The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

Hence my caveat about the cuppa's intended recipient.

One of my favourite bits of linguistic change is the way all words meaning 'immediately' have shifted their meaning to 'in a little while', no doubt due to people saying they would do things immediately when they meant later.
Anon meant immediately but by the Tudor age it had shifted its meaning to soon, and people said presently for immediately.
Now, presently means later.
I am certain in 200 years immediately will mean soon and we will have to have another word for immediately.

Sorry Pastamancer I don't think I know "teasy". Can you use it in a sentence?

He was tired and teasy after a long day :)

It means grumpy.

I think teasy is Cornwall only. Not heard it used in Somerset.

Hence my caveat about the cuppa's intended recipient.
indeed!

Dreckly in East Anglia means, soon, in a bit, perhaps later, I'll see how things are going. 'Well, I've told my mate Bill you asked about having that wall plastered, he said he'll pop by dreckly and take a look.'
Bill might appear after lunch, or he might not arrive for the next six weeks.

Trills thanks for the OU clip on Shakespeare's language and pronunciation, it was really interesting and I now know why some people, particularly Irish friends say filom not film. The original being written as philome. Well I never

I've heard 'filom in the NE of England too.

It was interesting, wasn't it?

It doesn't affect 'nuke-ular' though. (Which seems to be gaining ground.) I wonder if that - and other changes - are due to eg the decline of Latin? (People not being immediately conversant with the root word......)

Sounds like dreckly is the equivalent of "mañana mañana"

dreckly

sounds like a corruption of "directly"

There's an old joke about someone asking a Gael for the equivalent of 'manana' in Gaelic (having explained the word) whereupon the Gael ponders for a little then says 'I don't think we have a word which implies such a degree of urgency.'

Ha ha ha Cozie!

Lurking - I've always assumed it was a West Country pronunciation of "directly" (though now I know it was used in Sussex too).

Stormtreader - sort of - though I think manana is always at some far out point in the distance, whereas, like Lumela says, if something is to be done dreckly it could happen very soon (or not for some time!!)

Not heard of teasy, though

I've spent the last two winters in Newfoundland. The people there have an accent that is 50% Irish and 50% Bristolian. Some of them have 'Newfie' roots hundreds of years old but they sound like they just got off the boat from Dublin. Bizarre!

Nantucket also has an interested accent that is probably Elizabethan in influence. They stayed pretty segregated for a long time so the accent hasn't been diluted too much by language switching or modernity.

In Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, there's a good bit about the transfer between the nations, including iirc, mention if the Hoi Toiders in I think Virgina, who had come from the W country.

I found some residues about 40 years ago: the obvious ones, pronunciation era for herb, your years for your ears, diaper for nappy...and of course 18c spellings which Collins promulgated.

Era?erb you idiot iPad..

I must read that book, keep meaning to but forgetting!

I find it fascinating how some accents endure whilst others are absorbed. Are there any linguists on the thread who can explain why, for example, there are fourth generation Scots living in Corby that have never been to Glasgow but sound as if they grew up in the Gorbals? But I know very few people my age from Devon or Cornwall who have a particularly strong West Country accent, and those of us that have moved away or travelled a far amount have more or less lost it altogether

There's an old story I was told once (although, sadly, I don't know the absolute truth of it) of the first mass contingent of Canadian soldiers coming across to Scotland during the Great War. The story has it that the commander of the Canadian forces gave a 25 minute oration to the Provost and Council of Glasgow who had come to the dockside to welcome them - but that hardly anyone understood him because the entire speech was given in Gaelic! (The Canadians were nearly all from Nova Scotia.)

The old languages last a long time in some places.

Enrique - I'd love to think I say fillum because of Shakespeare, but sadly it doesn't explain why I say farrum for farm or wurruld for world, lol.

It's a west coast Scotland accent I have rather than Irish, but there are a lot of crossovers.

Olenna, along with Notes from a small island it's my favourite, utterly readable and absorbing.

On the Scots in Corby, when I was at the children's centre there I thought it was because it was a v tight community, poverty kept people there, if children picked up another accent eg RP they stood out and might get teased.

You can still hear Welsh accents round the ( now almost extinct) Kent coal mines for the same reason, think of Aled Jones who, again iirc , grew up in a Welsh speaking household. He's basically gone RP with a slight lilt if you listen carefully, but I'd bet quite a few if his family haven't.

There's the Welsh speaking enclave in Argentina too.

For real nerds ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

and here's a great site to subscribe to ...

britishisms.wordpress.com/

It's fascinating how an American picks up oddities where "English" has contaminated American from subtleties.

And here, where I live in Wales, we still have Geordie accents locally from the descendants of the miners who came down from Durham decades ago. They colonised part of s small village and had their own social club.

LRD - i'm currently getting enraged on your behalf watching a US made-for-TV documentary called "The Dark Ages" - apparently for nearly 800 years the whole of Europe was at war with each other, when they weren't succumbing to the plague. Best quote so far: "Every day, half the people who were alive the day before would be dead"