Dialect

[ladyofastolat]

I didn't do that dialect meme that's been going around because it was too obviously American, and most British people seemed to be coming up with much the same answers, or else going, "What?" I feel like putting together a British version of it. I've got about a dozen questions so far, but am open to suggestions. So, British people: can you think of any examples of words where you have encountered regional variety?

It's been quite interesting thinking about it. I was brought up rather bilingual in dialect terms, with a Scottish father and a Derbyshire mother. I then picked up some Gloucestershire words at school. However, I seem to have stopped using quite a lot of the dialect words over the years. The Scottish ones, in particular, are ones I'm familiar with, but don't actually use myself. I'm always amused, though, by the fact my Dad's main contribution to my childhood dialect lexicon was in terms for different types of rain, such as "smirr" and "stotting" - concepts that he claimed had no exact equivalent in English English.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

pronunciation of scones
Round savory bread product containing a filling
A field boundary
Tourists
An endearment


There are quite a lot of plant ones, but to ask those you are kind of expecting people to know both the latin and common names, which is a bit of a big ask.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

1, 2 and 5 were already on my list. I'll add the others. I did consider putting in a few plants ones, but I'm not sure. My Mum and Dad used very different words for the common wild plant / weed? that sticks to you, as well as for a few others.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Easing my sore buttocks onto an old hobby-horse: As a child, what did you say in the playground when you were playing a game and want to call a truce?

You see a group of animals standing in a farm building. They have udders and go moo. Complete the following sentence: "Look at those ____ standing in that ____!"

You haven't had anything to eat in a long time, and your stomach is letting you know about it. You would also like to be warmer. You say: "I'm ____ and ___!"

Your friends invite you to enter a haunted house: you demur. What do they call you, by way of a derisive taunt?

A man who dresses flashily with lots of expensive jewellery is a ____.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I meant to bring The Lore and Language of School Children home from work today, but forgot. I was quite ridiculously excited when I looked at that some years ago and saw that I said all the "right" words for the area I was brought up in, regarding truce terms etc., despite the fact that the book was around 20 years before my time.

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

I'm middle-middle class, Received Pronunciation English all the way, so the only differences I tend to encounter are, for example, that Judy will say 'serviette' and 'lounge' and 'settee' where I'll say 'napkin' and 'sitting room' and 'sofa'. Oh, and there is also some debate about what 'dinner' is. (It's the meal you have about 8.00 at night. Just for the record.)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I was dithering on whether to include some U / non U dividing words in my list, or whether to limit it to regional dialect. By the way, for those three, I'd say "napkin", "living room" and "couch". Dinner's the main meal you have in the evening, but ideally at more like 6.30, not 8 - although I was brought up to have dinner on the dot on 5. A very posh-sounding and affected person once told me that my accent and vocabulary was more or less acceptable, except that I ruined it all with my "frightful" northern vowel sounds in words like "class". "You should change that," he told me. I didn't.

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

At Yome, we have Word maps : a dialect atlas of England (http://www.librarything.com/work/1626393/book/10618777) which I recommend to anyone interested in dialects. It's rather out of date, which adds to its interest, I think, as we can see how things are moving.... I had your reaction to finding out that

My contribution to the meme (I numbered it 0) is 'What do you call the space between two buildings containing a footpath'. At Yome, the traditional answer is 'A snickelway', and from childhood in Northamptonshire, it's a jetty.

Another one: what do you say in a shop when you are handed your change?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the book rec. I'll see if we've got it in the library.

It was your extra question that gave me the idea, and I was planning on including it - with all proper credit to you, of course. When I was young, I called it a jitty - a word totally inherited from my Mum - but now I'd probably call it an alleyway.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My mother (from Wrexham) always called it a 'shut'; in York when I lived there it was a snickleway. But I guess I'd call it an alleyway too. (Which reminds me - an alley was also a word for a large marble, when I was growing up in Hampshire in the early '70s: is there any dialectal variation there, I wonder?)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Your mother was from Wrexham? I'm now counting down the minutes before philmophlegm, the resident Wrexham enthusiast, notices this fact and pounces on you.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Let's call it fourteen minutes (sorry - I was doing my timesheet for work).

