Dialect part 3

[ladyofastolat]

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

Comments

[king_pellinor]

Context: born in the South somewhere, spent first 18 years living in Whitley Bay in Tyne & Wear, then Oxford and now the Oilawoi. Parents from Gateshead and South Shields both on the south bank of the Tyne

[ladyofastolat]

re. Spuggy: see the Geordie dictionary here

[king_pellinor]

Interesting - I don't recall anyone else using it.

[chainmailmaiden]

That's what we call sparrows at home, but I don't suppose it's a word I would have ever used in conversation with you :-)

[phoebesmum]

I have the same problem with the genus corvidae. As far as crows and rooks go, I cling to the belief that if you see one rook it's a crow, and if you see a flock of crows then they're rooks, but jackdaws have me flummoxed (I'm not sure I've ever even seen one). Ditto ravens. Thank heavens for magpies, and it's not often you hear me say that.

21: Pimp? Doesn't seem very English!

[ladyofastolat]

When not calling them "corbies", I usually call them "croworrookorjackdaw", all one word. I have so often pored over the bird book to commit the differences between them into my brain, but it just doesn't stick. It was a nice relief to be in north-east Scotland last year and see the "hoodies" - the hooded crows - and at least be able to identify them. Though all the millions of versions of gull and the guillemotsorrazorbills we saw there totally undid any certainty I had with bird identification.

[phoebesmum]

From living in Cornwall for many years, I can tell you that any bird you may find anywhere near the sea is a shitehawk.

[steepholm]

Context: Hampshire for first 18 years, followed by relatively short stints in Surrey, York and Cambridge, followed by 18 more in Bristol. Parents: father grew up in Kingston-Upon-Thames, mother in Wrexham

[ladyofastolat]

The "daps" thing interests me. According to several websites I've just looked at, it's a specifically Bristol term, derived from the Bristol-based factory that made them, called Dunlop Athletic Plimsolls (though this is one of those definitions that I'm inclined to be dubious about). However, the term had clearly spread as far as a small village in north Gloucestershire - though the nearby small town hadn't heard of it.

[steepholm]

Interesting, bain't it? And there's a T-shirt, of course... http://www.beast-clothing.com/order.html

[phina_v]

It was pretty much exclusively daps in Highworth (near Swindon) and Bromham (between Devizes and Chippenham) too. I certainly never thought of them as anything else until moving to Bournemouth and not being understood.

[philmophlegm]

One I wish I'd got you to include (perhaps you could add it as an edit...) is "You annoyingly lucky person!" When I was at school, we used to say "You spawny get!". The earliest written reference to this phrase I can find is Irvine Welsh's novel 'Trainspotting', but that wasn't published until I was at university in 1993, and the film is 1996.

[ladyofastolat]

Oh, gosh, the spawny get question! We spent hours at... was it Butteller 2? looking this up online, didn't we? It was that final night, the one when Bacchus was wearing the Japanese t-shirt and got some of us very drunk on exciting mixtures of spirits and strange liqueurs, and got himself even drunker. I remember various failed attempts to access the OED using various local libraries' websites, and much chasing around, but no answers.

[philmophlegm]

If it wasn't Butteller 2, then it was a similar event.

I still don't have any answers though.

[amalion]

I was brought up in Birmingham and then lived for 20 years in Australia, so my dialect has become somewhat mixed as has my memory of phrases used for many of the following

[philmophlegm]

32: It looks like 'pikelets' is a west Midlands term then. My mum uses this word and comes from Wall Heath.

[ladyofastolat]

A school friend who came from the West Midlands - Wombourne, I believe - called them pikelets, which is why I put the question in.

[bunn]

I'm sure that the Cowley Road tesco in Oxford used to sell both crumpets and pikelets: they looked very similar, only the pikelets were smaller and thinner.