Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A bloom by any other epithet (aka Language 1)

England is a single country, right? Where everyone speaks the same language, yeah? Not so much!
Since moving 'oop North' about 18 months ago, there have been a number of occasions where I have felt like I am speaking a whole other language to those around me.

The first and most obvious perhaps is the area of Dialect. I have learnt a surprising number of new words in the past year or so. Do you know what the following mean (answers will be given later)?


  1. Nithered
  2. Pack-up
  3. Sand shoes (I have come across 4 different terms for these!)
  4. Bread cake
  5. Riggweltered
  6. Canny
  7. more to come

And similarly, in my various dealings with American English, there have been a number of words that I have had to look up, often resulting in an outburst of "Oh! It's one of those!" when the item turned out to be something I knew very well, but not by that name. Such as:

  1. Skillet
  2. Ground meat
  3. Shredded cheese
  4. Rutabega
  5. Thrift store
  6. Duplex
  7. Jumper (US)
  8. Biscuit (US)
  9. Sausage (US)
  10. Baseboard

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