'Mother Tongue' odd words

[ippy]

I think they were collected by the Opies in their 'Lore and Language of Schoolchildren'.   They said that truce words were the most important for children, and also that adults don't use them.   Well, I say to my wife, 'barley bungalow', when she is thrashing me with a besom.

Many regional variations, e.g. fainites used to be common in London.   And some towns had their own truce words.  I wonder if they have died out?  Maybe not, because they are also used just to take a break, e.g. to have a pee in the middle of a game.   Just say, 'the referee's a wanker'.

 I'm ex Londoner and I have a lot of family in the Cleethorps, Grimsby area and I love the difference in the way we word various things, I would say "look at that over there in the distance", they would say "look way up yonder over there", sherbert, is kayli powder to them, there are loads of things of a similar nature where we differ, I enjoy hearing these differences.

I went to UCL in London a while back and the automatic voice telling us to mind the doors etc, on the lift; I noticed the London accent, I've been living in northern essex working mostly in the Cambridge area since 1970, and must have lost the usual familarity I would have had were I still living there and no I don't miss London, perhaps the art gallerys and the museums, not much else

Ippy
 

[Enki]

How about these words for certain birds:

wind cuffer- kestrel

water pleep-snipe

couterneb-razorbill

And two of my favourites:

cattie face- short eared owl

little footie arse- little grebe

[wigginhall]

And peewit for lapwing; dabchick for little grebe. 

[ippy]

How about these words for certain birds:

wind cuffer- kestrel

water pleep-snipe

couterneb-razorbill

And two of my favourites:

cattie face- short eared owl

little footie arse- little grebe

Old English: Merle, a Blackbird

ippy

[Brownie]

'Myoclonic' isn't an odd word!  It's a commonly used medical term, particularly in neurology, describing muscle spasm.  There are also ''tonic, clonic seizures''.  All those words are used to describe involuntary actions caused by disturbance neurotransmitter pathway.

The other words cited are extremely odd!

[SusanDoris]

Brownie

Thank you - I didn't know that!

[Brownie]

I almost wished I hadn't said anything after posting, SusanDoris.  Seemed a bit know-it-all, it wasn't meant like that .

[Leonard James]

Old English: Merle, a Blackbird

ippy

Merle Oberon was Anglo-Indian. 

[Brownie]

Indeed she was Len.  Very pretty.  Blackbirds are pretty too, not just to look at but they make a very mellow sound, so she was well named.

[Leonard James]

Indeed she was Len.  Very pretty.  Blackbirds are pretty too, not just to look at but they make a very mellow sound, so she was well named.

I think the blackbird's orison is the most beautiful of the common birds.

[Samuel]

Amphidromic is nice. it relates to tidal patterns.

Gramfers, westcountry dialect word for woodlice

emmets - a word for ants

[SusanDoris]

I almost wished I hadn't said anything after posting, SusanDoris.  Seemed a bit know-it-all, it wasn't meant like that .

I'm very glad you did post it! I thought it was very interesting.

[Brownie]

Thanks, makes me feel better.

Agree with you Len about the song of the blackbird.

[Rhiannon]

Brownie, never feel bad about imparting knowledge. It's one of the joys of this forum.

[Ricky Spanish]

There used to be some odd 'truce' words used by children in games which seems to vary across the country.  In one area it was 'fainites', in another 'scribs', somewhere else it was 'cree' or 'barley'.

For some reason, we used Keys/Keys'd as a truce word...

[Shaker]

Illeism - the practice of referring to oneself in the third person.

[Leonard James]

Illeism - the practice of referring to oneself in the third person.

One is not amused! 

[Shaker]

Don't say I never edumacate you hignorant rabble ...

Since we're discussing language, allow me to introduce the concept of Siamese Twins. The term is now rather frowned upon to refer to people - the preferred term is conjoined twins - but it persists in linguistics to refer to an idiomatic phrase where two words always appear together in a certain order, and sound odd if they're reversed. Technically it's known as an irreversible binomial - the two words aren't literally irreversible but it sounds peculiar if they are. It doesn't affect the meaning of the phrase; it just looks and sounds strange. Examples include fish and chips, black and blue and so on. Brenda works in a fish and chip shop is a perfectly normal phrase in standard English; Brenda works in a chips and fish shop isn't. John was beaten black and blue is what we're all used to; John was beaten blue and black isn't. We don't talk about mouth and foot disease and we don't give the house a really good tidy and leave it span and spick.

