O.T. : What Have We Done ... ?

And the other way around if you are Kenneth Williams...

Honi soit qui mal y pense Fait toujours reconnaissance Hammersmith Palais des dances Badinage, ma crepe suzette.

Double entendre restaurante Jacques Cousteau, Yves St Laurent Ou est la plume de ma tante? C'est la vie, ma crepe suzette.

Reply to
The Medway Handyman
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A xenophobe to add to all the other 'qualities'.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

When we moved here my children were still in infant school. The local usage they came back with was 'can I lend a xxx' meaning either 'will you lend me a xxx' or 'may I borrow a xxx'. Even my wife started adopting local usage. :(

Reply to
Alang

Look, if someone is an 'entertainer' then regional dialects are and can be part of that entertainment. Rab C Nesbitt springs to mind.

What I object to is anchor men and so on speaking apalling english.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Not 'entertainment'. News and so on. Informational programs should not be hosted by people who obviously lack the ability to speak grammatically correct english in a clear voice.If their information on grammar is patently incorrect, what does that say for their information on anything else?

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I don't care, as long as its comprehnsible. And unambigous, and gramatically correct.

I.e car'el and gra' are unacceptable. Mere change of vowel sounds is not the same as eliding consonants.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

using 'loan' in place of lend or borrow - can be confusing if there's not nuch context.

Reply to
PeterC

I guard my tailstock!

Reply to
PeterC

Lancashire dialect. IIRC.

I dont pull ma breeks on in the morning either, or britches for that matter.

Dialect words may or may not gain or lose common parlance. Swine has been replaced by pig almost exclusively, as pigs became the business of thos who used the sort of scandinavian derived dialects..the loss of french pronunciation as the sway of the original norman conquest 'upper classes' has diminished. this is all fine enough.

What is not fine, is the sea of ambiguity that now threatens to rob language of comprehensibility and precise meaning.

And the attendant attitude that this actually doesn't MATTER.

Punctuation has a HUGE impact on meaning.

Spelling distinguishes homonyms.

One received pronunciation may not be everyone's common speech, but it does provide a single standard that can be used unambiguously as a single means of converse with ambiguity removed.

You may feel that since no one has anything worth saying anymore, how you say it is irrelevant: I don't ascribe to that view. The clipped tones of the military are not mere affectation: they are there to allow precise unambiguous orders to be given in conditions of high background noise, for example.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

When a bit lost in Wales I came across a small reservoir that was shown on the map but the name on the sign was Dwr Cymru and most of them seem to be called that - most confusing.

(Found out later that it means 'Birmingham's Water').

Reply to
PeterC

No they don't.

Consonant elision is not mere accent.

Accent is stress and intonation alone.

Saying 'gorra lorra cash' rather than 'is financially well endowed' is at one level, a dialectical exercise, but is not an *accented* form of 'Got a lot of cash'.

It's a bastardised format. And may well be unintelligible to anyone not used to it.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

It's worse than that IMHO. The current ethos seems also to celebrate stupidity and the superficial.

Worse still it seems to be unnacceptable to think for oneself nowadays.

Reply to
Mark

I dont understand how you can possibly draw that conclusion.

Geordie is Scandinavian in its singsong intonation. Cockney is ultimately low French.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Agreed, that 'standard English' might be a moving target, but that is not an argument for no standards at all.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Shame, I can't find a photo of the a.m. pedestrian crossing.

Reply to
Mark

I'm all in a spin.

Reply to
Mark

No, to some of us it is simply the natural and correct way to proceed.

We just know that 'a phenonema' is not correct. It's 'a phenomenon'.

And when using such words, its generally in a context of very precise meaning being required.

The exception might

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Scottish probably.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Welsh is the same. I beleive the way to pump your tyres up is to put wind in your wheels.

Did you know that th country with the largest number of English speakers will shortly be China?

However, as I keep insisting. having standards is not t same as preserving a static language.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Well at least he understood the meaning.

Whereas we now have a party in power that looks, behaves and talks as if they had never left their nappies behind, let alone the school playground.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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