D’you know, I used to live in West Wales and all the signs in the Doctor’s surgery were in 2 languages – English and Welsh. Now, I have moved house and the signs in my doctors are in many different languages and some of those have a squiggly alphabet that I can’t read at all. Now, I don’t really expect to understand lots of other languages (especially those with a different alphabet) but sometimes am amazed by all the regional variations that we have in our teeny tiny country. I know a girl (DG*1) who comes from Yorkshire and who wears ‘pants’ instead of trousers and who has never heard of a head being referred to as a bonce. Now, it may be that you too have no idea of bonces and also wear your ‘pants’ over your knickers, but that probably just illustrates that you too have a regional variation of your own.
Now, in addition to the simple regional variations, DG has a very broad Yorkshire accent so understanding her often results in lots of ‘pardon’, ‘sorry’, and ‘could you repeat that?’ – but all the same, we usually get there in the end and discover what each other actually really means. So, there we were on Saturday night and she was telling us about her ongoing university course:
DG: “I want to be a barrister now you know”
WW: “Oh yes? Why is that?”
DG: “Well, originally I wanted to be a corporate lawyer but I was telling someone that’s what I wanted to be and then they asked why I needed to do a degree to do that”
WW: “That’s a bit strange, what an odd thing to say…”
DG: “Yes, they wanted to know why you had to go to university to be a carpet layer….”*2
*1Disaster Girl
*2 Please read this with a broad Yorkshire accent or you just won’t get it at all…
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