After "44 years of meticulous study," the Dictionary of American Regional English is nearly done. But Britain has a longer and more complicated history of linguistical eccentricity. Here, for example, is how we count sheep on the English left coast:
Yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp, teezar, leezar, cattera, horna, dik, yandik, tandik, tetherdik, bumpit, yan-a-bumpit, tan-a-bumpit, tethera-bumpit, methera-bumpit, jigot...
But according to this Guardian article, it would cost way too much to compile the UK version of the regional dictionary. Which sucks. How cool would it be to leaf through the OED of Britslang, to read of ways to say someone is clemmed, a bit previous, a gurning gormless git... Want want want.
So what terms do you like to use? What makes those around you stare and blink and scratch their heads while you chortle to yourself?
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I was really interested to see "riftin'" and "jags" attributed to Pennsylvania - both are used in the same way in Scotland.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourite words is 'oxters', meaning underarms. I also like 'dreich' for drizzly, dreary weather. I recently found out that 'outwith' is a Scottish word - as in " that topic is outwith the scope of the current document".
Counting...I like Yakuza--ya, ku, za=8,9,3, a losing hand in a Japanese card game, and this is an archaic counting system.
ReplyDeleteHasta luego borrego! Back of my neck gettin red and pritty. Kit and kaboodle. Bamboozle.
ReplyDeleteDoxie. Ham handed. Maui Wowie or just plan Wowzer.
Actually until you asked the question I woulda never thunk I hadem.
I use Hwyl! as a salutation, and sometimes the Pennsylvania Dutch, "all" as in "The milk is just about all. Can you pick up a gallon on the way home?" Plus the usual Southern quirks -- "fixin' to," "y'all," et al.
ReplyDeleteCanada has its own east coast variants: right some good, leave 'er lay where Jesus flang 'er ... and so on. But a regional dictionary would generally find even less variation here than in the US.
ReplyDeleteThe Aussies use a lot of regional diction, mostly from the midlands and north of England. I particularly like 'gazumped.' Then there's the shortening of words: rego for registration, sicko for taking a sick day (falsely), having a perv (for voyeurism). Calling electricians sparkies, carpenters chippies and their tea break a smoko (even when no smoking is involved). But my all time favourite is p-plated hoon.
I believe in linguistic poisoning: I add my own words. Fleleh: the skin that forms on top of hot chocolate. Paz, my signoff, which is Hebrew for sweet (as in, sweet dreams). Or Pax, which I think means peace, whatever anyone else might thing.!
ReplyDeletePaz!
I hopelessly use pop references, especially from tv. Anytime I deem something to be stellar, I say, "Those are the money beets."
ReplyDeleteChadao-- don't even remind me of Japanese counting suffixes! Ugh, bane of my second year of the Nihongo.
ReplyDeletekath, dreich is a lovely one.
ReplyDeleterhbee, 'back of my neck gettin red and pritty', ha, I like that--it feels a bit nineteenth century, but, well, redneck :)
wendy, I just have to exchange email with an Australian and I'm talking about have a convo in the arvo...
jennifer from p, please take pity on a culturally moronic English person and tell me what tv show the money beets hail from.
schlomster, a name for the wrinkly skin on milk, hot chocolate, gravy--what a cool idea. How about...skinkel?
The American version of The Office. Dwight Shrute sells paper by day and runs a beet farm by day and night. The 'money beets' are on top, which draw in the roadside buyers, so that then you can foist off lesser beets upon them.
ReplyDeleteLike promising something sexy, in a beet, and just getting a beet.
I use the expression 'going all round the Wrekin' meaning to go the long way round, even though, living in Scotland, most people don't know what it means as the expression is localised to the Midlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrekin
ReplyDeleteOne of my fav Scottish expressions is 'gud gear comes in small packages' to mean it's ok to be small or short
I'm Australian, and one of the sayings I bring out on special occasions is "Your blood's worth bottling", basically to thank someone for something extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteIt may well be English, from my paternal grandfather, who was called "Jack" because he was for a time an English sailor.
Oh dear. I was born in Brooklyn; my grandparents were very Irish, but lived in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Orthodox Jewish (my father spoke Yiddish fluently, including to my grandmother when he didn't want us to know what he was saying); when I was 7 he moved us to Surrey where we lived next to Glaswegians; and then I became a journalist, which has a private language all its own. So...
ReplyDeletefrom Yiddish/Hebrew, "frum" (Orthodox, strictly observant) and "ungepotch" (overdone, messy)
from Brit-lish, "nicked," "nobbled," "bollocking," "all 'round the houses," "kip" - and I say "clemmed" all the time, because I'm in Minnesota and it is cold and damp here.
and from one of my grandmothers, her favorite saying for someone cheeky: "he's got too much of what the cat cleans her paws with"...