Being around family and friends that have known you a longtime, your quirks and foibles become just part of you, they don't seem to get flagged up in any way. You then meet someone new, your idiosyncrasies pointed out and highlighted.
My family heritage is Irish Catholic and my Grandfather on my mothers side was a Romany gypsy, so along with all the guilt shit from being a Catholic I was also brought up with some Romany traditions. These involved lots of rituals and a whole slang language of it's own.
This may go some way to explain my quirky ways, especially with words. I love words, reading dictionary's is something I have always loved to do and reading maps. People often say swearing is a lack of vocabulary, I disagree, my language can be very colourful but I do consider myself to have a good vocabulary. I have a very strong West Yorkshire accent so it never ceases to amuse me when someone thinks this equates to low intelligence. A work colleague with a plum in her mouth was very shocked that I knew what a "Billet doux" was. If ever a riposte needed to include the F word, that comment was one of them, I rose above that.
As a child we had a mix of Leeds slang words, my hubby who is from Liverpool thought I made most of these words up, he had his own slang words. We then had the Romany slang words for just about everything and were used all the time in our house. It was obvious spending time with my Auntie Lizzie my grandfathers sister, they were a secretive lot and didn't want non Romany folk understanding a word they said. She also had funny little rituals, the mugs were not to be used by family we had to have the Crown Derby china cups. On my mums mothers side the whole family spoke in what we called Pig Latin, it was everyday words said in a jumbled up fashion and we were all fluent, no-one else had a bloody clue what we were saying. I am glad my nieces know of it and we giggle when trying to have a conversation that the girls needn't be hearing, their faces incredulous as to what they are hearing trying to make sense of it.
My mum also had lots of weird and wonderful sayings I assume passed on from her mum. I realised how different and how much slang we used when we moved from West Yorkshire to North Yorkshire, here the accent was quite slow and soft, I found it quite difficult to make myself understood so learnt to temper my use of the words I have used all my life. Accents and sayings have always held a fascination to me, with the likes of twitter these local isms are more apparent when you find yourself having to explain things which are commonly used where you live. Some of the Romany words I used as a kid are now used in mainstream language, our dialects and colloquialisms much more widespread.
Often my future daughter in law challenges me on the things I have said, saying she's never heard of half the expressions I use so has come to the conclusion these are Sharonisms and for those there are no explanations.
Sha X
My family heritage is Irish Catholic and my Grandfather on my mothers side was a Romany gypsy, so along with all the guilt shit from being a Catholic I was also brought up with some Romany traditions. These involved lots of rituals and a whole slang language of it's own.
This may go some way to explain my quirky ways, especially with words. I love words, reading dictionary's is something I have always loved to do and reading maps. People often say swearing is a lack of vocabulary, I disagree, my language can be very colourful but I do consider myself to have a good vocabulary. I have a very strong West Yorkshire accent so it never ceases to amuse me when someone thinks this equates to low intelligence. A work colleague with a plum in her mouth was very shocked that I knew what a "Billet doux" was. If ever a riposte needed to include the F word, that comment was one of them, I rose above that.
As a child we had a mix of Leeds slang words, my hubby who is from Liverpool thought I made most of these words up, he had his own slang words. We then had the Romany slang words for just about everything and were used all the time in our house. It was obvious spending time with my Auntie Lizzie my grandfathers sister, they were a secretive lot and didn't want non Romany folk understanding a word they said. She also had funny little rituals, the mugs were not to be used by family we had to have the Crown Derby china cups. On my mums mothers side the whole family spoke in what we called Pig Latin, it was everyday words said in a jumbled up fashion and we were all fluent, no-one else had a bloody clue what we were saying. I am glad my nieces know of it and we giggle when trying to have a conversation that the girls needn't be hearing, their faces incredulous as to what they are hearing trying to make sense of it.
My mum also had lots of weird and wonderful sayings I assume passed on from her mum. I realised how different and how much slang we used when we moved from West Yorkshire to North Yorkshire, here the accent was quite slow and soft, I found it quite difficult to make myself understood so learnt to temper my use of the words I have used all my life. Accents and sayings have always held a fascination to me, with the likes of twitter these local isms are more apparent when you find yourself having to explain things which are commonly used where you live. Some of the Romany words I used as a kid are now used in mainstream language, our dialects and colloquialisms much more widespread.
Often my future daughter in law challenges me on the things I have said, saying she's never heard of half the expressions I use so has come to the conclusion these are Sharonisms and for those there are no explanations.
Sha X
4 comments:
Love my Yorkshire/Greek slang. Makes us individuals!!! Great post
And that's what makes individuals fascinating. Thank you X
Nice blog. As a lover of words you might be interested in the word play involved in cryptic crosswords. I am doing a series of posts on solving cryptic clues. This was the first one I did. http://caroleschatter.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/cryptic-crosswords-solving-hints-1.html Hope you enjoy.
Thank you Carole will take a look x
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