Partner's slang language

[oreo2020]

My partner was born in 1970s and grew up in London. I am an immigrant.
He's now in his 40s and fairly professional and still uses a lot of slang language that he grew up with intermittently with friends and colleagues, for example:

Jack diddly squat
Brown bread
Bird (talking of me)
Snuff it
You get me
Bump off

And similar...

He also says 'Valentimes' instead Valentine's although he spells it correctly!

I don't correct him as English is not my native language but I find it somewhat stuck in 1980s and do think a grown up man would have grown his vocabulary as he was building up his life and career.
But maybe it's more common than I think?

I'm in my 40s and in a professional City career. I grew up in South London surrounded by people using all the expressions you list. I still use a few of them myself and would probably use more if I regularly spoke with others who speak like that (but my close friends and husband are from all over the U.K. and other countries so they wouldn't get it).

@BibbityBobbety, not necessarily. Words like bath and grass can be said in different ways.

Think has one pronunciation, θɪŋk.

Pronouncing Bath and Grass in different ways is not the same as using the wrong word “could of” or a non existent one “sumfin”

@KirstenBlest

Yes, but 'a' is still the same alphabet You can have different accents emphasising the sound differently. But to completely change the sound from a 'sk' to a 'ks' is wrong. The same way you'd follow the BODMAS/PEDMAS rule in maths for the right order of things - similarly in English there's an order to how the alphabets are pronounced in a word.

If someone believes that there is one right way to pronounce words and that anything else means the person is uneducated, does that mean they think there are only educated people in a really small location? Because surely by that logic - say they are working on the basis of RP being the "correct" pronunciation - then there are no educated people up north, or in America, or Australia, etc? Which is clearly factually untrue.

@Hoppinggreen

Pronouncing Bath and Grass in different ways is not the same as using the wrong word “could of” or a non existent one “sumfin”

Well, it is. "Sumfin" is to do with an accent that drops the g and has a f for th - it's still spelt "something". It's no different to any other accent pronouncing a word differently.

OP, do you actually know lots of Londoners? Or do you know lots of people who live in London? The two are not the same. And, unsurprisingly, they very often don’t sound the same.

I would suggest this is the issue. I don't use the phrases on your list but grew up around lots of people who did - and in an informal setting my Company Director DH will use the majority of them. Except pacific for specific because it would make me want to stab him.

Sorry, and we're both from south London. Missed the pertinent part of my story 😂

@KirstenBlest

Fink what you like Claudia, but I would think that you were uneducated.

TBH, that says more about you than it does about the person with a regional accent.

Think has one pronunciation, θɪŋk

That looks like something a pig would say

Aks for ask is incorrect.
Could of is incorrect.

We were corrected at school and at home. As a result, I speak clearly, and, in general, write correctly.

I mispronounce some words because I might have only ever read them or only heard them being said incorrectly. I usually get teased if I do. It's for my own benefit.

Fink what you like Claudia, but I would think that you were uneducated

You’d be objectively wrong, but that is fine with me as it just says everything about you and nothing about me.

No Claudia, it says that you speak lazily but are too stubborn to accept criticism.

I live in south London and my son had to watch a video of a teacher reading a story for home learning, she was saying frew for threw and fought for thought. I'm sure she knows how to spell the words correctly so think it's just the accent.

I come from a S.London family. 3 generations back I was a Deptford girl. Thanks to a scholarship to a posh school and posh university I now speak RP. But in my head I still pronounce liquorice as lickerish and Noah's ark as Nor's Ark.

When I meet up with less socially mobile members of my huge extended family, I don't change my accent, but I revert to my childhood pronunciations. It would feel rude and stuck up to do otherwise. I refer to Greenwich as Grinnidge, not Grennitch, like most of the locals.

Op. You're coming across as snobbish about your partner, as if you're trying to airbrush his past social status turning him into someone fake, a social climber. Not a good thing in English culture. He HAS expanded his vocabulary and learnt to moderate his informal language according to the setting. What do you want him to do? Learn some middle-class slang instead? Loo not Lav?

@KirstenBlest

No Claudia, it says that you speak lazily but are too stubborn to accept criticism.

And it says you are ignorant and judgemental.

I can talk "posh. But also descend into pure South London when talking to my family. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It's an accent, pure and simple.

No Claudia, it says that you speak lazily but are too stubborn to accept criticism

What is lazy about it? It doesn’t save energy to say ‘f’ for ‘th’.

Is it lazy for Sheffielders to contract ‘the’ to ‘t’?

@SoupDragon, and as you point your finger, three fingers point back at you.

@ClaudiaWankleman, that is dialect, not mispronunciation.

Could you respond to the rest of the questions I’ve asked?

I’m really eager to see this definitive source of ‘correct’ English that isn’t just derived from what your mum said when you were growing up.

And also an explanation of what is lazy about my speech.

I think as a non native speaker perhaps you are holding him to higher standards. Im Scottish and was born in an area where generally no-one outside of there has a single clue what you are saying. But grew up with a very neutral accent and always used proper language. Since being involved in the 'grown up' world as you put it, I do now speak very 'properly'. Most people including Scottish people assume I'm English or have lived in England a long time.
But I think here the accent or slang thing generally is judged as being 'common' (God forbid one sounds common)
As for actually saying or using wrong words that would really annoy me.
In our house it's the great divide of my posh accent and his common one haha
But I will admit I'm genuinely terrible for correcting people and quite rightly people have and will tell me to shove it.
I doubt he's referring to a colleague etc as a bird and it's more likely you are with him for most of his casual conversation rather than official and so you notice it.
It's there a reason it bothers you so much?

Ex-husband couldn’t hear the difference between Houston (we have a problem) and Euston (where trains leave from).

and as you point your finger, three fingers point back at you.

Don't you like it when people make judgements about you...?

[quote BibbityBobbety]@unmarkedbythat

But I'm not aiming to convince you. You asked me what I thought, and I told you. In my head it's very clear what is a colloquialism or not, and I'm happy with that distinction. If I were an English teacher I would find it very odd teaching children that the word 'ask' is to be pronounced as 'aks'. I wouldn't be teaching them to use the word 'summat' or 'innit' in a classroom. That is a slang they'll pick up at home. If a word isn't in the dictionary, people can pronounce it how they want, it's a colloquialism. If it is in a dictionary or text book, there's only one way to pronounce it.[/quote]
Well, we are having a conversation. So yes, I asked what you thought. And because I disagree with you I'm saying so and saying why.

You are convinced that aks is simply a mispronounciation of ask and not acceptable in the same way summat is: for me they are the same thing and neither indicate a lack of knowledge or understanding or are "wrong".

In any case this is a very interesting thread!

@ClaudiaWankleman, I said parents not mother.

Examples of what we would be corrected on might be when an s sounds like ss or z, not to say 'ours' as 'arz', 'aitch' not 'haitch', 'bring it back' not 'fetch it back', 'lend' not 'loan', 'obvious' not 'ovious'.
We were encouraged to look up the meaning and pronunciation of words in the dictionary, and to understand the root of the word.

At school, I remember being taught that it was recognise not reckenize, precedent not president, dissect not disect, and so on.
We would get corrected if what we said was grammatically awry.

Like the OP, my mother tongue is not English, so I have learnt English not just absorbed it.