Words And Things
Posted By Judith on 4th December 2015
During the last few weeks Peter has been working hard on the garden/garage project doing lots of research, trying to find suitable styles and materials at a reasonable cost, ready for Adrian’s arrival.
During one such e mail exchange he asked the purveyor what material the garage would be clad in and was surprised to receive the reply ‘parachute weatherboard’, something neither of us had heard of.
When we asked what this was the answer was equally surprising. Apparently the garage would actually be clad in ‘larch weatherboard’ but the message had been changed by his predictive text!
‘Larch’ to ‘parachute’, surely that must be the weirdest predictive ‘oops’ ever. Unless you know different!
All of which got me thinking about words and language. It is often said that the USA and Britain are two countries separated by a common language, well that goes for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire too.
For years I’d happily been eating tuna salad teacakes for my lunch, but the first time I asked for one after we’d moved to Lincolnshire I got the strangest look.
It seems that in these parts a ‘teacake’ has currants in it, not exactly what you want with lettuce and mayonnaise! What I have now is a tuna salad ‘breadcake’.
Then I thought some more and made myself cross.
Beware ‘rant’ alert.
First we had to suffer ‘AQI’ and I’m not referring to the Air Quality Index, I am in fact referring to ‘Australian Question Intonation’ or ‘HRT’ and that’s not Hormone Replacement Therapy but ‘High Rising Terminal’.
How annoying was that, though it does seem to have subsided somewhat.
So has the phase among young people not long ago when pronouncing ‘ask’ as ‘aks’. That used to drive me mad, I always wondered how they would spell it.
Finally, the one that seems prevalent at the moment, the one that currently annoys me, is people who begin every reply with the word ‘so’. What’s that about?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of regional differences. I love listening to Neil Oliver with his gentle Scottish pronunciation and I could listen to a Geordie accent all day long, but some things are just plain ridiculous.
I’m very proud of my Yorkshire accent, and was quite offended when, a few years ago, the husband of a work colleague said I sounded like Victoria Wood.
Not that I have anything against Victoria, I think she’s very funny and talented, but she was born the wrong side of the Pennines. She’s from Lancashire!!
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