Accents and dialects

What pi&&$& me off is people saying aksed instead of asked. How hard is it to pronounce it right.
I find if hard to understand the scots people. And recently in my fave Vietnamese bakery I struck an older women who I had to ask what was in the pie I was buying, it was steak and cheese and tomato. I had to ask 4 times until I got it. :)

Russ
 
The north-east of England has a few "groups" whereby people from certain places are known by certain names. As you will have noted (come on, pay attention at the back), there are Geordies (from Newcastle and other parts of Tyneside) and Mackems (from Sunderland). Going a little further south, Teesiders (from Middlesbrough and around that area) are known as Smoggies. This is a reference to the history of industry in that part of the world, notably the large number of chemical plants.

There are also people from Hartlepool, a town on the County Durham coast. They are known as Monkey Hangers, after a (highly dubious) story of a French ship being shipwrecked and the only survivor, the ship's monkey, being hanged as a French spy.

Incidentally, none of these terms are pejorative - people from these places commonly refer to themselves as such. I have a friend from Hartlepool and he routinely describes himself as a Monkey Hanger.
 
rascal said:
What pi&&$& me off is people saying aksed instead of asked. How hard is it to pronounce it right.
I find if hard to understand the scots people. And recently in my fave Vietnamese bakery I struck an older women who I had to ask what was in the pie I was buying, it was steak and cheese and tomato. I had to ask 4 times until I got it. :)

Russ
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As you mention scots, I learned that 'wee' as little, is a scots word...very good video, will post the link later...

Yes, and expecially instead of especially...I guess speech gets wracked at times...🤷😊
 
TastyReuben said:
It's certainly prevalent in my area, but I don't know where else it may occur.
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What I remember most from the two years I lived in the Cincinnati burbs was that everyone had a German name... and was Catholic. We moved in, with our Italian name, and we're Lutherans. I went to public school, while all my neighborhood friends went to Catholic school. The family across the street prayed for us. There is quite possibly a movie in that scenario.

CD
 
Duck59 said:
The north-east of England has a few "groups" whereby people from certain places are known by certain names. As you will have noted (come on, pay attention at the back), there are Geordies (from Newcastle and other parts of Tyneside) and Mackems (from Sunderland). Going a little further south, Teesiders (from Middlesbrough and around that area) are known as Smoggies. This is a reference to the history of industry in that part of the world, notably the large number of chemical plants.

There are also people from Hartlepool, a town on the County Durham coast. They are known as Monkey Hangers, after a (highly dubious) story of a French ship being shipwrecked and the only survivor, the ship's monkey, being hanged as a French spy.

Incidentally, none of these terms are pejorative - people from these places commonly refer to themselves as such. I have a friend from Hartlepool and he routinely describes himself as a Monkey Hanger.
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When I worked for a software company that was bought by a company based in Newcastle, their board of directors would come to Dallas about twice a year, and since I was a senior manager, I spent a lot of the time they were here with them. They were all very laid back, and funny. One guy would toss out Newcastle and British terms just to mess with the Americans in the boardroom (in a fun way). I will never forget him responding to a challenge we were facing by sayin, "Keep your peckers up." All the Americans just looked at each other. He did later explain that "pecker" meant "nose" in Britain, after he grinned and watched the Americans squirm, and people laughed. "Pecker" means some other part of the male anatomy here.

Of course, we got to introduce him to the jalapeño pepper with a tequila shot chaser. That's when we knew for sure that he had a sense of humor -- none of us got fired.

CD
 
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On Scottish accents: there is a great variety and accents can be very different even a few miles away. Edinburgh and Glasgow are only about 45 miles (70 kilometres) apart, but the two cities have hugely different accents. You'll get different accents within the cities as well; Edinburgh ranges from the posh Morningside accent to the Trainspotting tones of Leith.

You'll see the difference with a lot of words, too. Take, for example, words meaning children in the east and west. On the eastern side, people will use the word bairns, also used in the north-east of England. In the west, children are weans (pronounced wains). A rough cut-off point is Falkirk, around half way between Edinburgh and Glasgow. To the west of Falkirk, weans is the common currency.

