to the edges of wild moorland and/or cities of red brick.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd have to agree that by that definition, Cornwall is in the north since it does have hard-pressed villages clinging to the edges of wild moorland (and I live in one). On the other hand, the red brick thing means that Reading is also in the north.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

I think it also involved the North consisting of sheep farmers and fishermen, and the South of arable farmers and cities.

If I remember correctly, the inclusion of fishermen in the North meant that the South had a thin veneer of North all the way round the coast :-D

[chainmailmaiden]

Ah, but what you have to remember about Bacchus is that since he was born in Jo'berg everything is 'The North' to him :-D He does make an exception for London though, so his map is essentially 'The North' & 'London'.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Aside from those migrants on here, who are now geographically further south, from Sussex it's all north but the general view was if it was north of Watford Gap it was Northern! All flat caps, "Ee by eck", black pudding, "Trubble at t'Mill" and whippets!

Part of this is now proved by living in the Black Country which most people would think of as Midlands but where they seem to have an affection for 'blood sausage' or black pudding.

As for shops our better corner shop is up a hill from us, there is another one down the hill too - so we can do either. Being brought up on the slopes of the downs most stuff is "down" to me. Down the beach, down to the chippy, down the pub ...

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

The hour is largely on, er, a moving road, yes, er, like those horizontal escalators you get in airports, so the distance covered is, er, actually rather greater than it seems if you're judging from the fact that we're travelling at 70mph exactly....

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Yup, but it takes us 15 minutes of that hour to get to the edge of Southampton, which is why I took some time off the 70-or-so miles that the timing alone might suggest.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If you do that experiment that involves cutting out a model of Britain and suspending it to find the center of gravity, the 'middle' is roughly oxford so there must be a fair bit below it.

Of course, that only applies to a tiny flat paper Britain. We never tried sticking plasticine on to simulate the Highlands or the Pennines.

That's a thought actually. If you start in Scotland and walked to say Oxford, I reckon *on average* you'd be walking downhill...

[nilsigma.livejournal.com]

I have heard it said that the geographic centre of Europe is in the Ukraine (presumably taking the Urals as the Eastern boundary). Makes you think.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Looking at a map, I think you're right. Interesting...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

You've said this to me before, and I replied "bollocks" and subsequently demonstrated that the centre was more like south Yorkshire. Unless Portsmouth is really, really heavy.

[nilsigma.livejournal.com]

Are we including Shetland and Rockall? And the Channel Islands?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

You have to say mainland Britain I think, otherwise the experiment gets a bit fiddly.

I think what you have to do is cut out a map of Britain onto card. Then you can find the centre of gravity by holding an extreme like Land's End and then drawing a line directly down to the ground. You then repeat this for other extremities, and where the lines cross is the centre.

Or something like that.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The Ordnance Survey has the centre in Northumberland.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2271914.stm

[nilsigma.livejournal.com]

Well I am heading home past the definite centre of England, Meriden.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

A variety of answers on Wikipedia - all of Britain, all of it excluding islands, just England etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_points_of_the_United_Kingdom

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Surely you'll get a different answer depending on what projection you use?

- creatrix

[nilsigma.livejournal.com]

No way is Oxfordshire in the Midlands. It is in the outer ring of Home Counties and therefore South, or even South-East! Of course, that would have been different if you studied Middle English dialects.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Midlands is from York downwards to about Birmingham (because Oxford's in the South).

Or Eastleigh up to Winchester (because Oxford's way up North), if I'm coming from Southampton rather than Newcastle :-)

[nilsigma.livejournal.com]

I used to live in Lincolnshire, which presents a regional problem all of its own. Definitely not North, or East Midlands, or East Anglia ... it is a region in itself.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Of course, east and west present their own problems: where is the dividing line? No-one can decide if the Isle of Wight is south-east or south-west, and some organisations put us in the south-west and expect me to go to regional meetings in Plymouth for the day, while others put us in the south-east and expect me to get to Kent. The nice ones create a "south" region that slots between south-east and south-west, and allows me to go to meetings in Hampshire.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

In North Devon when I was growing up, they said 'over to'. This sounded odd and rural to me at the time, so I assume it was something that wasn't said in Swansea where we lived before that.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

People say "over to" or "across to" here, but in this case they actually mean it. "I'm going over to Southampton" etc.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

In Traveller, I wonder if people use 'up' and 'down' to mean coreward and rimward. That is, would someone on Capital say that he was going "up to Deneb" or "down to the Solomani Rim"...?

[louis-soul.livejournal.com]

In America the terms up and down have to do more with the economical class of the area,and most cities here are either square or circular.If the center of the city is commercial/business and just generally common people oriented it's called downtown.

If the area caters to the rich, has upscale apartments and other housing and financial buildings it's called going up town.

To an American the term "going up to Oxford" makes complete sense becuase you are going somewhere that is socially/educationaly above everything else.
Here where most people have no idea where oxford is and generally only think of the school when you mention it they usualy have this vague image of a grand school amongst the rolling hills and moors and covered with clouds and things. It's almost mystical.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I fear that Americans who think that Oxford is "socially above everything else" will get a terrible shock if they ever visit the town...

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Especially the far end of Cowley Road :)