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.

First job was in central Scotland, I moved from the Midlands. The first time I moved house, I was insulted when someone asked me when I was 'flitting', as to me this implied I would be leaving in the dead of the night, leaving unpaid bills behind me and no forwarding address. She just meant moving house!

PIL were from Aberdeen, and it was only on my second visit that I realised my FIL wasn't called Ken! MIL used to say eg. 'We'll have dinner at 1 o'clock, ken?' !

My sons were going to their first school disco here in Australia, and my neighbour told me the $7 ticket price included a bag of chips and a bag of lollies. And asked if I wanted to pay the extra $2 to get them s sausage!?

Well I thought it distinctly odd that the ticket price would include a bag of chips. And why in gods name would you need a whole bag of lolly pops? And where did the sausage fit into all this? But I just gave each of them $10 and sent them on their way. On their return I found out : chips = crisps, lollies = sweets, the. 'sausage', was a sausage sandwich from the BBQ after the disco, like having dinner on the way home!

When I finally admitted my confusion to my neighbour she thought it was hilarious.

Oh, and (I'm originally from the west of Scotland, my friend is from the east), before my eldest started nursery, I asked my friend if I should send sannies with him to nursery. She replied no, it's ok, they'll feed him there . I couldn't understand why she thought if want him to eat his little black gym shoes. She, obviously, meant sandwiches!

Thought I'd*

zukie ah use tae hiv a rowie fae aitkins in ma piece box fan ah wis in high school. Tha or a jeely piece. 'Twis guy fine like :o Ah hivnae hid een fir a lang time noo tho. Im a teuchter noo :o

I'm suddenly thinking that it'd be easier to talk to someone in German than some of you Northerners!

An American friend of mine was at a party over here (Ireland) when, near the end of the night, she asked if anyone could give her a ride.

I ran over to her and explained to her what she had just said. The poor girl went puce. A few garsúns at the party were disappointed too because she is stunning looking.

Our Egyptian friend (not sure if this is an Egyptian thing or just him) calls the living room "inside" and any room that isn't the living room "outside". DH discovered this after this conversation

Friend: I'm just going outside to get my laptop
DH: You need to go outside to get it?
F: Yes, it's in the bedroom
DH: You need to go outside to get to the bedroom?
F: Yes.
DH: I've been to your flat, you can get to the bedroom through the hallway...
F: Yes, I know, that's what I meant..

A funcy piece! That's a belter

:o I've loved reading this thread. I'm scottish and so many terms and phrases I use or hear and don't think twice about have been mentioned. It's funny to see them being misinterpreted.

A regional dialect fail here:

I'm from West Scotland and was in the East Scotland visiting, I was in a friends house and asked where something was and was told 'it's on the bunker'. Bunker to me is a big coal storage and I had one in my garden at home so looked out the window confused only to be told they meant on the kitchen counter.

zukie I really miss Aitkins. I'm near Inverness now but used to be in the 'Deen then Huntly and the only rowies you can get here are Harry Gows and they're shite in comparison. AND they're called butteries here too I'll be flying for my hols in april from Aberdeen so I'll be going to buy a mass of them on my way home :o luckily they freeze quite well

catchingmockingbirds, my apologies. I'm on my phone and got my smileys mixed up! I thought you were being sarcastic!
I'm from the west of Scotland and we said bunker for worktop, but DH is from the same area and accused me of making it up!

'Fancy piece' means the other woman in some places

A cob in certain parts of the west mids is a batch. But ask for a batch anywhere else and you get

Batch! Not a cob!

batch is several items cooked/made at the same time

I'm from Glasgow and an aquaintance from Kilmarnock confused the hell out of me by talking about her winter dyke.Apparently it's a Kilmarnock word for a clothes horse. I'd never heard it before.

and you mash tea.

It's ok chop

This was in Fife, I was really confused and argued blind that a bunker was for coal and lived outside and they had the term mixed up

Where I work the children say 'for' instead of 'to'. So you get 'I was going for town yesterday...' which took me a while to work out.

When I worked in Essex the kids looked at me like I had two heads when I told them to get some pencil crayons to colour their work.

People round here tend to just pronounce the 't' of the and add it to the next word - think Peter Kay and 'tinternet'. A common conversation might go 'where you off', 'just o'er yonder t'moors' (pronounced mewers). Everything is o'er yonder, up yonder, down yonder, under yonder. No-one has ever worked out where yonder actually is.

goths.

down here in the thames estuary they use indoors to mean at home instead of inside.
it used to confuse me and be odd but it's got to the stage where it now annoys the hell out of me and I have to correct it. I don't know if I can cope with it for the next 50ish years!

I am american and my husband is from Sunderland, and the regional accent and words took some getting used to.
Conversations with the IL's went like this:

me: how you are you doing today?
IL's: Oh, we are canny
me: (silence) oh okay. (To me, canny means clever, but they mean good.)

IL's:(at 11am in morning) what do you want for dinner?
me: I don't know - that's like over 6 hours away.
(oops, they mean lunch)

IL's: what do you want for tea?
me: Oh, I am fine, I don't want anything to drink right now.

I am much better now, 5 years later....but I am still dislike getting called "pet", sorry

After 4 years at a Scottish uni with more English than scors I thought I'd identified all my Scottish words but I totally bamboozled my English flat mate when I moved to London by saying I had tugs in my hair