Hi all,
Apolgies for the late reply. I usually post on Chrons from my phone whilst dashing around for various schools. It's a hassle to quote and even more, the autocorrect feature on iPhones is often mindbogglingly erroneous, so I wanted to be able to reply when I sat down. Plus there're far too many opportunities for ribbing to pass by
but thee and me have more or less the exact same regional vocab so that doesn't mean much.
and
I did not understand your sentence, but likely would have with a bit more context.
When these kinds of threads have appeared over the years, I've always thought of how I was reared on a diet of North American authors from age 9 -17. In particular I learnt how some NAmericans say things like quarter of twelve, and I learnt what side of the hour that meant. I learnt about culturally specific things from Stephen King from The Red Sox to the difference between how we use moot. What helped me the most was not a dictionary - I doubt I ever even looked to check - but as
Parson says, context.
Another example -I'm ashamed to admit, but I can justify - is that I watch a few of the U.S.
Real Housewives franchise; it's great human nature research (my justification
). I often end up shouting at the TV when these privileged horrors use the word "class", "classy" and "classless", and by doing so become the thing they behold/deride in others. We have a complicated relationship with the word 'class' in the UK and though the party line is we are a classless society which is absolute tosh, it's almost a dirty word when used as above. In fact, by
using it, I'd venture that you're not what the
'well-bred elitists' call classy. I can't imagine a Brit using it in that context without irony.
the word ‘scundered’ has a variety of meanings, often with only a few miles between them
Come on man, what does it mean, then? You can't drop a word like that into a thread and not define it.
What I rather suspect has happened isn't the reduction of "tacky" by eliminating a letter, it's confusion by people mishearing and/or mispronouncing "tat"
I'd disagree because of others who have said they thought it was a conjugation (kinda) of tacky (or vice versa). Certainly my friends and family know the difference between tat and tack. What I've considered over the past few days since posting this is that it's to do with the evolution of the English language and our specific generation(s). So as a relatively recent word, those of us who are older might assume it's a dinlo (
) getting it wrong, mispronouncing 'tat', but for the younger ones, it has bcome common parlance. It's interesting because inter-culturally, I hear amazingly bizarre amendments of words and sentence structure by Afro-Caribbeans here in London. Whether that be the use of quite archaic English (by my first generation W.African friends), or the pronounciation. Jamaicans are happy to call me
facety as opposed to
feisty, and pronounce/spell it as such (when I'm just being my pleasant ol' self
). When my OH talks I often don't concentrate properly because I'm so entranced by his sentence construction. One of his favourites is when given a choice he will reply, 'Rather, I would xyz,' for example.
Whenever I ask my sister who is over-educated in languages and Lit, she usually rolls her eyes and says, 'For God's sake, language evolves, meanings and usage change!' so I didn't ask her this time. She uses some ghastly Americanisms and whenever I bleat at her about it, she uses the above justification, though.
it's common to hear reference to "a change of tact" when it should be "tack" and "being on tenderhooks" when it should be "tenterhooks
Oh, I hear this
all the time. I have to bite my tongue and not correct them. The hardest to convince is tenterhooks because often they won't see how the meaning can be made from the construction of tenter and hooks, so they assume it's tender. The same for albeit, which I often see written as
orbeit,
all be it;
common or garden vs
communal garden; and just today,
rebuttal vs
rebuddle (I suspect this latter is to do with homophone-like issues rather than an evolution of langue).
I'd see it as a mistake, plain and simple.
HA!
Ditto "I was sat" by the way. STOP IT!
Oh I don't do it. I would if I was writing in character voice, or perhaps even reporting a tale in which I wanted to underline my innocence at the start of whatever happened. But I think that latter comes from Victoria Wood and Julie Walters sketches
I think of the Southern U.S.. How it is in U.K. where they don't speak English, I have no idea.
You question our English then confuse tact for tack?
mwuahaha.
the way people say wrench when they mean retch. See also people who say crutch when they mean crotch.
LIES! I can't imagine
anyone being that dense.
"just cheap vacu-formed tack."
It would do the job, yep, thanks. Thing is this is a hugely over-count novel in terms of words, so I am trying to be as brutal in the first draft re extra words.
Based on the majority of feedback, 'tack' stays in my wip.
Thanks Chrons!
pH
