| Author |
Message |
Areff
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:30 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Default User wrote:
| Quote: | Tony Cooper wrote:
"Row", as in "having a row with his wife" is uncommon in AmE?
Pretty uncommon in my part of the nation. I doubt I've ever heard it in
conversation.
|
Here's proof that "row" is chiefly British:
Google:
"having a row with" 680
"having a row with" site:.uk 523
"having a row with" site:.au 44
"having a row with" site:.nz 12
"having a row with" (Total for UK/AU/NZ): 579
I ask Coop to explain these results. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Tony Cooper
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:39 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used above
with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley Valentine" on
HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it meself. I
don't think it's even marked for class.
|
I've seen usages like "I'll get me coat" here (in aue), but it always
seems to be a deliberate affectation. It doesn't seem naturalspeak to
anyone in this group.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando FL |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jim Lawton
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:42 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used above
with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley Valentine" on
HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it meself. I
don't think it's even marked for class.
|
It's not "me" though is it? It's actually just "mi" - a slovenly way of saying
"my".
| Quote: |
I don't recall any previous discussion here of the "singular us" in
UK speech (but not usually in writing). It is perfectly common to
refer to yourself as "us" under certain circumstances: "Give us a
cuddle", "Throw us that towel", "Pass us the salt, please".
That was such a great movie. I'd seen "Shirley Valentine" as a stage
play in Windsor. It's one of the few instances where the movie and
the play were somewhat different but both good in their own way.
Was "Shirley Valentine" the only major role for Pauline Collins? I
don't think I've ever seen her in anything else. At least to notice.
Now that I've Googled her, I do think I remember her in "Upstairs,
Downstairs", but the rest of her credits are unfamiliar to me.
She's been well-known as a TV actress in the UK for decades, often
with her husband John Alderton. Although both have had movie roles,
they have either failed to break through into films, or just weren't
interested.
|
--
Jim
"a single species has come to dominate ...
reproducing at bacterial levels, almost as an
infectious plague envelops its host"
http://tinyurl.com/c88xs |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
the Omrud
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:47 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Tony Cooper spake thusly:
| Quote: | On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com
wrote:
Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used above
with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley Valentine" on
HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it meself. I
don't think it's even marked for class.
I've seen usages like "I'll get me coat" here (in aue), but it always
seems to be a deliberate affectation. It doesn't seem naturalspeak to
anyone in this group.
|
That's because it's never (for most values of never) written down,
except in jest. We all say it, but none of us writes it.
--
David
=====
replace usenet with the |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
the Omrud
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:50 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Jim Lawton spake thusly:
| Quote: | On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com> wrote:
Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used above
with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley Valentine" on
HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it meself. I
don't think it's even marked for class.
It's not "me" though is it? It's actually just "mi" - a slovenly way of saying
"my".
|
Perhaps, but it's closer in sound to "me" than to "my".
--
David
=====
replace usenet with the |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Harvey Van Sickle
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:00 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
On 17 Aug 2005, the Omrud wrote
| Quote: | Jim Lawton spake thusly:
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud
usenet.omrud@gmail.com> wrote:
Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used
above with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley
Valentine" on HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley
used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it
meself. I don't think it's even marked for class.
It's not "me" though is it? It's actually just "mi" - a slovenly
way of saying "my".
Perhaps, but it's closer in sound to "me" than to "my".
|
I don't think it *is* a "perhaps". It seems to be pronounced -- and
fully intended to be -- "me", and doesn't appear to have anything to do
with sloppy speech.
Surely this is a dialect thing: it's similar to the "we was" one
encounters -- or used to encounter -- even from "properly educated"
people in some parts of the country. (Lancashire springs to mind.)
--
Cheers, Harvey
Idiom: Mixture of Canadian and British
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Areff
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:00 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Tony Cooper wrote:
| Quote: | That might mean more if we knew if your part of the nation was next
door to the Unibomber's hide-away or just off the corner of Nostrand
Avenue and Flatbush Avenue.
|
Just off the what? As Br. Martin Ambuhl can tell you, Flatbush Avenue and
Nostrand Avenue are two of the more important thoroughfares in Brooklyn
(FLCIA), and their intersection has long been known as "The Junction".
