(Mostly) Dialect Meme

[sam_t]

I'm an East Anglian with West Midlands relatives who lives in Yorkshire, and my vocabulary tends to vary. Most of these questions seem to be more suited to North American usage (and some reflect class rather than region) - I'll put in more questions as I think of them.

1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.
Assuming it means naturally flowing water rather than e.g. field drains, the general case is 'a stream' but I use 'beck' most of the time in Northern England.

2. What the thing you push around the grocery store is called.
Supermarket, not grocery store: a shopping trolley.

3. A metal container to carry a meal in.
A plastic container would be a lunchbox. I don't think I've ever used a metal one.

4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in.
Frying pan.

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people.
Settee when I was growing up, now more likely to be sofa.

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof.
Guttering (horizontal), then drainpipe (vertical).

7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening.
If I had one, it would probably be a veranda. As I haven't, the uncovered area where people sit in the evening during the two weeks a year when it's warm enough and not raining is the patio.

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages.
Fizzy drinks.

9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup.
Does not exist. Flat round things served with syrup are pancakes; flat round things served at breakfast means that some poncy person's been mucking about with the toast.

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself.
Baguette.

11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach.
Swimming trunks, or swim shorts if they're definitely shorts.

12. Shoes worn for sports.
Trainers, unless they're a particular type, e.g. plimsolls, football boots, etc.

13. Putting a room in order.
Tidying up.

14. A flying insect that glows in the dark.
Do glow-worms fly? If not, then firefly. Neither are words I need to use very often.

15. The little insect that curls up into a ball.
Woodlouse.

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down.
Seesaw

17. How do you eat your pizza? (Not exactly dialect!)
Depends on local manners. At home, cut into wedges with a wheel and picked up with fingers.

18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Odd. If at an organised event, a car boot sale, jumble sale, or bring and buy sale.

19. What's the evening meal?
The main meal of the day is called dinner, whenever it occurs. If dinner happens in the evening, the other meal is lunch; if dinner happens at midday, the other meal is tea.

20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are.
If there's a floor below the ground floor and it's not a cellar (i.e. used primarily for storage), it's a basement. My associations are 'bargain basement', followed by 'basement flat', not furnaces and rec rooms.

21. What do you call the thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places.
Drinking fountain

(Added)

22. A narrow, paved or cobbled access way between or behind terraced houses.
Passageway, or access lane if it's wider than one person with arms outstretched.

23. An enclosed paved footpath leading between streets, not belonging to a particular set of houses.
A snickleway if in York, a lane otherwise.

(Note to Northerners: I do know the word 'ginnel', but don't tend to use it, even when I'm in Leeds and points West. I'm only slightly more likely to use 'snicket'.)

24. A farm building to keep e.g. cows in.
A barn.

25. Bread baked into a small round, suitable for one person.
Roll, bread bun. (But I understand bread cake, barm cake etc.)

26. A bit behind schedule.
On the drag, running late.

ETA:
27. Do you pronounce 'scone' with a long 'o', a short 'o', or something else?
A long 'o'.

(from drasecretcampus)28. The process of making tea (the drink).
Making a cup/pot of tea, putting a pot of tea on, brewing tea (usually 'the tea's brewing', rather than 'I'm brewing tea').

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

22. A narrow, paved or cobbled access way between or behind terraced houses.

Back alley, lane, ten foot

23. An enclosed paved footpath leading between streets, not belonging to a particular set of houses.

Snicket, at least in Bratfud


24. A farm building to keep e.g. cows in.

Cow shed, byre


25. Bread baked into a small round, suitable for one person.

go see lnr... the list is endless


26. A bit behind schedule.

running late.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about 'scone' (I say it with a long 'o'). I'd also forgotten the word 'snicket': it's a word I know but don't really use, although I'm more likely to use that than 'ginnel', I think.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

The bread roll is about the only place I'd differ - I think probably by being an East Midland who's lived in the north; it would be cob (crispy or soft) or bap (always soft).

I'm sure I've another word for snicket/ginney/three foot but I forget it, and I don't think I'd've used it as a child. We have ten foots round here (the south east), but I'm not sure if they are called mews or backs or whatever.

[Skowns] sound posher to me than [skons], and technically I suspect they should be [skoons] as that's hwo the town is pronounced (AFAIR).

