A friend in England just sent me a nice little book: “British
Language and Culture,” published by Lonely Planet.
I thought my knowledge of British English was moderately
okay. I can read the Financial Times without a crib sheet, and even do the
crossword puzzle. (The puzzle, sadly enough, often resorts to cricket
terminology, which kills me, but I now know all about googlies and centuries
and maiden overs, not to mention former Archbishops of Canterbury and Prime
Ministers and managers of Manchester United.)
But this new book is a gold mine.
I opened the book randomly to Cockney rhyming slang. “Apples
and pears” I knew from an Austin Powers movie (it means “stairs,” which rhymes
with “pears”; you can say just “apples” if you’re feeling obscure). How about
“Use your loaf” for “Use your head”? I assumed “loaf” was just a silly
euphemism for “head,” because people’s heads were big and lumpy, like loaves of
bread. But it’s rhyming slang too: “head” rhymes with “bread,” which leads us
to “loaf of bread” . . . .
The book also includes Estuary English, and Zummerzet
English, and Geordie English. It has a Cornish lexicon, and a Welsh lexicon,
and a Scots Gaelic lexicon, not to mention a Lallans supplement.
It makes my head spin, that there are so many ways of saying
the same thing.
Here’s a story from my own past:
Where I grew up – in the Pacific Northwest in the
1960s/1970s – “I have an idea” was a synonym for “I think so” or “I agree.”
Example: if someone said “I think it’s going to rain today,” you could agree by
saying “I have an idea.”
Then I came to New England in 1978, still using all my
Northwestern idioms. I quickly stopped saying “pop,” and substituted “soda”
(which seemed strange for a year or two, but which wasn’t such a big deal). I quickly
stopped making fun of people who didn’t pronounce “ant” and “aunt” in exactly
the same way. Ditto “ferry” and “fairy.” Ditto “Mary” and “marry” and “merry.”
And slowly I learned to speak New England English, or more specifically,
Rhode Island English.
But it took me a long time to get rid of “I have an idea,”
even though people reacted strangely to it. One person long ago said,
wonderingly: “What? What idea do you have?”
Okay. I finally got it. No one understands “I have an idea.”
But I still think it’s a cute expression.
And isn’t it lovely that we have so many ways of expressing
ourselves?
‘Bye now. I have to run up the apples and pears.
