English dialect

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Confusion reigns in Oxford as your "ole boy" can be your father your son or your brother, you have to pay attention or you lose the plot completely.

Mike

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by Meunier on 18/04/2018 21:32:01:

Posted by Mike on 18/04/2018 15:52:17:

In the house where I first stayed in Scotland I was told that there was a thing called a "lade" at the end of the garden. I was a bit disappointed to discover it was just a mill stream.

Edited By Mike on 18/04/2018 15:53:46

Mike, that lade isn't that far off a mill leat.
DaveD

Known as a 'goit' in my part of Yorshire

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

It all looks rather benign and safe but Mother Nature occasionally bites back. The whole area is vulnerable to flooding; heavy rain, a spring-tide, and a storm-surge might combine and overcome the defences. Not a good idea to build houses there!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 19/04/2018 10:40:11

Eirther build on stilts, or pontoons, both methods used elsewhere in the world I believe

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

For a variation on streams of different sorts, how about the religious song reference to "Siloam's shady rill"?

And for something slightly different; in Herefordshire, a packed lunch was "bait", and those who felt the cold were "naish"

And when we moved from Sussex to Cambridgeshire, we had to learn to distinguish between "twittens" and "snickets"

Who thought that Britain and USA were two nations divided by a common language?

Howard

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Howard Lewis on 20/04/2018 21:14:48:

And when we moved from Sussex to Cambridgeshire, we had to learn to distinguish between "twittens" and "snickets"

Where I come from we call them 'lanes'.

Neil

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2018 21:55:48:

Posted by Howard Lewis on 20/04/2018 21:14:48:

And when we moved from Sussex to Cambridgeshire, we had to learn to distinguish between "twittens" and "snickets"

Where I come from we call them 'lanes'.

"gennels" for me.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Can't remember exactly where in England we were, it may have been in the Lake District, but my sister went into a butcher's shop and asked for a piece of Hogget, only to be told that "we don't sell pig meat here"(a hogget is a year old sheep, and better than lamb, more meat, more flavor ). A couple of confused Kiwis gave the butcher a little lesson in sheep meat.

Ian S C

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Hi John Gibbs. It's a "close" in Scotland, although a friend of mine in County Durham lives in a "wynd". But back home in Lincolnshire there was a passage called Skinner's Jitty. I've also known the term "vennel" used in the North of England and south-western Scotland.

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

This is part 1 of a collection of voice recordings made in Derbyshire & specifically the Erewash valley area, the home of "Ey Up Me Duck".

The original was released together with a book which was compiled by a duo of local folk singers. I managed to track down the voice recordings but sadly (so far) not the book for my Aunt who was born an 'Ilson gel' but has spent most of her adult life in Canada.

Owl get rahnd ter lodding up part 2 wun dey !

[JonParticipant @jon]

"It has been said that the dialects from Upper Gornal and Lower Gornal are different, and the places are only about a mile apart"

Quite true Gordon used to live in Sedgley at one time, knocked around surrounding areas for over 20 yrs even worked and schooled there for decades.
I was a Brummie originally before moving to Telford, Walsall then Sedgley, Gornal was another language 1 mile away, just imagine them stringing a sentence together. "We'll be hangin the pig on the wall to watch the band go by"

Though theres many crossovers nicked by Brummies and the wrongly established new Black Country towns such as Wolverhampton Bilston was only in it along with Wednesfield, West Bromwich (Sandwell) dubious.

Annoying come off J2 M54 and see a sign Welcome to the Black Country, never in it thats 8 1/2 mile away at the start of it.

http://www.lowergornal.co.uk/d_dictionary.htm

Back on topic skunt was widely used and still is, my mate from Bloxwich always uses it. Brummie would say on the P..s

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

One definition of the Black Country is where the 30 foot coal seam comes to the surface, apparently the Black Country society includes everywhere where it was mined.

One thing I do know, is that raising the subject in a room full of Black Country folks is a great time-waster…

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

I've just come back from a few days in Ironbridge – nobody said "scunt" once. Mind you, that's not in the Black Country. I'll have to continue my research at the museum in Dudley.