'Shut' isn't something I've heard of though, and I lived next to one when I was little. Mind you, my parents were immigrants.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

'Snickleway' sounds very viking-ish somehow. I wonder if it is.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Well, a lot of my mother's expressions came from her mother,* and she was from Wellington, Shropshire. So possibly it's not a Wrexham thing after all.

* e.g. "Cock your ub-jug!" meaning "Pass your plate!", or "spuntle" for "spoonful".

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

growing up in Hampshire in the early '70s Likewise, same area, same time; more specificly south-western edge of the New Forest.

Now that it is mentioned I remember alley marbles. We also had terms (which I now can't remember) for various different sizes of alley marbles. This is all primary / junior school age: I don't think anybody played marbles at secondary school.

We also played "marbles" with small ball barings, including those from the ink cartridged of fountain pens. I particularly liked getting the really small ones: about 2mm in diameter!

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

I seem to have developed an alarming tendency to leave sentences half finished. Thank goodness all I said this time was
"I had your reaction to finding out that"
In the meme itself I wrote
"I am ass" as the answer to question 7.


Anyway, what I was going to write, was
I had your reaction to finding out that I said the words for my localities, too.

This does not bode well for a day in which I was supposed to have finished editing Chapter six of The Thesis. But seeing as all I wrote was three sentences, I think I finished them all.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I assumed that was the conclusion to your half sentence. I drop whole phrases myself a lot, too, normally due to some over-zealous 'select and delete' when editing.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Slang term for left-handed.
Slang for a pair of trousers.
The schoolground game where someone is 'it' and has to touch someone else who then becomes 'it'.
Pronunciation of Shrewsbury.
Sandwiches.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Your number 3 was on my list. I've never been very good at slang, and I can't think of any slang terms for 1 and 2 in my vocabulary. I'll include the questions, though, and see what others came up with.

[segh.livejournal.com]

What is the playground way of saying someone is out of order?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I have no idea, from my own childhood, but I'll add it to the list. Perhaps once I see other people's answers, they'll start ringing some bells.

[segh.livejournal.com]

I deduce that your playground conduct was always impeccable!

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

lnr's reaction to the dialect meme was to post a poll about what people call an individual small bread product.

I take your point about the UK responses to this meme, though I still found it very interesting reading people's answers, especially the additional commentary type things. I posted it on myself partly because for a couple of questions at least I did have answers that were different from any I'd seen on my own UK part of flist, and partly out of interest to see if I could pass it on to different parts of my flist so I could see their answers.

The question of the original meme I thought most relevant to dialect in the UK is the 'shoes for sports' one, as long as we can go back past trainers to the things we'd have worn at school esp when little and esp I expect for people above a certain age. I know what I called plimsolls, phina_v called daps, and other people call pumps (which in turn is interestingly rather different to what US folk mean by pumps.) Secondly would be the 'small body of water' one. I do agree that most of the others, from a UK point of view, are either obvious, or a commentary on the difference between UK and US practices, or more relevant to class than dialect - although of course there is some overlap between issues of class, dialect, and locale.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

The main reason I didn't do it was merely that my answers were pretty much exactly the same as the first person whose answers I read. I still found it interesting reading other people's responses.

I've already got the sports shoe answer on my list. Most people answered it with "trainers", but I was going to specify the slip-on sports shoe that we wore for school sports in the days before trainers. My Mum called them plimsolls, my Dad called them sand shoes, when I went to school I started calling them pumps, but the children from the rural villages only a few miles away all called the daps. My Mum discovered this when she went to do some supply teaching just a few miles from home, and had no idea what the children were talking about when they said, "shall we wear our daps, miss?" They had different words for several other things, too, I think.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Actually that reminds me that some lads in the Navy called plimsolls 'daps'

[amalion.livejournal.com]

A dialect word for:
hands
ears
face

Terms for someone who looks miserable

I'm sure I know more but at the moment my forgetery is working well.