One common myth is that the further north in Scotland you go, the harder the accents are to understand. This, generally speaking, isn't the case. People from the Highlands tend to speak more slowly and an Inverness accent, for example, is pretty easy to follow. Glasgwegians (or Weegies as they're commonly known), often speak very quickly and tend not to enunciate words, so they can be hard to decipher at times. The accents of the Scottish Borders can also be tricky. That's not unusual for the more rural areas - despite coming from Newcastle and having no problem with even quite dense Geordie accents, I can struggle to understand what someone from rural Northumberland is saying.
 
Duck59 said:
That's not unusual for the more rural areas - despite coming from Newcastle and having no problem with even quite dense Geordie accents, I can struggle to understand what someone from rural Northumberland is saying.
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It is a relief to hear that native speakers struggle too.
For me in Croatia,the same with some dialects.
This is what I saw.
View: https://youtu.be/8X5zX3yVoiQ


I truly found it helpful to have the poem at the end of that video fragmentized and analysed.
 
Well, it’s been a long, long day of driving, much longer than it should have been, but them’s the breaks.

We started out a little late, which I’m used to by now, and had breakfast from McDonald’s, in the car. I broke the “No eating when I’m driving” rule because we were late, but it sort of set the tone for the whole day.

All day, it rained just enough to be annoying, but not enough to be able to leave the wipers on intermittent, so all day, I was continually turning the wipers on and off.

There seems to be more trucks on the road every time I drive somewhere, and it just irritates me being on a long stretch of interstate, in BFE…and stuck in a never-ending ribbon of truck traffic.

We’d decided on an alternate route the night before, a scenic state route, and being that it’s labeled a State Scenic Byway, we thought for sure there’d be spots to turn off the road and have our picnic lunch, or even a state park, or even a little town/village green space somewhere…but no. Not a spot.

We ended up enjoying our lunch while taking in the exhilarating views offered by the dollar store parking lot.,,look!…a shopping cart! Don’t see one of those every day! And how about that dumpster full of pallets and cardboard?! Now that’s what I’m talking about! I :laugh:, but it was 💩.

After the scenic state route, we rode I-68, which is a beautiful drive as well, but it’s definitely up this hill and down, getting over one big hill/small mountain after another (as was the state route).

We eventually got within 30 minutes of the hotel and decided to take the back way in, got off the interstate, then made another last-minute decision, which was very wrong, and ended up taking about 50 minutes to drive what would have been less than 20, had we stayed on the interstate the whole time.

Oh, but the fun was just starting. I went out to get half-and-half for tea…convenience store right the other side of the road, but no left turn out of the hotel, so I had to turn right.

As soon as I turned right, I spotted a proper grocery store off to my left, drove to what I thought was the turn-in for it, but it was one entrance too soon, with no way to cut over to the parking lot for the store, so I got back out to the road and…again, no left turn.

I said, “Forget it, I’m going back up to the convenience store, now that I’m on the right side of the road,” drove up there, went in, couldn’t find the half-and-half. Forget that, I couldn’t even find the 🤬 milk!

I asked the guy at the counter where the milk was, and when I’m tired, my accent gets a little thicker, and the jerk thought it was funny, and mocked me, saying, “The mee-yilk? The mee-yilk is over they-yer!“ and then started laughing.

I was mad they didn’t have half-and-half, because I wanted to make him ring it up, and then tell him to pizz off. I had to settle for just telling him to pizz off. Jerk.

That meant…you guessed it, back to the grocery store, where I did finally manage to get into the parking lot, get my half-and-half and some fig newtons, and get back to the hotel, where the digital key my wife shared with me wouldn’t work on my phone, so I had to get a swipe key.

All told, to get half-and-half, it took three stops at two places that I can plainly see from the hotel room, and nearly 30 minutes. I could have walked across the highway and back in about 10 minutes, but when I did that the last time I was here, I damn near got hit, both directions.
 
TastyReuben said:
Well, it’s been a long, long day of driving, much longer than it should have been, but them’s the breaks.

We started out a little late, which I’m used to by now, and had breakfast from McDonald’s, in the car. I broke the “No eating when I’m driving” rule because we were late, but it sort of set the tone for the whole day.