Rod

[Sam Longley 1Participant @samlongley1]

Can anyone from the Scottish borders tell me exactly what a " Puffy Dunta" is please ? It is one of 2 things – but which one? I have asked at talks about the borders but no one seems to know. But as a child it was in common use & the locals referred to them often.

Another one (& i know this) is a "Finnon" also used a lot years ago.

[Cornish JackParticipant @cornishjack]

Sam – wasn't 'Finnon' ('Finnan' ) usually paired with 'Haddie' … what we Sassenachs would call Smoked Haddock?

rgds

Bill

Edited By Cornish Jack on 23/04/2018 11:50:51

[Brian GParticipant @briang]

Posted by Roderick Jenkins on 23/04/2018 10:51:22:

I've just come back from a few days in Ironbridge – nobody said "scunt" once. Mind you, that's not in the Black Country. I'll have to continue my research at the museum in Dudley.

Rod

Perhaps nothing was out by more than a "gnat's cock"? I used to work with an elderly Black Country engineer who would only describe something as on the scunt if it was "up and down like Collins's Cocks". Funnily enough he had never heard of the famous racing cockerels.

Brian

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

Posted by Brian G on 23/04/2018 13:11:37:

Perhaps nothing was out by more than a "gnat's cock"? I used to work with an elderly Black Country engineer who would only describe something as on the scunt if it was "up and down like Collins's Cocks". Funnily enough he had never heard of the famous racing cockerels.

We were a bit more genteel where I'm from (Derbyshire White Peak) because it was always within a "gnat's whisker"

…and old Humph on "I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue" always said within a "gnat's piccolo".

…and it was always known as "finny haddock" in our house too.

Jon

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

'Snap'. – I have never quite got my head round the term 'snap', meaning (I think) elevenses or packed lunch, carried in a 'snap tin' or 'snap box'. Only ever heard the term in North Nottinghamshire/South Yorkshire area.

A 'midges' is well known in engineering circles meaning a very tiny amount, as is 'Donald' (from Donald Duck) meaning broken, and describing a ship as a 'disnay ship' – further refined by enlarging to 'this disnay work and that disnay work' of Scottish or Glaswegian extraction.

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

Posted by ChrisH on 23/04/2018 13:36:23:

'Snap'. – I have never quite got my head round the term 'snap', meaning (I think) elevenses or packed lunch, carried in a 'snap tin' or 'snap box'. Only ever heard the term in North Nottinghamshire/South Yorkshire area.

Snap is any packed-up meal. Also into Derbyshire. Snap is always put up, as in "Put up your snap" rather than being made.

I always thought that "disnay" was the same as "dunna" or "does na", as in "doesn't" [work]?

Edited By Jon Gibbs on 23/04/2018 13:53:34

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

I came back from an international standards meeting in the US yesterday where the Italian Chairman, who likes to try to use different English idioms, misremembered and came up with…

"We should wash our dirty linen at home". Linen was also pronounced as line-en.

It was a pretty good try, infinitely better than my attempts at Italian, but, whilst all of the Brits got it, I think it left the rest of the meeting wondering what the heck he was on about

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Snap is miners bait.

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

I can appreciate 'snap' being used by miners, it was back then a very mining area, but 'bait'?

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Certainly 'bait' in West Cumbria, but that was a mining area as well, coal and iron

[John ReeseParticipant @johnreese12848]

Even in the US a lunch pail is often called a bait can. Did we inherit that from you?

[Brian GParticipant @briang]

I've heard "bait" in Kent, although nowhere near as often as "beaver", but I haven't heard either for many years. Always assumed they came from bite and before (as in before lunch) although I wouldn't rely on my folk etymology.

Brian

(Edited to remove second "although" from a sentence – my grammar is appalling).

Edited By Brian G on 24/04/2018 08:49:38

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

I just threw the bait in for a sort of joke, I've no idea of origins. I'm from north England and bait was /is a normal word. Snap was a strange word used by southerners, or TV northerners. I never heard of lunch until I moved south.

[Author]

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