The Junction is right near where Brooklyn College (CUNY) is, as well as
Midwood High School. Have I mentioned that my elder siblings graduated
from Midwood High School? That Allen Konigsberg (lka Woody Allen) did as
well? That my sister had a summer job in high school, 1977 I believe, at
the then-newly-opened Wendy's (still in existence?) at the Junction? That
that was the first Wendy's in Brooklyn and possibly the first in New York?
Moreover, the intersection of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues is not
of a perpendicular or pseudoperpendicular nature. So "corner" doesn't
really sound right. If I had a photo I could explain this better.
| Quote: | Areffites may note that I have used the Areffian style of specifying
"Avenue" in both. Chicagoans would say "...corner of Nostrand and
Flatbush".
|
A Brooklynite *might* omit the generic part of the street name, but I
think Flatbush Avenue is one case where that would pretty much never be
done by a native speaker. It's too confusing, at least if you're in that
part of Brooklyn. Another example like that is "Coney Island Avenue" --
saying "the corner of Coney Island and 18th" sounds dead wrong. How is it
handled in Chicago with Blue Island Avenue or Stony Island Avenue?
So anyway as a tentative rule, you don't omit the generic part where the
non-generic part is a place name that's sufficiently proximate
(geographically as well as temporally) to the street in question.
Incidentally, "Nostrand" is /noUstr@nd/, in case anyone's wondering. I
don't know if that's how it's typically pronounced in "Van Nostrand". (On
the episode of _Seinfeld_ where people are auditioning for roles in the
sitcom-within-a-sitcom _Jerry_, when Kramer arrives to audition for the
role of Kramer, he's announced as "Martin Van Nostrand", and the speaker
uses the "cot" vowel in "Nostrand" rather than the "coat" vowel. There's
an old publishing house called "Van Nostrand" -- I always assumed it was
pronounced like the Brooklyn street. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jim Lawton
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:06 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:50:36 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Jim Lawton spake thusly:
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com> wrote:
Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used above
with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley Valentine" on
HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it meself. I
don't think it's even marked for class.
It's not "me" though is it? It's actually just "mi" - a slovenly way of saying
"my".
Perhaps, but it's closer in sound to "me" than to "my".
|
I say "mi" as in "mix" - I've never thought about it, it's so much part of
having a northern accent, stemming from dialect :-
A'll get mi coit,
Ast' getten thi coit?
exactly the same vowel, actually.
--
Jim
"a single species has come to dominate ...
reproducing at bacterial levels, almost as an
infectious plague envelops its host"
http://tinyurl.com/c88xs |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Mike Lyle
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:18 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
the Omrud wrote:
| Quote: | Tony Cooper spake thusly:
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:23 GMT, the Omrud
usenet.omrud@gmail.com
wrote:
Tony Cooper spake thusly:
Drifting a bit....I usually associate the use of "me" as used
above
with Irish-speak. Last night I was watching "Shirley Valentine"
on
HBO and noticed that the Liverpuddlian Shirley used "me" thusly.
It's used throughout the UK in informal speech. I use it meself.
I
don't think it's even marked for class.
I've seen usages like "I'll get me coat" here (in aue), but it
always
seems to be a deliberate affectation. It doesn't seem
naturalspeak
to anyone in this group.
That's because it's never (for most values of never) written down,
except in jest. We all say it, but none of us writes it.
|
It can actually be grandee-speak, too; though I doubt if there are
many genuine survivors. I think I put it in the mouth of an
"eh-what?" squirearchical character for an AUE exchange with
Mickwick: it certainly would have fitted.
--
Mike. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Areff
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:19 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Alan Jones wrote:
| Quote: |
"R H Draney" <dadoctah@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:ddvvsi031e4@drn.newsguy.com...
Areff filted:
In my freshman year of college, there was a guy who used "wanker" a lot.
I think it might be related to the apparent appropriation of certain
pseudo-British accent features in forming the "stoner accent" (which is
heard on _The Simpsons_ in the 'Spike' character BTW).
Can't place Spike...if you mean "Snake", he sounds Baltimorean to me....
[...]
