Words that get on your nerves

I was sent to elocution lessons as a child. Probably a complete waste of money as I would have lost my accent anyway soon after moving south. Like my Dad and siblings ( no-one else went to elocution lessons) we seem unable to retain a specific accent but simply start to unconsciously adopt and mix in what we are hearing around us. When I used to return north for school holidays, a day in my accent would be as broad as ever.

I still retain some northern vowel sounds, think bath rather than barth, but the rest is gone.

 

I remember going to Rotherham market once and asking a stallholder for four yards of cloth. Before he picked up his wooden yardstick he looked at me and said “You talk funny.” I was from a village less than ten miles away.

Just as a matter of interest, I wonder what percentage of northerners went for elocution lessons and what percentage of southerners did.

 

@Tidemark maybe the stallholder was expecting metres?

Funny that in Birmingham I notice that road signs are now in yards. Even the city centre tunnels have "xx yards to exit" signs.

 

Oooh, no, not in 1963!

But yes, if you go to buy timber these days, it’s sold as 2.2 metres x 2” x 2”. What a country! It’s a wonder they don’t ask for payment in guineas and give you change in bitcoins.

 

Some years ago we had a holiday in Spain and the dining room staff apparently had bets on our nationality.

On the first night we were greeted in German and I used all 1/5 of my knowledge of the language to exchange greetings in German back. However, the waiters hovering around our table apparently cast some doubts to this, so on the second night the greeting was in Russian.

That wasn't a success either so iterations of "please" and "thank you"s were offered in surprising languages, with attentive eye to our reaction.

By the third night we got a hang of the game and every time a member of the staff was within earshot, we selected a language and cheerfully pretend- talked "Joo joo, jättebra" " veramente cosi, cara" and so on

Not sure if any of the staff ever won the game but at least we had excellent service with a waiter never further than a foot away.

 

My OH and I enrolled in Mandarin Chinese conversation classes way back in the days of Chairman Mao’s little red book. A time when 99.9% of Chinese people rode bicycles and only dreamed of ever driving a car. Our teacher was “on loan” from Beijing university in an exchange programme with a British university. Mr Wang taught us in true Chinese style - repeat everything by rote ten times then learn what you were saying. Even now, I can quote “je tiao jie shang you ji zuo fangzi?” which means “how many houses are on this street?” OH and I gathered various sentences and questions together and used them as code in certain situations. For example, if a dinner with other people was becoming a bore, one might ask the other in Mandarin how the little green frog was today and the reply might come back as “tired” and so we’d leave.

 

I never had electrocution lessons, and being a southerner I dont know anyone who did

If you buy timber it would 50x50 for two by two these days. I started work in 1970 and the timber trade went metric that year.
Unless its hardwood, that, as far as I know is still in Imperial due to the US dominating the word market.

 

I dunno. Maybe we’re a bit backward here in Derbyshire… I agree, it does give the dimensions in mm but the bit that stands out is the inches.

 

That's because your brain is fixed on inches, mine is and always will be.

If asked to estimate the length of something I always do it in my head in ft or inches, then if its required I do a rough conversion in my head. I think in imperial but I've always worked in metric.

I've never learnt a different language but often assume people still think in their first language then do the conversion in their head.

 

Yards and miles are the official measurements for distance in the UK as far as I know.
There has be cases where signage in metres has had to be removed as its illegal.

 

A few days ago I got a message about my Screwfix order. "Your parcel has left our sortation facility and is now starting its onward journey." I suppose I should have been pleased that the journey was onward, rather than backward... but who on earth invented a "sortation facility"?

 

Only in the beginning. Once you've passed a certain point, no need for conversion.
Although I grew up with imperial measurements, one of my early jobs was in a timber merchants which was useful for learning metric. Softwood was measured in the first and hardwoods in the second...

 

When kitting out our former house in west Yorks, in 2005, we found carpet width was measured in metres, but length in feet. Maybe that was just Yorkshire...

 

My languages get awfully mixed up when I'm tired.

When The Child was The Baby in Italy I tried to buy my bus ticket in Finnish, carefully explaining where we wanted to go, and the driver laughed and asked me to try again, this time in Italian I had only spoken Finnish all morning so perhaps that was understandable.

I still notice I get my language reverting to Finnish translations when I'm tired, the radiator becomes a battery and the telly is opened rather than turned on and so on.

I also mix up languages with similar level of proficiency, so when trying to find the Czech word I come up with the Swedish one-both languages I have just a superficial hang of.

In a Harry Potter book Ron answers the door and the door answers back- totally untranslatable in any language where people just open the door without any answering in any direction. I loved that

On the building materials front, oddly 2" by 4" is known as twofourther in Finnish, regardless that inches are totally unknown and the country certainly has been self- sufficient with timber forever.