AIBU: TO REALLY STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE... (Title edited by MNHQ)

[Penisbeakerismyfavethread]

This week at work I have heard “Lickle”, “Hospickle” and “Punkin” used instead of little, hospital and Pumpkin, and it really confuses me. So wibu to ask if there are any words like this that really get to you?

I shouldn't judge, but fuck it. In my area people will often use "shew" instead of "showed". Also "Y'arrlreet buh?" - a popular greeting around here.

Einsteins we had

Ibble, obble, black bobble,
ibble, obble out,
turn your nightie inside out.

What annoys me is the way some relatives from the northwest pronounce names ending in A - Anna becomes Anner, Julie become Julier. It's not "er". Calling someone Hanner when they are called Hannah is just wrong.

I moved to the south west 18 years ago and still can’t stand hearing the word “lush”. I cringe every time.

I was told that dd has Pacific Learning Difficulties.

I mainly heard hospickal when living in East Yorkshire and it used to make me irrationally mad. There is no c in hospital! How did this start being a word?!?

But then my Geordie accent and sayings probably made them confused too.

Aks instead of Ask.

I Aksed for something.

Accents yes - complete rearrangement of letters or adding new ones ... no.

Asseptable - acceptable
Chester drawers - chest of drawers
Expresso - espresso
Pacific- specific
Led in bed - laid in bed

None of these are related to dialect except the last one I think but they all drive me nuts.

Scousers say haitch, but we obviously do have a significant Irish influence.

You all might enjoy 'youse' as a plural. Furness peninsula special!

Youse is also common in Scotland (in both senses of the word).

J-eye is particular to Scotland and Ulster Scots and is actually taught in some schools as the correct way to pronounce the letter J.

You beat me to it with youse.

And for me spam=mam=ma'am.

Just like flour=flower.

Different words, same sound.

Youse also very common in N Ireland. Yous'uns and themm'uns.

Aks instead of Ask

This actually has roots way back and was I believe common vernacular hundreds of years ago. Chaucer apparently used it in his writing, spelled "ax"

At some point it disappeared from standard British English but i guess by then it's usage had already spread to non British English speaking countries. So we stopped it here, they carried it on.

A good book on how old English language travelled out of the country and persisted while it disappeared here is Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. Well worth a read!

I moved from the West Country to Lancashire at 7. I was confused that my new friends were going to “learn me how to talk Lancashire”. I don’t think it was just a child confusing learn and teach, I think it was a genuine dialect difference as I’m sure grown ups used it that way too but it’s years since I’ve lived there so can’t check...

TH-fronting, replacing either th- sound with other sounds. Not so much a bugbear, but it's been a source of confusion and frustration in my house as my British spouse does it and cannot hear the difference between words like three and free while for me, an American where very few dialects use th-fronting, they sound quite different.

All of our kids use th-fronting, even the one which keeps being told how American he sounds, and like their father cannot hear the differences and trying to get them to say it really does not work. Been there, tried all the tricks. It did cause some trouble when learning to read and spelling and things like that and it was a bugbear then. There wasn't much guidance on how to help them and sometimes I wish I understood more about it.

@Green that's interesting, I've always wondered where it came from

I was confused that my new friends were going to “learn me how to talk Lancashire”. I don’t think it was just a child confusing learn and teach, I think it was a genuine dialect difference

I'm in Wales, and in welsh the word for 'learn' and 'teach' is the same, hence a lot of Welsh people mix them up in english. interesting to hear other english regions do it too though.

fuzzy

That's interesting. Have you got an example? I'm trying to imagine it and can't!

Hello folks.
We've had a fair few reports in about this thread. We've had a read through the posts and tbh, we don't think describing certain dialects as 'common' is really on, and we ask you to consider how you'd feel if you were on the receiving end of such a comment...

We're going to remove posts which are not spirit of the site but we may take the entire thread down if we have to continue to zap.

Thanks,
MNHQ

What a boring world it would be if we all sounded the same.

dementedma "Bugbears for me are "I've went" and "I've seen" which are used up here"

What on earth is wrong with "I've seen"? It's a contraction of "I have seen" and is perfectly good English. What do you say instead , "I seen"?

sorry, that should have read "I seen" in the original post.
as in "I seen him yesterday"

Again, 'aks' is very much part of my dialect, going back years and years. It's a very distinct dialect that has many words that are unique to my part of the UK. Its not just a lazy or incorrect version of English, so I refuse to apologise for it or change the way I speak for the benefit of people that think there is only one correct version of English.

You learn something new every day! I had no idea that 'outwith' was specific to Scotland - it's a wonderful word and one I use a lot in business correspondence and reports etc.

Also with the J-ai pronunciation of the letter J - I wouldn't say it's a Scottish thing but more specifically West of Scotland - DF who's from Largs pronounces it that way but DM who is East coast doesn't.

@elainaelephant do you have another word for way of saying Axe where you are or are the two sounding the same?