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

[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 It's rather out of date, which adds to its interest, I think, as we can see how things are moving....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.