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.

VERY glad to hear the cobs issue not just confined to me! When I first moved to Leicester & asked for a 'bread bun' the shop assistant just couldn't make the connection. We had a five minute stand-off until my frantically pointing at the right object finally enlightened her. She thought I was insane, asking for something so obscure as a bread bun. I had a right cob on by the end of that exchange

I once pissed myself laughing when the American boy I was dating told me he was wearing 'cacky pants' - it's the combination. The khaki trousers were very nice.

Is it quite widespread to use having a cob on for mardy, or is it just Liverpool?
Leicester people do you just eat your cobs?

Well I'd never heard of having a 'cob on' before hitting Leicester - and yes, it meant being mardy :-)

Visiting friends in Southampton and as walking to pub got soaked by bus going through puddle, I wasn't too bad being on inside but lad I was with drenched to skin So decided to nip back and change whilst I went to meet the friends. I caused uproar because I announced "he's gone back to change his kecks "

Trousers are kecks in Liverpool..... Apparently undies are/were kecks in Southampton and they thought I was giving too much info. Wierd southerners!

My manager has provided us with much hilarity from a single mistake years ago.

A customer came in and strode up to her and demanded to know where we kept our "Dai caps"

She looked at her a bit strangely and said "Dye caps? No, we don't sell those. Have you tried Boots?"

Customer then said "Why would Boots sell Dai caps? My Grandson needs one for the photo tomorrow."

Giggling, the other two of us finally translated for her that the lady wanted a tweedy flat cap for a little boy in infant school whose photo was being taken the next day for the St David's Day photo's that get published in the local newspaper every year.

All the while they were looking at each other up from the corner of their eyes, both wondering about the stupidity of the other.

The lady finally found one in the market and came back in to brandish the thing at my manager who by now had seen the funny side.

Speaking to a data analyst colleague, to hear "poo it on the pooter" and "pooing it on now duck".

I have the sense of humour of a six year old. I still PML.

DH is from Norn Iron. When I went to NI for the first time he talked about a local shop being a 'real kip'. Now I'm from Norf Lundun, so to me a kip = a sleep. I was until he explained that a kip means messy/untidy/disorganised.

We've been married for 25 years now and I use NI words a lot - yoke and yer man are just so useful. I saw that HibernoCaledonian used garsun up thread. FIL uses that a lot. When I heard him say it i assumed it came from garçon, but presume, with the fada, it's Irish.

I described a young lad I work with as being 'quite fit' to my manager yesterday. He gave me a bit of a confused look and I had to explain that it means 'able to stand up for yourself' where I come from .

He is quite fit though, in both ways .

I stay in Scotland too

We can, and frequently do, have whole conversations which would probably make no sense to foreigners.

Goany go intae the scullery hen, go intae the end press and bring me a pan loaf?

How?

Because a fancy a wee piece! And while yer there bring me some cowel ginger. (cold fizzy juice)

Whit kind?

emmmm cola.

We actually called our living room the kitchen and we called the kitchen the scullery.

My granny called a nappy a hippen and an onion was pronounced ingyin!

We tended to use some Irish words rather than Scottish. Even fellow-Scots looked at us strangely at time.

i moved a lot when I was younger, six months here, six months there. Every town I had to learn a new name for a filled roll at lunchtime. I've had
Baps, Barms, oven bottom cakes, cobs, rolls, butties,scufflers, bread cakes & stotties.

My mate asked for chips in a teacake in the fish shop in Newcastle. Apparently in Oldham teacakes don't have currants in. They do up here.

I was baffled by the 'outdoor' in Birmingham - it's an offy. And a gambowl - although I use that now - for a somersault.

Eh? Teacakes do have raisins in in Oldham... barm cakes don't. Nor do muffins (they're the oven-bottom type).

Gambol- yes- to anyone else in the world Britain, gambolling is what lambs do- i.e. skipping around in a field. But No! gambolling is apparently what the rest of the world call a forward roll
I did wonder why so many colleagues had such happy, carefree, spontaneous childhoods!

My dad was from Bolton, and used a lot of local words.

He went into the petrol station once and asked the girl on the till "could I have a chit luv"

She went bright red, and pointed in the direction of the toilets... he was equally red faced as he explained he meant a receipt for his petrol...

A teacake is a bread roll here. A fruit teacake has currants. So you would ask for a chip teacake if you felt posh, or a chip butty if you were being common.

We moved from Glasgow to Ayrshire. I don't think I ever worked out what the correct response to "Whit ye sayin' t'it?" is. I remember looking blankly when asked "Did you get a lumber?" (did you pull?), or someone said "gads!! (yuck)"

DH (from Bolton) says "give it me", rather than give it to me.

Before I lived in Manchester I'd never heard the phrase "All right?" or "Are you all right?" as a form of greeting.

I'd be walking the kids to school and passing other mums who'd ask "Are you all right?" and I was thinking "What's up ... do I look as if there's something wrong with me?"

It took weeks before I worked it out

ProtegeMoi dabs = 2 slices of potato with a slice of fish in between the potato and covered in batter. Lovely :)
Hardly anywhere does them now, only the traditional chippys.

A dab tea cake to me would be a dab butty
I'm in the north east

A dab here is just the battered and fried potato, no fish involved.

I moved from Manchester to yorkshire (various parts) and discovered

packed lunch became pack up or snap
sweets became spice
barm cakes became bread cakes/teacakes (still can't bring myself to say that)

and if you go to the chip shop and want fish and chips, you just say 'once' and they know what you mean!
and twice, they give you 2 lots of fish and chips -I'm still amazed by this fact although not sure what you say if you want 3 or 4, twice and once? twice twice??

just remembered the one that really annoys me and I'm trying to train the dcs not to say

'on a morning'

it's 'in the morning' ffs

drives me batty

When my DC started a new school we got a list of supplies that he needed.

I duly went out and bought the pen, pencils, crayons etc.

DC came home one afternoon furious that he'd gotten in trouble for not having crayons. He had crayons. But apparently they were the wrong kind.

Where I come from crayons are made of wax - which is what he had. But apparently he was supposed to have colouring pencils, locally known as crayons.

I was having a little conversation in my head as you do and started wondering when people say "nowt" is that how its spelt?

I was texting my mum and i wrote "nowt to show for it"

Nowt/owt are the spellings right or do they even have spelling?!

The more I say them the less like words they sound.

Maybe I should have started a thread about it

I'm from Leeds and use these words frequently

crusty rolls = baps

I love this thread! I live in NE Scotland and have done all my life, but when I met my FIL I couldn't understand a word he said! A classic line from him once was, 'I ken, bit if ye didnae ken, ye widnae ken, ken?' Eh, no, I dinna ken! I have conversations with DH where we'll often comment that no-one outside Aberdeen would have a clue what we we're talking about. Doric is brilliant!