Being served in a petrol station just over the river Tamar, the female attendant called me "My lover". Bit odd I thought. But not so odd as being served in a pub by a grizzly looking, rugby playing, 6 foot tall barman who also called me my lover.
When I first came to East Cleveland, where the locals have a dialect quite different from those just 5 miles away. I was surprised to find spouses referring to each other as mate. In the local dialect this sounds like meart.
Ay up, me duck ...
- beachcomber
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- Joined: 17 Jan 2009, 10:49am
- Location: North Yorks
- Heltor Chasca
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- Joined: 30 Aug 2014, 8:18pm
- Location: Near Bath & The Mendips in Somerset
Re: Ay up, me duck ...
My lover, here where I am in Somerset is normal, despite the sex of the user although only to men. My babs or my baba is another. Less common is, 'Alright me old cocker?'. I found that one uncomfortable...b
- kylecycler
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Re: Ay up, me duck ...
sjs wrote:JT taught me O-level English at Ilkeston Grammar School, on the Notts/Derbys border, in the dialect's heartland.
I knew a girl from Ilkeston, so I learned it was pronounced "Il'ston". It wasn't how she started a sentence, it was how she finished it, always with "Janettamean?" - "Do you know what I mean?" Don't know if that was a regional thing or just personal, but I usually did...
Vorpal wrote:When I first started working the industrial bit of Essex I couldn't make out what people were saying when they greeted me. It sounded a bit like 'wigh (why?)?', or occasionally 'wighluv?' I eventually figured out that it was a severely truncated 'alright?' and that the correct answer was generally, 'course', or 'course, mate'.
I remember Sir Paul McCartney saying, when he recorded 'We All Stand Together' with The Frog Chorus, the kids in the children's choir were all stage school kids. Don't know where they were from, possibly Essex because he said none of them could pronounce 'frog' - kept saying 'fwog'. Curiously, the word 'frog' isn't in the song, although maybe that's why.
Flinders wrote:In Lancs when I lived there, someone called you pal, you needed to tread very carefully, it meant they weren't at all happy with you.
In Glasgow, especially, it can be used sarcastically, but all over the UK, a hundred years ago, 'pal' was to have a tragic connotation...
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-pals- ... -world-war