Everyday Stranger

I refuse to use the word "y'all". It's just a step too far. And anytime I have been to Canada, I come back with "eh?" in my voice, and it won't go away.

And the Mary Poppins bit-I think Dick wasn't human. That's not normal.

I think I shall start up an "I want to fuck Colin Firth" club. I imagine membership response will be huge.

The most unique adaptation of cockney rhyming slang ever attempted by Hollywood has to be dick van dyke fabled ran tings in Marry poppins.
32 CORE BLIMEYS’ and he was only in shot 13 minutes

The term, "No worries" aggravates the hell out of me simply because I had a roommate who used it all the time...and I didn't like her.

I'll try to get her voice out of my head and put my version of Helen's voice in its place...maybe I'll like it once again.

But I know what you mean about the different words. When I read your first sentence of your last post, I asked myself, "I wonder if she means angry or drunk." Obviously I got my answer.

Often I use words I picked up along the way in different countries and finally got everyone I knew used to them.

Now I'm in Texas and I have to start all over with all these new people I'm meeting.

I like your Victorian words...you can insult someone without them knowing it. Must learn this!

HI H ,Bobs your uncle ,the uncle
Meaning
Either describing a simple task or used when a task is completed.
Origin
P. Brendon, in Eminent Edwardians,1979, suggests an origin: 'When, in 1887, Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to the vital front line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by his uncle Robert, Lord Salisbury.'
PS this may give you somthing to go at.it seems it was a a popular scandal at the time
pps i will sign my posts "paul uk" as we have now a paul from irland "paul irl" HI mate!

Wow, i thought i was the only one to confuse my friends and family after watchin' Pride and Prejudice. lol.

hilary: i wonder how may people got your double double reference...i work at tim ho's. ew, i have to work tomorrow.

H-oh yes, P&P is the most wonderful thing...i am so very madly in love with Mr. Darcy. Nothing can cure a bad day quite like watching the Pemberly bit! *big sigh*

laura: this explains why my husband uses "no worries" all the time--he picked it up at UBC!
a friend of ours postdoc'd in the southern US and thought it was awfully funny to go around saying "i'm fixin' to reckon...."
in nova scotia, it's "some", as in "that was some good, wasn't it?" "it's gonna be some cold tonight", etc. and buddy. everyone you don't know is buddy, the pet name for your baby boy is buddy, your dog is buddy, and buddy up the lane there nearly drove over me this morning when i was comin' back from the horton's with my double-double an' a maple dip.....

I am surprised no one has mentioned two of my favorites, "y'all" and its plural, "ally'all"

I worked for a year and a half with a group of engineers from Alabama, It used to just throw me when these really bright people would talk like they had just fallen from the back of a turnip truck. Valuable lesson in not judging people by how they speak.

Helen, you should probably be very careful mixing Victorian and Modern American skater dialects, the results could be really bad...

"Dude, your quaintly aggravating colloquialisms like really bum me out and stuff" Not pretty.

Keep up the great work, You rock!

Dane

ah, i adore a british accent. in high school i did the play "noises off" and had to learn to speak with one. perhaps that's why when a british couple asked me directions once, i answered them with a british accent. doh!

*kisses*

good luck on that job search. and have a lovely weekend! ;-)

Hi H,
"Bob's your uncle" is right up there with "...and that's where things went pear-shaped"! Bless my dear friends in London! They never once resorted to calling me a "Silly Sod" (at least to my face) for all my incessant "hey, what does that mean?" pestering.

Today is Day 3 of my newly-discovered 'H' addiction! It's glorius. OK to refer to you as 'Smack'?

Oh yeah... Nice Butt!
Cheers, Paul in IL

H, I think your next stop into IQ sludge should be Better Off Dead. 'Gee, Ricky, I'm sorry your mom blew up!'

Anything with Colin Firth in it makes me pant. Forget Farrell; he's tainted. Give me the sexy mature man who looks like he'll throw down instead. Anyone want to see "Girl with a Pearl Earring" with me?

As for the Cockney bit - I'm the only one of my friends who understood *any* of LS&2SB or Snatch. Fucking love it. I think it's from years of PBS. My parents are BBC snobs.

Mike the Marine-now I can't quit saying "Dude!"

Sarah-I LOVE the Liza one. Must use it.

Jiminy-you've been missed, babe. Sorely.

Hey there, H! Let me just throw my lot in with the crowd who says that "fixin' to" is a fine turn of phrase. Where I grew up, Memphis, Tennessee, nothing ever happened, everything was "fixin' to" happen: I'm fixin' to go to the store; it looks like it's fixin' to rain. I miss some of the southern accent phrases I've lost in my four years in Boston, three in D.C., and now 10 in New York. So don't make fun. I had no idea, however, that "fixin' to" had made it all the way out to Indiana. Thanks, Sue, for that tidbit.

Every once in a while, I come out with a phrase that stops everyone around me with a look like, "what the hell did he just say?!"

And, the Cockney word phrases are not made any easier to understand when hidden behind the heavy curtain of their accent. It finally explains a line from the movie "Ocean's Eleven." When the explosives guy says that they're all in "Barney." They look at him. He explains, "Barney...Barney Rubble...Trouble!" I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I spent the entirety of Lock, Stock without understanding half of what was being said, and still loved the movie.

Have a great weekend, H. And everyone else, too.

"And don't let some stuffy fart-and-shit make fun of your American English."

