Re: Subject: RE: [Harp-L] Joe Cocker w/subtitle translation
Liz, I think your spellings about the harmounica ;), etc. bring a touch of class to the group. I love seeing these colorfoUl posts from the British on Harp L and elsewhere. You can instantly tell where they're from, Australians are similar, but they have their own phrases that give them awayand you can tell a lot about a person from their spelling and the words they choose. Pat Missin for instance, lives in Ohio, but when you see the spellings on his wonderful harmonica site, you know he's from Britain.
I only mention this cause language history is a hobby of mine... as for Johnny Come Lately changes we've made as Americans, British English has changed greatly since 1776, we've changed only half as much because we are such a large, sparsely populated. You used to usestuff like prefixes "eth" and "ten" at the end of verbs to denote past tense. We have preserved several of these, while we don't use "eths" (like goeth) anymore, we still say forgotTEN like you did 400 years instead of "forgot like you do now." In some geograpically isolated areas, like WV, largely settled by you Scots, more of the old stuff is more preserved, one of these days, I'm going to let the word "betwixt" slip in a video if I haven't already.
Swear words, on the other hand, remain largely unchanged. I can think of a very crude four letter word Chaucer used in the Canterbury Tales for the female anatomy back in the 1200s, that means the exact same thing in Middle English that it does today.
Dave .
____________
Dave Payne Sr.
Elk River Harmonicas
www.elkriverharmonicas.com
EGS1217@xxxxxxx wrote:
It might have been pretty 'bad' Rick, lol...but you didn't correct the
misperception that spelling those words correctly with the 'u' left in, is in any
way a 'dialect'. Hmm....rather, it's the Queen's (or King's) English..and
far precedes any Johnny-come-lately changes made to our language by upstart
Americans. ;)
I still remember the humiliation of being told I'd failed my very first
typing class test here in NY two weeks after arriving from Scotland, purely
because I'd quite properly spelled colour, neighbour and so forth with a 'u'. Oh,
the ignominy of it...I shan't ever live it down. ;)
Elizabeth
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:03:00 +1000
From: "Rick Dempster"
Subject: RE: RE: [Harp-L] Joe Cocker w/subtitle translation
To: "d.flendrich" ,
Message-ID: <486B5254.7C8A.0066.0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
It makes the language more colourful. You might labour to understand it
neighbour, but it's a matter of honour to those of us living under the rigour of
the Commonwealth.
Harp content? hmmm.....well, playing the harmonica is an Hohn-ourable
occupation... sorry that was pretty bad!
RD
>>> "d.flendrich" 2/07/2008 4:41 >>>
Priest, Jim wrote:
> But he's still one of my all-time favourites.
You spell "favorites" with a 'u'. Who can read that dialect? ;-)
d.f
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