![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
british dialect notes
i'm way more willing to adjust my vocabulary than my pronunciation. this is not a huge surprise, but there it is. i'll say hiya instead of hi, for example, especially to a person behind a counter at a sandwich shop (or similar person in service capacity). i'm doing very well remembering to say i've got instead of i have. and so forth. if the local dialect has a word i don't have at all, fine (see lorry, arguably trousers, certainly bap -- a round bun to put sandwiches on); but even if the local dialect word is a word that means something else in my own dialect, i'm perfectly happy to make the switch (the perennial jam/jelly confusion; also lemonade, salad, even paper in the academic sense -- here, a "paper" is an exam, and what i know as a paper is an essay). but i can't get to where i feel normal changing the way i pronounce things -- it's as much a matter of not wanting people to think i'm mocking them (also called taking the piss, an expression it's very difficult for me to use convincingly) or trying to fit in where i don't as it is of being stubborn and clinging to my own accent; i know i can get it back. still, the only time i say tomato with a low back "a" ah is when i've just said tomato with a mid front "a" ay and i'm about to suggest calling the whole thing off.
[eta: ooh, i remember another good one: scheme. british english uses "scheme" the way we'd use program or plan -- it takes some concentration to keep in mind that an insurance scheme, for instance, is in no way sinister. of course, they do also use the word "plan"; but then, where we use "scheme", they tend to use something like plot, and we can have "plot" in that situation as well. completely unrelated example: couple weeks ago in semantics we were reading a bit of ... wittgenstein? bah, who remembers ... talking about games, what makes a game, etc., and on the question of whether opponents were necessary, the text said "But consider patience." i had to look helplessly around the room until someone told me: solitaire. ah, dialects!]
what i can't do, and this is very frustrating to me, is react quickly enough to get what's up? and [you] all right? right. these questions have opposite meanings in britain and north america; to me, the first question means "how's it going" and the second means "are you okay", while around here (as i learned the hard way when i was in edinburgh, through weeks of confusion between self and flatmates), the first question means "what's wrong" and the second means "hello". i can respond correctly to "y'alright?" when i hear it, but i cannot, cannot, cannot train myself to produce it. this is very frustrating. i've been trying not to say "what's up" at all, since while americans understand it the same way i say it, brits are often knocked for a conversational loop -- but i can't get myself to say "hi, y'alright?" it's not that it sticks in the craw; it's that the conversational muscle memory just isn't there. should probably think about switching to "how's it going", which i believe is an unloaded phrase.
[eta: ooh, i remember another good one: scheme. british english uses "scheme" the way we'd use program or plan -- it takes some concentration to keep in mind that an insurance scheme, for instance, is in no way sinister. of course, they do also use the word "plan"; but then, where we use "scheme", they tend to use something like plot, and we can have "plot" in that situation as well. completely unrelated example: couple weeks ago in semantics we were reading a bit of ... wittgenstein? bah, who remembers ... talking about games, what makes a game, etc., and on the question of whether opponents were necessary, the text said "But consider patience." i had to look helplessly around the room until someone told me: solitaire. ah, dialects!]
what i can't do, and this is very frustrating to me, is react quickly enough to get what's up? and [you] all right? right. these questions have opposite meanings in britain and north america; to me, the first question means "how's it going" and the second means "are you okay", while around here (as i learned the hard way when i was in edinburgh, through weeks of confusion between self and flatmates), the first question means "what's wrong" and the second means "hello". i can respond correctly to "y'alright?" when i hear it, but i cannot, cannot, cannot train myself to produce it. this is very frustrating. i've been trying not to say "what's up" at all, since while americans understand it the same way i say it, brits are often knocked for a conversational loop -- but i can't get myself to say "hi, y'alright?" it's not that it sticks in the craw; it's that the conversational muscle memory just isn't there. should probably think about switching to "how's it going", which i believe is an unloaded phrase.
no subject
I've also heard soda called a "fizzy drink". And that reminds me -- another one is making sure I get "still" water instead of "sparkling", if I just ask for water. And of course the lemonade = clear citrus flavored soda.
no subject
as for water,