Mom [OT]

In message ,
dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers writes
Like who? Who doesn't love the Geordie accent?

There must be some poor deluded soul somewhere, bonnie lass! ;-)
It's one of my favourites!

Whey thank you pet. Thaat's verry kind like.

Porrs, I mean haawaay the laads, helen s

My bestest friend's little boys are Geordies born and bred (she's
Kentish through and through), and they call her "mam".
--
Cathi

Steve Touchstone had some very interesting
things to say about Mom [OT]:

Course, as we've already heard in this thread, a lot of times the
accent doesn't mean much as you get farther away from "home". Lots of
us 'Merikans can't distinguish accents within GB, heck some can't tell
the difference between someone from NZ, Australia or GB. Don't feel
too bad, some New Yorkers can pinpoint what neighborhood another New
Yorker is from by their accent, while most West Coasters are clueless.

As I discovered fast in tech support, the stereotypical New York
accent is limited to the city. People from elsewhere in the state
don't have that accent [but to me, New Jersey speakers sound very
similar to NYC].

--
"Don't mess with major appliances unless you know what you are doing
(or unless your life insurance policy is up-to-date)." - John, RCFL

In message ,
dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers writes
Except that, as you point out, it's sometimes hip or cool to talk
"down", and some who start out in what might be considered a "lower
class" work hard to lose the accent and talk "up". But, IMHO, that is
universal, not a British thing.

Cue memory dragged from subconcious of a young Nigel Kennedy being in a TV
interview when he was at the err... Yehudi Menhuin Music School? A very posh
young man indeed. You'd never think it these days with his "working class"
accent ;-)

Cheers, helen s

Strangely enough, I was thinking of quoting him as an example too!
--
Cathi

Yowie wrote:

I couldn't call my mother anything other than "Mum" despite the
fact I know her full name, and she calls me "Victoria". Everyone
else calls me Vicky.

Except for your online friends, of course...

Joyce

Takayuki had some very interesting things to
say about Mom [OT]:

I have a habit of sometimes calling women "sir". I also call groups
of women "guys", like "Hi guys", and "I'm going out with the guys". I
sometimes get some funny looks. Do you suppose that's okay?

I wouldn't enjoy being called "sir". Would you enjoy being called
"ma'am" or some other feminine form of address? Same thing, IMO. If
you know the person's gender, addressing him/her by a title used for
the other gender borders on insult, I think [by saying that person is
in your opinion more a member of the opposite gender to his/her own].

--
"Don't mess with major appliances unless you know what you are doing
(or unless your life insurance policy is up-to-date)." - John, RCFL

jmcquown wrote:

Woman from the Southern U.S. is sitting in an airport next to a woman from
NYC. The Southern woman attempts to strike up a conversation by asking,
"So, where are you from?" The woman from NYC replies snootily, "I am FROM
where they don't end a sentence with a preposition." The Southern woman
thinks about this for a minute, then says, "Okay, where you from, bitch?"

That is an excellent joke, thanks! Definitely a keeper.

Joyce

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On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 16:40:03 -0500, Takayuki
wrote:

John F. Eldredge wrote:

My mother was an elementary-school teacher, and once had a
principal gesture to the Halloween-decoration witch on her
classroom door and ask her, jokingly, if Eldredge meant "old
witch".

I thought that "Eldredge" was just one of those names that begin
with "El", like Eldorado, or El Paso.

Well, when I am trying to explain to someone how to spell it (since
many people get confused if you just tell them the letters), I
sometimes say "E L Dredge like dredge a river".

When I have tried to look up the likely original meaning of Eldredge
(or Eldridge, the other common spelling), I have found a variety of
explanations. The two likeliest ones that I have found are "Eld
bridge" (old bridge) or the Old English phrase "Eld Reac" (meaning
Old Kingdom). Reac is cognate to modern English "Reach" and to
German "Reich". Both derivations likely started out as place names.

The surname Eldredge or Eldridge is apparently from southern England,
but most of the ancestry on my father's side, except for the Eldredge
line, has been traced back to Scotland. My mother's side is also
probably Scots, judging from the family names, but we haven't been
able to trace it back beyond my great-grandparents.

Incidentally, speaking of family origins, my mother's father
immigrated to the USA from Canada as a child, around 1900, but didn't
become a US citizen until around 1950. His wife, my grandmother, was
born in the USA but, without knowing it, had lost her citizenship
when she married my grandfather. US law at the time, since changed,
was that an American woman marrying a foreign man would lose her US
citizenship, but an American man marrying a foreign woman would keep
his US citizenship. Canadian law didn't automatically grant
citizenship to the wife of a Canadian citizen, so she spent four
decades or so as a stateless person, with no citizenship anywhere. My
grandmother, even though she had started out as a US citizen by
birth, had to go through the naturalization process to regain her US
citizenship.

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--
John F. Eldredge --
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

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On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 14:23:40 -0800, Seanette Blaylock
wrote:

Takayuki had some very interesting things to
say about Mom [OT]:

I have a habit of sometimes calling women "sir". I also call
groups of women "guys", like "Hi guys", and "I'm going out with the
guys". I sometimes get some funny looks. Do you suppose that's
okay?

I wouldn't enjoy being called "sir". Would you enjoy being called
"ma'am" or some other feminine form of address? Same thing, IMO. If
you know the person's gender, addressing him/her by a title used for
the other gender borders on insult, I think [by saying that person
is in your opinion more a member of the opposite gender to his/her
own].

For some reason, if my father was saying yes to a male gas station
attendant, it always sounded like "Yes'm". The rest of our family
used to fuss at him about that. He always insisted that he was
saying "Yes sir", but it didn't sound like that. For some reason,
gas station attendants were the only ones he said this to.

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--
John F. Eldredge --
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

Kreisleriana wrote:

Kids imitate anything they see on TV. They don't think too hard about
it-- they just think if it's on TV, it's cool.

Well, yeah. But I was just wondering what the appeal was about cockney-
speaking Londoners, to kids from Glasgow. There's probably a cultural
history there that I'm not aware of, being from over here.

Joyce

Kreisleriana wrote:

An' th' infamous glo--al stop (glottal stop).

LOL!

Some people use that here, too, eg, "I ain't gi'in (getting) any younger."

Joyce