If you can have binomials, you can also have trinomials, with three words habitually in a certain order. Jack bought the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel is a prime example; Jack bought the whole thing, barrel, lock and stock is just weird. If we're poorly we're generally not able, willing and ready to go to the throat, nose and ear hospital.

So now you can bore your family and irritate your friends by knowing what an irreversible binomial is. Thank me later

[Shaker]

I'm ex Londoner and I have a lot of family in the Cleethorps, Grimsby area and I love the difference in the way we word various things, I would say "look at that over there in the distance", they would say "look way up yonder over there", sherbert, is kayli powder to them

It's kayli here in Leicestershire too - next door to Lincolnshire so no surprise, really.

I grew up around mostly old people so took on a fairly old-fashioned rural Leicestershire dialect (as opposed to Leicester accent - there's nobody well-known that I can think of with a Leicester accent, that of Gary Lineker having been almost totally obliterated). A few words of proper Leicestershire dialect that spring to mind:

Okey - ice cream (hence okey man);

Corsey - back yard;

Cob - bread roll;

Black over Bill's mother's - (mother rhymes with bother): A very dark grey, overcast sky full of rainclouds, shortly before a downpour.

Jitty - a narrow alleyway or path (my home village is stiff with them);

Nesh - feeling the cold easily.

More here: http://goo.gl/aUZ1Uv

Out in the sticks where I come from - cowshit country - it's a little different to how it's written on that list but ossletternipupumfrit really does mean I shall need to return home to retrieve said item, just as bardaregwumfersumsnap means I shall return to my abode in order to partake of luncheon.

There used to be an splendid audio clip online of a proper old Leicestershire dialect but I've just looked again and it's disappeared The phrase I remember, perfectly comprehensible to any native Chisit*, was the straightforward enquiry weerweryanooweryerwee, which obviously is Where were you and who were you with?

* A native of Leicester. From the popular phrase heard at Leicester market or indeed in any shop where pricing is unclear: Amma chisit?

[Rhiannon]

Not really dialect but accents - I grew up in the neither/nor part of Greater London which can't really decide if it's East London or Essex, although since I've left it's definitely far more the former as East Enders have headed out. No need to describe the slang I grew up around, although as my family were the real deal when it comes to having a proper East End accent I have a fine ear for the difference between that and the Estuary accent (my own, pretty much), something not often noticed by tv producers, even on EastEnders itself.

Now I live in rural Essex; here there are still pockets of the old accent but it's dying out. In my part it's an amalgam of the burr of Suffolk and the flatness of the fens; there are a few younger people who have it but generally they speak poshed-up Estuary, no doubt caused in part by the migration in of families such as my own.

[SusanDoris]

Referring to them thar irreversible whatsits - it's to do with the vowel sounds, isn't it, and the way the mouth can relax with an 'a', as in apple, sound; also the open and closed consonants. I read that somewhere, and it makes sense I think.

[ippy]

Merle Oberon was Anglo-Indian. 

Like your deep philosophical line of thought Len, a good one .

ippy

Apparently, more of the deep stuff, Merlot wine was named as such by the French due to its colour being similar to the reddish brown of young blackbirds.

ippy 

[ippy]

Just a thought, isn't it so that Londoners speak English and then anywhere outside of London we get all of the various accents that are a sport off of London English?

ippy

[ekim]

It always seems strange to me how many British pop song singers lose there normal accent and switch into an almost Americanised accent when they sing.

[Shaker]

Just a thought, isn't it so that Londoners speak English and then anywhere outside of London we get all of the various accents that are a sport off of London English?

ippy

Not so fast Mr Bond! Many linguists believe that Received Pronunciation - what's regarded as neutral standard English or BBC English - grew out of East Midlands English, since that was the language of court around the beginning of the 15th century (i.e. Chaucer's time).