Bit of a delay posting anything as I have not been well and then had to scrabble about to catch up with TMA01.
Couldn't agree with you more, William, about Bush being continually misunderestimated.
Speaking of definitions, I love the old Punch one about the man in the railway ticket-office, "Cats is 'dogs', and rabbits is 'dogs' and so's Parrats, but this 'ere 'Tortis' is a insect, and there ain't no charge for it".
Enjoyable potted history:
"American is the language in which people say what they mean as Italian is the language in which they say what they feel. English is the language in which what a character means or feels has to be deduced from what he or she says, which may be quite the opposite."
Great article in the Grauniad:
The author says, intert alia, "in scouring these dialects, I have unearthed all sorts of characters – from the Midlands jaisy, a polite and effeminate man, the Yorkshire stridewallops, a tall and awkward woman or the dardledumdue (Norfolk 1893), a person without energy. The English language has never been short of slurs for the stupid and colourfully describes them as a clumperton (mid-16th century), a dull-pickle or a fopdoodle (late 17th century) or a goostrumnoodle (Cornish 1871)."
Trying to guess their meanings, I think I'd feel like a goostrumnoodle!
Have a listen to this accent from a very isolated American community:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E
It is amazing - closer to our West Country than to West Virginia! Not that far from the accent David Crystal thinks Shakespeare may have spoken with.
[I've changed the order of some of the things on this blog and deleted others to separate the English from the German ones (some stuff is only visible to logged in OU users). I've moved the following up as it is relevant to U214 (Worlds of English)]
David Crystal competition:
The Telegraph and Profile Book had a competition a couple of years ago to write a poem of not more than 100 words (including the title) which had to include at least 25 words from the following list:
Roe Lea And Loaf Out Street Mead Merry Riddle What Bone-house Brock English Bridegroom Arse Swain Pork Chattels Dame Skirt Jail Take away Cuckoo Cunt Wicked Wee Grammar Valentine Egg Royal Money Music Taffeta Information(s) Gaggle Doable Matrix Alphabet Potato Debt Ink-horn Dialect Bodgery Undeaf Skunk Shibboleth Bloody Lakh Fopdoodle Billion Yogurt Gazette Tea Disinterested Polite Dilly-dally Rep Americanism Edit Species Ain’t Trek Hello Dragsman Lunch Dude Brunch Dinkum Mipela Schmooze OK Ology Y’all Speech-craft DNA Garage Escalator Robot UFO Watergate Doublespeak Doobry Blurb Strine Alzheimer’s Grand Mega Gotcha PC Bagonise Webzine App Cherry-picking LOL Jazz Sudoku Muggle Chillax Unfriend Twittersphere
These are the 100 words David Crystal analysed in his (then) new book The Story of English in 100 words. It's good fun as an exercise - though High Art it is perhaps not! The following was my attempt (before I found out 'undeaf' is a verb!)
Cherry-picking, or the music of English speech-craft
I’m woken by the bloody radio
- doublespeak and shibboleths –
Undeaf, yet slightly dozing, hazy,
I take in rousing mega-breaths.
I ponder, as a skirt I iron,
That I eat “eggs” instead of “eyren”;
And over tea I’m spoilt for choice
With royal, regal, kingly words.
Out in the street : wee dame I know
Says not “ahoy-hoy!”, but “hello!”
I think of “fuselage” and “carriage”:
Which of these chattels rhymes with “garage”?
Chillax, dude! A rose would smell as wicked
If called a ‘skunk-flower’, when you pick it.
LOL.
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