To ask if you've ever had a dialect fail

[DizzyZebra]

I think dialect is the right word?

Anyway, I once really offended a girl who was new to my school. I had made friends with her and she invited me to her house, She got changed and i said 'Omg that suits you dead bad!'. Now, As an adult, I agree with her and can see the stupidity in saying something like that, BUT it was something EVERYONE where i lived said when really what they meant was 'That really suits you'.

She imediately looked hurt and i could tell by the look on her face she thought i was back pedaling as i sort of choked and tried to explain, and stuttered through it. I think she realised within a few weeks when she made more friends though.

My Mum also, after moving to the north, became increasingly frustrated one night. Her partners son came downstairs and asked her (As she was folding laundry) if there were any of his pants in there.

She said 'Yeah there are some over in the other pile'

He went over to look and said he couldn't find any, My mum said there were definitely some in there. He searches again and still can't find any. My mum said 'I just this minute put some red pants of yours in there, i know i did! They must be there'

He says 'I don't have any red pants'

My mum marches over, Grabs a pair of red boxers and says 'Look! red pants! See!'

Only for him to fall about laughing as he had actually meant trousers, and everyone here calls them pants, she just didn't know.

Sheisold lives in the north

Baps= bread rolls
Jugs = big boobs
Cob on= mood
Snicket= ginnell
Pumps = sweet black gym shoes
Pot = something you get on your arm if it breaks

Catching I use bairn and wean but spell wean like that I always thought it was a derivative of wee -one

I spell it wean too normally , but spelt it wain as I was replying to sashh and that's how it was written.

I didn't realise others down here didn't say 'tuggy hair'?!

Guess it's never come up in conversation.

It's just ALWAYS been tuggy hair to me!!

And despite living in Essex, my DC's have always been weans to me!

Bluey, that's my hometown too! Glad to have been of service!
Thumb, I've never heard of knots called "lugs," but "lug 'oles" are your ears.
Sheisold, I agree with snicket, pumps and pot. Baps are breadcakes though.

I'm Canadian and when I moved to London I couldn't figure out why everyone was asking me if I was 'alright'? In Canada it suggests you are not alright, as in 'I just watched you fall on that patch of ice, are you alright.' I eventually figured out that it expressed zero concern whatsoever :)

We struggled to serve a man who came into the shop for "tates", we thought maybe he wanted potatoes? We're in the North East of Scotland and he was var var posh English. He wanted "tights". Funnily enough the locals think we're posh English - not as posh as he was tho!

When I went to live in England for uni I realised how "Scottish" I was (I moved to Scotland when I was five). On being met with blank looks when I asked when the scaffies came, I couldn't for the life of me think of another word for them. Scaffies are bin men.

On the flip side, when I was working in Aberdeen whenever my manager asked me for a 'tool" I was never sure whether she wanted a hand towel or a hammer. They sounded the same to me. I've lived in Scotland for over 25 years now (married a local), and I'm still learning. I LOVE doric, it's beautiful.

Oh my granny used to say bidey-in too. When I asked her what that meant she told me it was another name for a concubine.

I don't think she could bring herself to be more specific than that!

As a fresher we were introducing ourselves, one girl introduced herself
'hello, I'm xxx, I'm from shitland'
another chap replied in a pitying voice- 'oh come on, it can't be that bad, I'm from Bognor Regis'
he soon learnt how Shetland Islanders pronounce 'Shetland' at least to a southerner's ear. She wasn't amused.

Oldlady the howf thing makes much more sense now. Strangely, I have never come across one since that day in training!

I'm from NW Scotland (despite the name) and always remember the alleged story of an English visitor coming into the local Greengrocer and asking the wee old lady if she had any garlic and she replies, 'Och yes - it was my first language'. I live in the SE of England and get funny looks when I tell people I wish I could speak Gaelic as it does sound exactly the same in my accent as garlic to most Southeners.

Only works with a Highland accent though as southern Scots tend to pronounce it the same as the Irish (which is wrong ).

Has anyone reading this thread not understood a word/phrase supposedly from where they live? Yorkshire lass born and bred here but I don't recognise some of the sayings people have posted ! Suppose that shoes how you can even have Regional variances! Baps to me are either soft bread cakes or boobs! Fluffies are also bread cakes..but v soft. Kids are beglets . A fair can also be a feast. "Put wood in toil" means shut the door(I.e. put the wood in the hole!) oh, and I watched Australian Masterchef and for a good ten minutes couldn't understand why a woman was cooking with an igg...oh..egg!

South Yorkshire here bread roles are bread cakes always bread cakes nothing else!
Maungy , face on , ,mardy, lots of words for feeling off it !

Pie and peas would always be meat and potato? pirk pue would be with brown sauce

Other side of the Pennines here but we also 'put 'twood in t'oil.

That would be pork pie! !

Talking to the new Canadian temp at work I was explaining that the grumpy looking woman that she had just met was in fact a decent sort but had the tendency to "call a spade a spade".

The look of abject horror on her face had me quickly explaining that in England a spade was a shovel type tool.

I now live in Gloucestershire where school gym shoes are called "daps" and I have looked blankly at someone who offered me a Henry (isn't that a hoover I said) it's an orange juice and lemonade.
My parents were Irish, so press, hot press, pants, bring, bold, all those words mentioned upthread were used in our house as common words. I grew up in Derby, so bread rolls were cobs, those gym shoes were pumps, but does anyone remember using the word "jitty" which meant an alleyway between houses??

On meeting an American pen friend in the flesh for the first time, she said "oh my gosh you're so short! How tall are you?"

I said "5 foot and a fag butt"

"5 FOOT AND A HOMOSEXUALS ASS??" She gasped

I was on a backpacking trip and the guide/driver said, whilst driving along a street, 'look at that, schoolgirls in thongs'. I thought, you perv (and how can you tell??) - took a while to realize he meant 'flip flops' . . .

Had just moved in to johns (ex) house and he took me to meet his friends in derbyshire, who asked something that sounded like "so what do you think of John's arse then?"
I was completely horrified until I was told they pronounce 'house' as "arse" !

Oh and 'tea cakes' have currants in where I come from! 'Barm cakes' don't.

My American friend came over here to go to uni in Glasgow. She used to fall about laughing when, at the end of a transaction, the shopkeeper would hand her her bag, and say " That's you, then!"

And in Glasgow, gym shoes were " sannies" ( as in sand shoes) ??