Oh MAN, I'm still giggling about that one. Best Friend and Dear Mate are going to kill me, but that's way they get for calling my people Sceptics.

Good to know that Amber, Ilyka and I are all parrots that pick up accents. We're like Meryl Streep, only without the bad nose.

Mike, read up on your Irvine Welsh. It will keep you schooled in the way of rhyming slang.

Helen, I knew you'd get it. Which is why I did it, of course. Friends of mine from England (north country boys) were telling me about LS&2SB when they came for a visit. It wasn't out here yet. They had seen it but couldn't figure out why they were calling the telly a "Liza." My mate Dan felt like a fucking tool when American Girl Me explained it to him.

I use it in writing quite a bit, but as I can't pull off a proper accent, I rarely use it in everyday chitchat. Though I do call Jaime my china, no matter what. People look at me weird. I don't bother explaining.

I think they can lecture me about how I speak when they realize the term "fixin' to" is not socially acceptable either.

No, no, no . . . fixin' to rules. It's no "might could," but it's still plenty handy for everyday use.

As you know, I do this same sort of thing too, but don't lose your roots. And don't let some stuffy fart-and-shit make fun of your American English.

Cockney sounds cool, but good God, how do you keep up with it? I mean I love Lock Stock and Snatch and used to watch Red Dwarf on BBC America and I cannot for the life of me figure out how Brits keep up on that stuff. I mean, you're talking about a "language" that can change daily, depending on who's in the news and cultural norms.

For instance, "pony and trap" is NOT a phrase most Americans would be familiar with. Hell, I'd never heard it until Gareth mentioned it below, so how the hell would I deduce that pony=crap?

Helen, definitely dumb it down with Bill & Ted. Just remember: San Dimas High School Football RULES!!!

lock stock ... awsome flic... and of course Snatch was a better follow up, trying to understand Brad Pitt, forget about it.

This is the closest thing to an accurate account of the origin of the phrase "Bob's your uncle."

It seems that no-one knows for definite where it came from originally.

I do that all the time! I've always been an unconscious mimic for accents and phrases, but until I was a teen, I never realized it. The worst time I had of it was when I was working tech support at a local ISP (SE Georgia w/a Navy base). I had two lines running at the same time, and I was flipping back and forth between a Scottish woman (heavy brogue) and an older man who had never once stepped foot outside of the county (one of the heaviest Southern accents imaginable). My boss had to stop and just watch and listen to me until I got them both settled. He told me to go and take a break to sort out what I wanted to sound like after I got off the phone.

Laura, we can now bond over how great that film is. *Sigh*. And you're a better person than I am on the "Lock, Stock" side-I had to turn the subtitles on.

Kyle-I have absolutely no idea where that saying comes from. We have a lot of English readers here-come on, help us out!

I too have picked up 'no worries' from living in a BC mountain town that attracts so many aussies in the winter we celebrate austraila day at the pub. Going to school in alberta (canada's texas) i get a lot of quizzical looks when i use it.

It took about six watchings of Lock Stock before i was able to understand the cockney bit without looking at the subtitles...i think it's because i memorized them rather than that i now understand it, but no worries :)

And the six hour pride and prejudice is my favorite thing! my roomate and i watch it every few weeks and then attempt to speak in that manner for the rest of the day. Much to the distain of anyone that might visit.

I do that to the people I work with, I call them all wankers and tossers..

What makes all this cockney stuff harder (when you're reading sv hearing) is that you have to hear it with the proper cockney inflections to even have a fighting chance.

Bein borned in ‘merica, I s’pose I jist wooden rather spek ‘merica.

Stuff like jaeetyet? To which you might respond nojew?

Thanks for bringing this up. Can anyone help me with the definition and origin of 'Bob's your Uncle"?..

There's a key difference between "no worries" and "whatever": "No worries" is never used sarcastically, as "whatever" often is. It really does mean "That's quite all right, it doesn't worry me, so don't let it worry you."

I just had to also mention the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

I love the ryming slang scene where they include subtitles "...and orders the ping pong tiddly in nuclear sub".

Ping pong = strong(est)
tiddly wink = drink
nuclear sub = pub (bar)

Thats the old rhyming slang. There is a more modern version now which really does require knowledge of english known celebrities to understand.

Britney Spears - beers
e.g. "Give us a couple of Britney's will ya Doreen".
Leo Sayer - an 'all-dayer' (drinking or a rave etc).
Nelson Mandela - Modern Rhyming Slang for 'Stella' (the lager).
Pat Cash - Modern Rhyming Slang for 'slash' (to urinate).

You have to be careful with Pony as it is also a sum of money. Lend us a pony.

Cockney rhyming slang gets really confusing for the uninitiated when people just use the first word rather than the rhyming one or couplet.

Hence, describing something as "pony" means it's crap (from pony and trap = crap).

So you could fall down the apples and rip your whistle in your haste to get to the dog before it stops ringing. Which all makes perfect sense.

No worries simply Australian for "Whatever". And without being too picky, in rhyming slang an American is a "sepo" = septic tank. Though I'm quite sceptical about Americans too.

A helpful dictionary is here

>even when the situation maybe isn't suitable for it. Late for an appointment? ...etc

These are all perfectly correct uses for "no worries"!! :) also suitable for use when someone burns down your house, kills your pet...and so on

You can say it any way you want to, as long as you keep saying it. Umm... I know what I meant, the question is: Did you? Oh well, I'm fixin' to (which is perfectly acceptable out here in Indiana, by the way) grab a bite to eat.