My RightPondian ears heard him actually as British, and slightly posh at
that: a drop-out from a public [BrE sense] school, perhaps. He doesn't seem
to be in the episodes we see at present.
|
I remember that. Interestingly, one of the features of his speech is a
shifting of normative /aI/ to the back, related to a tendency in British
speech that we've recently discussed here as an "oy-ing" of the "eye"
vowel. (I'm thinking of how Snake says "Bye!" for example.) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
John Dean
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:20 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Jim Lawton wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:30:11 GMT, Tony Cooper
tony_cooper213@earthlink.net> wrote:
On 17 Aug 2005 00:01:47 -0700, "Troy Steadman"
troysteadman@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
In "300 reasons why we love The Simpsons" we have this paragraph:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,939751,00.html
63 They get British humour. And throw it back at us, as in... Bart:
'You're watching PBS?' Homer: 'Hey, I'm as surprised as you, but I
stumbled across the most delicious British sitcom.' Bart: [reading
title] 'Do Shut Up'? Homer: 'It's about a hard-drinking yet loving
family of soccer hooligans. If they're not having a go with the
birds, they're having a row with the wankers.'
Could one of you Americans tell me what - if anything - that last
sentence means?
If someone in the family isn't chasing girls, they're having an
argument with someone that annoys them.
Maybe. It's not a particularly well-worded line to get across what
they wanted to get across.
Is it just pseudo BrE to give that flavour for American viewers? Do
left-ponders ever use "wanker"? Does anyone still say "bird" - and
does it sound BrE to an American ear?
|
I haven't seen the show, but that's my guess from the dialogue quoted.
The mythical Britcom is, I think, represented as introducing new
terminology to Homer. Yet another example of Americans using irony.
--
John Dean
Oxford |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Tony Cooper
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:36 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:07:54 +0000 (UTC), Areff <me@privacy.net>
wrote:
| Quote: | It's just making fun of British people using characteristic British
language not typically used by Americans. The following terms are
thought of as chiefly British:
"bird" (woman)
"row" (argument) (I wonder if the quotation reveals a lack of
knowledge of the pronunciation? But that just shows you that it's not a
term typically used in AmE [whether it actually is more common in modern
BrE, or just tends to show up in the archaic BrE material we're exposed
to, I don't know])
|
"Row", as in "having a row with his wife" is uncommon in AmE?
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando FL |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mark
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:56 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Legend tells of a time when the mysterious hermit Areff of
me@privacy.net returned briefly from exile to say ...
| Quote: | I don't think of "having a go" as being typically British, but perhaps it
is -- there's a tendency for British speakers to use similar phrases like
"have a think"... on the other hand, "have a look" is AmE.
|
'ava dekko
'ava pastry chef's dongle
'ava butcher's
--
My housekeeper regarded him with jaundice in her eye;
She did not want a colony of hippotami;
She borrowed a machine-gun from her soldier-nephew, Percy,
And showed my hippopotamus no hippopotamercy.
- Patrick Barrington, "I Had a Hippopotamus" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pat Durkin
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 11:14 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
"Tony Cooper" <tony_cooper213@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:9jp6g1p0u6mfscju53i78aqkhru7g288m8@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:07:54 +0000 (UTC), Areff <me@privacy.net
wrote:
It's just making fun of British people using characteristic British
language not typically used by Americans. The following terms are
thought of as chiefly British:
"bird" (woman)
"row" (argument) (I wonder if the quotation reveals a lack of
knowledge of the pronunciation? But that just shows you that it's not a
term typically used in AmE [whether it actually is more common in modern
BrE, or just tends to show up in the archaic BrE material we're exposed
to, I don't know])
"Row", as in "having a row with his wife" is uncommon in AmE?
|
Well, I don't think so. "There was a row in the apartment next door last
night. Apparently someone dialled 911, because the police finally showed
up."
Actually, while I was chatting with a neighbor last night, the police did
show up. The officer asked if we had heard any explosion or firecracker. I
had to say that all was quiet in the 5 minutes I had been out. Missed all
the excitement, I did. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Mike Lyle
Guest
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 11:19 pm
Post subject: Re: "...they're having a row with the wankers" |
|
|
Areff wrote:
| Quote: | Troy Steadman wrote:
In "300 reasons why we love The Simpsons" we have [...]
birds, they're having a row with the wankers.'
Could one of you Americans tell me what - if anything - that last
sentence means?
It's just making fun of British people using characteristic British
language not typically used by Americans. The following terms are
thought of as chiefly British:
[...]
"wanker" (all usages)
[...] |
But what struck me most forcibly was that the supposedly prudish US
let "wankers" through the TV net. I can't imagine Brit broadcasters
airing that episode unexpurgated -- and, indeed, as it's a prime-time
children's favourite, I'd have found it objectionable.
--
Mike. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| |
FAQ
Memberlist
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in