UK/US Divided by a Common Tongue

And then there is Dundonian, where the word Eh can be used to say anything you want.

The same way 'eh' is used in Canada!

I'm a Canadian living in the UK, and I've been caught using quite the wrong way.

Wife: How was your dinner?
Me: Quite nice, thanks.
Wife:Oh didn't you like it?
:ohwell:

I used to be so good at rattling off a bunch of these. Having lived both sides of the pond has impaired my language differentiation skills.

My favourites from Scotland:

greetin' - cryin'
ned - hooligan

... and my favourite saying: "Get it right (fu-ckin') up ye!"

Ach, there's many more up here.

There is quite a bit of language diversity in the British Isles as well,
There are at least 3 different types of English spoken in Scotland,
Scottish Standard English is the version of English that would be taught as English but is not the same as Standard English,

Scots/Lallans/Ullans is a form of English that's very old and is now considered a separate language, spoken in the Central belt, Borders and in the case of Ullans Northern Ireland rather than Scotland but is considered closer to the language Robert Burns knew.

And Doric, and even older version of English spoken Aberdeenshire, this is due to some Sassenachs taking over estates in Aberdeenshire and converting the locals from Gaelic much earlier than anywhere else in the North.


So while in Aberdeen a friend may greet me with "Fit like loon"
A friend in the borders or central belt may say "Hous it gaun"
And a friend in fife may say "Awright yah hoor"

All of course mean "How are you".

Scotland and the north of England traded with the Germanics while Southern England traded with the French.
So we get discrepancies like Kirk and Church from German and French respectively.

But both are in Scotland at least understood.

However, it gets much worse.
*kitten* was mentioned earlier, and the current prime minister got in real trouble for using that word because it is just another way of saying the C word.

In many parts of the UK that is the worst possible word you could ever use, but in other parts no one gives a...

Particularly in Fife where it's universally used to mean person (just like yah yoor)

So when I got back from the cup final a couple of years back a mates Girlfriend had written on my face book "What did that C... have on his t-shirt" (one of the players had raised his shirt to show a message after scoring). To her that's a completely acceptable way of writing "What did David Goodwillie have written on his shirt".

While a mate also from Fife whose Wife is from an area where that word is the worlds biggest insult got an absolute bollocking for using it.


And then there is Dundonian, where the word Eh can be used to say anything you want.

ok something weird happened wht my post was meant to say was I am always amazed at the similarities between Scottish and Dutch with reference to your erlier German comment- Kerk is Church in Dutch but also Ken (like in German) is to know- and i have experienced this in Scottish as well, also yah hoor (jahoor) is Dutch- I suppose it would make sense though- looking at the globe- geographically Scotland and the Netherlands are so close, and through trade/ fishing they most surely have influenced one another