Another dialect determiner: what you call the process of making or having made tea (i.e. the drink, not a smallish evening meal usually involving baps and eaten in the living room rather than at a dining room table).

I think I'd talk about mashing more than brewing, and I don't think I've ever steeped (stooped?)...

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I don't hear a class difference in [skowns] vs [skons], only a regional one, but then as I said, I'm from East Anglia.

I 'put a pot of tea on', usually, but if I had to choose I'd probably be brewing rather than mashing, and definitely not steeping. If I leave it too long, it's 'stewed', but I don't think there's a process of stewing tea.

Do you really know 'on the drag'? I didn't think it was that widespread.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Oh, and nobody ate at the dining room table when I was growing up, unless it was Christmas or (rarely) people were visiting for dinner: we all ate in the kitchen. I'm not sure whether this was the cause or effect of the dining room being kept 'for best' - the main reason was probably that it was always covered in marking.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I did ponder a question about lounges/parlours/sitting rooms/dining rooms but thought that perhaps to into niceties of working class/lower middle class behaviour rather than dialect.

When I think of people who pronounce [skowns] not [skons], I think of Betty's tea rooms (and putting on airs in the sort of caff where coffee comes with milk as default and probably is instant). I suspect actually practice would reverse the class positioning.

I think my eyes slid over "on the drag".

Baked goods are endlessly variable - what is a stottie, say, and whether it is a crumpet, an English muffin or a pikelet. I suspect I really mean pykelet - a round, batter-ish cake with pinpricks, toasted and buttered and best with syrup. (I think of crumpets as a kind of teakcake, maybe with less fruit.)

I think my parents argue over swede/turnip.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I don't know how Betty's pronounce their scones. I shall try to find out.

I think that a crumpet is a batter cake with holes, cooked in a ring, and more than a centimetre deep, and that a pikelet is the same thing only left to spread out a bit so that it's less than a centimetre deep. I didn't encounter the latter sort until I'd left home. My parents insist that both sorts are pikelets. I've never encountered any definition of crumpet that involves fruit.

I still haven't worked out what is meant by an English Muffin in the US. An enormously long discussion on papersky's journal sometime last year (I think) proved inconclusive.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I had meant to ask if you'd know what to do with an elephant's foot...

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Er, not really. That is, I'm not sure whether you're asking about a term 'elephant's foot' which has nothing to do with the lower extremities of pachyderms (in which case I don't know what it does mean), or whether you're asking what I'd do if presented with the actual foot of an actual elephant (apart from possibly questioning the sanity of the giver). I believe some people had them made into umbrella stands, but I don't think I've ever seen it done.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

It was on the food theme, subtheme baking.

Something between an eclair and a profiterole - spherical choux pastry bun filled with whipped cream and topped with chocolate.

My dad used to call on an elephant's foot, but I only dared to once, and it turned out the baker knew what I meant.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I'm not too good on names for that sort of thing in any case, as too much cow's milk is not good for me (and was even worse when I was younger) and I'm not terribly fond of choux pastry and cream in any case.

I can see that asking for elephant's feet might get you some odd looks if the baker doesn't happen to sell them!

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

You are indeed right about crumpets and pikelets, although you make them sound like something doughnut shaped, when they are both in fact circular rather than ring-shaped. Crumpets are perhaps twice as deep, and less crispy. And I'm getting a yearning for them now. Not had those things in years.

I've had arguments with Scottish friends about the proper name for potato cakes/scones/pancakes.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

No, not ring shaped, cooked with a ring around them to keep them from spreading everywhere. Definitely good things, especially when the weather's turned a bit nippy (like this coming weekend, for instance...).

I don't know how the different names or recipes for the various potato-based griddle cakes work. The one I know is 'enough flour kneaded into mashed potato to get a stiff dough, pat into small cakes and fry in a dry pan', and I learnt it from a friend who comes from Birmingham but whose relatives are mostly Irish. She called it potato bread.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

My mother's previous house had a nice kitchen table which was what we generally ate on, and a dining table in another room which was higher quality and used for special occasions. The kitchen table was closer and cosier, and the dining table was larger and in a more elegant room. Now that my mother's in a smaller house, the choice is between the breakfast bar (seats two, barely, not terribly comfortable, and not large enough for more than about a bowl of food each) or the dining table in the lounge.

