Dialect part 3

Apr 04, 2008 12:23

Okay, here is a UK version of the dialect meme, with questions added by Bunn, Steepholm, Muuranker, Philmophlegm, Segh and Amalion. Anyone who feels like doing it is free to add extra questions ( Read more... )

memes, dialect

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bunn April 4 2008, 13:48:14 UTC
South Wales - > North Devon - > Oxford - > Chester -> Cornwall

1. The space between two buildings containing a footpath: path

2. A knitted item of clothing worn over a shirt, without buttons: Jumper.

3. The act of not going to something that you're supposed to go to: Skiving

4. Playground game in which someone is "it" and has to touch someone else who then becomes "it.": Tig

5. Playground truce term when you want a break from the above games: Pax

6. Playground term you say when you want to claim something: Bagsy or Bag

7. Slip-on shoes worn for school sports in the days before trainers: Pumps

8. Small round bread: bap or bun

9. Sweet course that follows the main course: Afters

10. Scone: pronounced to rhyme with "gone" or with "moan": Gone (but in S. Wales it rhymed with 'moan'.

11. Generic term for a bird: bird

12. Round food stuff made with batter on a griddle, which is brown on the outside: Welshcake. It also has raisins in it, obviously.

13. A delicacy that you feel is particularly local to you: Nowadays, it would probably be pasties. In Swansea I suppose it should have been lava bread, only I don't know anyone who actually ate that, I suspect it of being one of those regional delicacies that exist only to horrify outsiders. Welshcakes again, I suppose. You could get a mean lardy cake or chelsea bun there too, but I don't think that was particularly local: I suspect that both of these have suffered from the onset of the Healthy Food revolution.

14. Term of endearment: When talking to the dogs, I tend to use 'sweetie'. In terms of the sort of 'endearment' that is used as a sort of verbal punctuation, people in Swansea said 'flower' and people in North Devon, Love, or My lover (yes, they really did. Not me though).

15. Someone who's soft and easily feels the cold: ? Not something I have a word for.

16. Tourists: Grokels. Visitors (said with that particular emphasis that carries just a suggestion of mental weakness: as in 'Oh, you are a visitor (unspoken: "that explains why you are picnicking on my lawn/ have fallen in my duckpond / have got stuck in this ditch"). If not currently performing any particularly idiotic feat, the question is reversed into 'are you local?'

17. A field boundary: hedge or bank (bank is stone but grasscovered and topped with a hedge).

18. 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 ____!" Look at those cows standing in that cowshed.

19. 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 ___!"

hungry and cold.

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

21. A man who dresses flashily with lots of expensive jewellery is a ____:
Almost certainly, a Grokel!

22. What do you say in a shop when you are handed your change? thanks

23. Generic friendly greeting: Hi (insert comment about weather).

24. Slang term for a pair of trousers: I don't have one, but the question reminds me of someone who I knew in Cheshire, who had a special pair of 'Pulling Slacks' for looking for girls in.

25. Slang term for left-handed: Nope, nothing here...

26. Pronunciation of Shrewsbury? Newcastle? Glasgow? Shrows, and long aas on the other 2.

27. Two pieces of bread with a filling: Sandwich.

28. A playground way of saying someone is out of order: Can't remember any

29. Dialect terms for hands, ears, face - and, indeed, for any other body parts you care to name: In Devon, ears are Yurs. Things that belong to you are also Yurs. Therefore, your Yurs are Yurs, a fact that can cause considerable amusement if you are the right age.

30. Terms for someone who looks miserable: I fear this may be a crybaby, unless it's a wuss who has been forced into doing something unwussy.

31. Potatoes: Tatos. Bananas are Nanas. I don't think that's dialect though. Bananas become nanas when you have a sister called Anna, and things then progress from there.

32. Pale round food stuff with a brown base, lots of holes in it, which you serve hot with butter. Crumpet

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bunn April 4 2008, 13:50:37 UTC
I forgot to mention that a Visitor (or Grokel) can also be a foreigner, although a foreigner is not always a Visitor.

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bunn April 4 2008, 13:54:44 UTC
A foreigner doesn't actually come from abroad. Foreign starts at a radius of about 60 miles, I reckon.

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ladyofastolat April 4 2008, 13:59:29 UTC
Whereas here, foreign is anything off the island. Southampton or Timbuktu, it's all the same to the true Oisle o' Woigh'a

Is that foreigner, or furriner?

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bunn April 4 2008, 14:01:11 UTC
I think it would be pronounced vurriner. As in 'She'm a vurriner, all the way from That London'.

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ladyofastolat April 4 2008, 14:01:55 UTC
re. terms of endearment: I think shopkeepers in Winchcombe would say "love", but quite a few on the island say "my love", which took me aback at first. The addition of the "my" suddenly made it seem rather more personal.

(For non-British people who find this very odd, there's nothing harrassmenty about it. It's totally unisex - used as much by women to women as by men to women. Whether men would say it to men, though, I don't know.)

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bunn April 4 2008, 14:03:16 UTC
I remember a male icecream seller in South Wales calling philmophlegm 'flower' once. pp went an amazing shade of beetroot red.

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ladyofastolat April 4 2008, 14:05:11 UTC
LOL! Oh to have been there...!

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