Today’s language is English. A test will follow at the end.
Most of you did okay. CLASS DISMISSED!
Beetelypete’s Classroom: Languages Special
Today’s language is English. A test will follow at the end.
Most of you did okay. CLASS DISMISSED!
beetleypete 
Whew! Some of my questions are not appropriate here. If I were in Yorkshire or Scouse at a bar, I think I could follow along with a glass (or two) of wine. Haha! Why doesn’t America call corn maize? That’s history 101 here in New England.
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I have struggled to understand people in both Yorkshire and Liverpool, Jennie. Then again, they are known not to like Londoners, so probably ‘lay it on’ thicker for me.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Good point! I bet they do.
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So, in the British version of Mary Shelley’s story, the villagers went after Frankenstein’s monster with flashlights? Ooooh! Scary!
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We are too reserved here to flash our lights, David. 😉
Best wishes, Pete.
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these are so good. one of my sons-in-law is an Aussie and he has taught us some of these. the first time I asked about someone wearing a ‘fanny pack’, he lost it.)
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We call those ‘bum-bags’ here, Beth.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I learned that the hard way )
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Well, now I “know my onions!”
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That was often heard in my youth, not so much now though.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I knew most of these except for the dialects.
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Good to hear that, Liz.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I once worked with a Scouser who, if somebody had a rant, she’d say they ‘had a gob on’. Many Americans have never heard of ‘fortnight’, and I don’t think that word is used in the US.
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Yes, fortnight throws them sometimes. I had a French friend who really liked to use fortnight after she learned it from me.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I have several Brit-ism references filed away as a result of sending a character to Cambridge. At the same time I adopted a page out of the ITV / BBC book where things they produce for an international audience use a more universal vanilla English and save the slang for stereotype characters. However, when I wrote a collab with a genuine English person it got tweaked a little tighter. I downloaded these as a PDF. YOu know what? One of the most difficult to find doing a search was agreement on Bob’s your uncle. Now, If someone can give me the definitive answer for Lighting Up Time.
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Lighting up time as I know it comes from cities and towns that had gas-powered street lamps. They would be manually lit by men employed to do the job, and the same men would go around at sunrise the next morning and turn them off. Once they introduced electric lamps, they added time switches programmed to do those jobs. So lighting up time varies every day throughout the year, depending on sunset.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Ah Pete, takes me back to favourite childhood poem, The Lamplighter, RE Stevenson
My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky/It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by,
For every night at teatime, just before you take your seat/with ladder and with lantern, he’d come posting up the street.
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That’s a nice poem. Thanks for adding it.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Aha, so when someone says it must have been just after lighting up time in a Christie mystery they go check the chart for that day. Unless, as I remember it, the lighting up man was the guilty party and being early or late blew his alibi. Thank you!
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Dogs, Pete. Arse over tit is ass over teakettle in the US. Fanny/vagina is a complete opposite from the US point of view. And very very seldom is maize used instead of corn. Most people over here wouldn’t know what you were referring to if you said maize. Maize is an Aztec or Toltec word.
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It seems like they got Maize/Corn wrong. Most people here call it corn too.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I love these. I remember saying “torch” once to some American friends and they fell about laughing because they pictured flames setting fire to everything.
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If they had ever watched ‘Torchy The Battery Boy’, they would have understood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchy_the_Battery_Boy
Best wishes, Pete.
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Well I for one am gobsmacked because I’ve always called maize corn, sweetcorn or corn-on-the-cob and thought maize was the american version. Oh well, I’m ambidextrous it seems 🤣
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I suspect we called it Maize a long time ago, before you and I were born. I grew up always hearing it called ‘Corn on the cob’ by my parents, but also remember ‘Maize flour’ in the kitchen.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I have always been “amaized by corn” Warmest regards, Ed
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Nicely done, Ed!
Best wishes, Pete.
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Gobsmacked – my favorite 🙂
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You would hear that all over the UK, Ned.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Very helpful of an American watches UK TV or movies…. chuq
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They are a guide, but a full list would take up lots more blog posts.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Or there is a book I believe chuq
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“Two nations divided by a common language” 😉 One which was missing from the Yorkshire dialect translator, which I rather like is “klart”, which can be a noun or adjective for muck or mud, as in: “He’s reyt in’t klart, is ‘t lad”, or “Eeh, it’s a bit klarty round eeer.” Dialect is a wonderful thing, which always takes incomers a time to learn, but I like to use it where appropriate, as opposed to mimicking an accent, which is patronising. Cheers, Jon.
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I’m hopeless at doing accents, so never mimic them. If I didn’t have a London accent, I would choose to speak like a Geordie. They always sound happy in that accent.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I’ve always been quite a good mimic, and I enjoy using a different accent to help me develop a stage character. Yes, I also like the Geordie accent, and the ‘Boro [Middlesborough] one, which is closer to me geographically, and subtly different from Geordie.
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Yep, klart should have been in there, teach!
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All heard of & so amusing. The one i liked in UK was ‘close’ for humid. In USA it was a constant ”have a nice day ya hear”
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My family always said ‘close’ once high summer humidity arrived. I still hear myself saying it sometimes.
Best wishes, Pete.
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