All day, it rained just enough to be annoying, but not enough to be able to leave the wipers on intermittent, so all day, I was continually turning the wipers on and off.

There seems to be more trucks on the road every time I drive somewhere, and it just irritates me being on a long stretch of interstate, in BFE…and stuck in a never-ending ribbon of truck traffic.

We’d decided on an alternate route the night before, a scenic state route, and being that it’s labeled a State Scenic Byway, we thought for sure there’d be spots to turn off the road and have our picnic lunch, or even a state park, or even a little town/village green space somewhere…but no. Not a spot.

We ended up enjoying our lunch while taking in the exhilarating views offered by the dollar store parking lot.,,look!…a shopping cart! Don’t see one of those every day! And how about that dumpster full of pallets and cardboard?! Now that’s what I’m talking about! I :laugh:, but it was 💩.

After the scenic state route, we rode I-68, which is a beautiful drive as well, but it’s definitely up this hill and down, getting over one big hill/small mountain after another (as was the state route).

We eventually got within 30 minutes of the hotel and decided to take the back way in, got off the interstate, then made another last-minute decision, which was very wrong, and ended up taking about 50 minutes to drive what would have been less than 20, had we stayed on the interstate the whole time.

Oh, but the fun was just starting. I went out to get half-and-half for tea…convenience store right the other side of the road, but no left turn out of the hotel, so I had to turn right.

As soon as I turned right, I spotted a proper grocery store off to my left, drove to what I thought was the turn-in for it, but it was one entrance too soon, with no way to cut over to the parking lot for the store, so I got back out to the road and…again, no left turn.

I said, “Forget it, I’m going back up to the convenience store, now that I’m on the right side of the road,” drove up there, went in, couldn’t find the half-and-half. Forget that, I couldn’t even find the 🤬 milk!

I asked the guy at the counter where the milk was, and when I’m tired, my accent gets a little thicker, and the jerk thought it was funny, and mocked me, saying, “The mee-yilk? The mee-yilk is over they-yer!“ and then started laughing.

I was mad they didn’t have half-and-half, because I wanted to make him ring it up, and then tell him to pizz off. I had to settle for just telling him to pizz off. Jerk.

That meant…you guessed it, back to the grocery store, where I did finally manage to get into the parking lot, get my half-and-half and some fig newtons, and get back to the hotel, where the digital key my wife shared with me wouldn’t work on my phone, so I had to get a swipe key.

All told, to get half-and-half, it took three stops at two places that I can plainly see from the hotel room, and nearly 30 minutes. I could have walked across the highway and back in about 10 minutes, but when I did that the last time I was here, I damn near got hit, both directions.
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Exactly how I thought your road trip would start. Lol

Russ
 
TastyReuben said:
Oh, but the fun was just starting. I went out to get half-and-half for tea…convenience store right the other side of the road, but no left turn out of the hotel, so I had to turn right.

As soon as I turned right, I spotted a proper grocery store off to my left, drove to what I thought was the turn-in for it, but it was one entrance too soon, with no way to cut over to the parking lot for the store, so I got back out to the road and…again, no left turn.

I said, “Forget it, I’m going back up to the convenience store, now that I’m on the right side of the road,” drove up there, went in, couldn’t find the half-and-half. Forget that, I couldn’t even find the 🤬 milk!

I asked the guy at the counter where the milk was, and when I’m tired, my accent gets a little thicker, and the jerk thought it was funny, and mocked me, saying, “The mee-yilk? The mee-yilk is over they-yer!“ and then started laughing.

I was mad they didn’t have half-and-half, because I wanted to make him ring it up, and then tell him to pizz off. I had to settle for just telling him to pizz off. Jerk.
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This was in Pennsylvania, I take it.
 
TastyReuben said:
Yup, Chambersburg.
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They have some bassackwards roads and bassackwards people over there in PA. Just sayin', that clerk had no room for mockery, coming from people who say, "Yinz". I know it's more over in the Pittsburgh area where people say stuff like that, and actually people in Pittsburgh are pretty pleasant overall. Never had the displeasure of going to Chambersburg, though. Hopefully that jerk was just a one-off and other people there were nice!

Urban Dictionary: yinz
 
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