Lounge/living room is another one!

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

For context, I grew up in a middle-class suburb of north London, and have lived in Edinburgh for the last eleven years.

5. Same for me. I've wondered whether it's a class/location thing? Once I left north London, no one else seemed to say "settee".

8. Fizzy drink or soft drink.

19. I call it "dinner" or "supper" interchangeably, only using these terms for the evening meal. I'm from London, and this confuses the hell out of my Scottish boyfriend, who uses the terms differently. For me, "tea" is primarily a drink but may also refer to "afternoon tea", the sort with scones (short "o", please) and such which I've only ever really known to be eaten on special occasions at fancy places, and for him "tea" is a main meal eaten in the early evening. Southerners generally appear to eat the evening meal later on.

20. I think "n/a" is the most appropriate answer here. "Rec room" is an entirely American term, I believe, and who on earth has a furnace under their house? I can't remember ever seeing a basement room in a house in the UK, come to that. Basement flat, yes. Don't even get started on systems for numbering flats and floors.

22a. In Scotland, you also get "wynd", a narrow street which does give access to residential properties but is often too narrow to drive down, dodgy to walk along at night, usually cobbled, frequently too small to show up on maps, and often built in the Middle Ages. I most often use the term when referring to a street name or specific area, e.g. Old Tolbooth Wynd, or "one of the wynds off the Royal Mile" (which have delightful names like Fleshmarket Close).

27. Name for the toilet? Informally, loo. Formally, toilet. Written on the door in public places, usually "Ladies", "Gents" or "WC". The American habit of calling it the "bathroom" can occasionally be confusing.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

5: I think it's a class thing, but one of those tricky ones where it happens in layers, or small clumps, or something. I've never quite managed to work it out precisely - it might be lower middle class, or working/middle with an association with India, or a combination of the two. Attempts to work out class in my family's idiolects are complicated by various bits of family history, like my grandmother's having been in service, or my mum having ended up at a small university with a variety of rather well-off people of different backgrounds. I don't think there's a north London influence particularly, though - there was a branch of my mum's family who were referred to as 'the Londoners', but they don't turn up in reminiscenses that often.

19: Depending on how you mean 'Southerners', it's likely to be by class rather than by location, although that may be changing with working patterns. I suspect dinner at midday is more common among people with a working class background in cities which are not London, which gives the Midlands and North a bit of a bias, but it's certainly not unknown South of there.

20: Agreed about rec room and furnace, although there are still houses with rooms below ground level - not all of those Georgian (and later) town houses with an area at the front have been converted into flats. The kitchen's usually down there, I think.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

It wasn't so much midday I was thinking of, it's people who have their evening meal at 5 pm or so. Ludicrously early, to my way of thinking. By "Southerners", I basically meant the south half of England, as opposed to Northerners or Scots.

Now you mention it, I can think of a house I know with a room at basement level. Like my flat block, and like a fair bit of Edinburgh, it's Georgian. It's not a basement-like area, though. For starters, it has windows. The hilliness of Edinburgh is probably to blame here.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

I love the word "snickleway."

Also, re. 18, yard sales are like the state sport of Oregon. I swear, any sunny weekend and they sprout like mushrooms (probably because we have so few sunny weekends). I could not believe it when we moved up here: a little sunshine, and suddenly everyone's piling their junk in the front yard.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand about yard/garage sales is how people know they're happening. If I put a sign in my front garden, it would be read by a maximum of 40 households, and only because I'm at the end of the street and everyone else who lives here has to go past. Unless you're on a main road, you wouldn't get enough people who want to buy things to make it worth your while, would you?

[serrana.livejournal.com]

Some people put ads in the papers, or signs up at the intersection, but more often, yeah, it's just whoever is going by.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure what they mean by a metal container for a meal - I do actually use the term 'tiffin' but that's because I've occasionally used one and it describes quite a distinctive container.

'Furnace' just brings to mind blast furnaces...

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I thought of - I've never used one but I know they exist - but I presume that wasn't what was meant by whoever wrote the question.

I presume we could substitute 'boiler'.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Oh, is *that* what they mean? I was completely flummoxed.

forthwritten, that's the sort of icon that I want to turn into a quilt. What is it, and do you know where I can see a larger picture of it?