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

[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'