Language musings again

[burntcopper]

Just before I fall forward into the keyboard...

Just a though. Everyone's got their accent and way of speaking, grammar and phraseology built up and ever-evolving due to upbringing and influences on life and circumstances. You'll speak differently and use slightly different grammar and accents with one set of mates than you will with your maiden great-aunt, right? As a whole, it's fairly consistent in terminology and grammar, and anyone from the area/upbringing will use the same phrases and pattern of speaking. Except sometimes the odd phrase creeps in.

These are the phrases that you picked up from other people, which somehow struck you as so right, you started using them without noticing. New words and words from other languages that get adopted and used freely, but when you step back and look, their difference from the surrounding sentence is so foriegn it's jarring. English is the best language at this, especially the type spoken in the British Isles (American is considerably more static) with all its myriad dialects.

And all of this came out just because I find myself picking up the occasional Geordie phrase from my dad, much more than I ever did as a child. As a child and teen I *never* used Geordie, though I had the sing-song element of the speech. Intonation gradually flattened out due to teasing at school, though it still happens occasionally. :muses: Maybe it's just as I became a linguistics geek in my twenties that I noticed and started to adopt the ones I liked.

Comments

[endcredits.livejournal.com]

It's funny--I've started using particularly 'Dublin' phrases/terms/slang lately, and because I'm rarely back home in London it's really jarring to my friends and family when they speak to me. I forget that UKers don't say "your man" and "your woman" constantly, or use the word "yoke" in place of "thing." ("Oh, you know that yoke you were talking about.")

I like being a linguistic magpie. :)