Oct 20 2008
in which there are britishisms
I already use a few British idioms in everyday speech, like “dodgy” and “shag” and the British use of “right” and that sort of thing, most of which I picked up from Harry Potter or Doctor Who or…well, the internet. Being surrounded by these sorts of colloquialisms in my fellow students’ daily language is just intensifying that; I’m finding myself picking it up even more, like their use of “bit” (Americans are more likely to say, for example, “I was a little upset” rather than “a bit upset”, or that someone’s “kind of an idiot” instead of “a bit of an idiot”), and saying “right” even more than I already did, and their use of “proper” (used as…”genuine,” I suppose, or some meanings of “normal” or “actual”–like, “It’s not a proper forest, just a few trees off the road”).
Some of that’s just natural osmosis, since I recognize in myself mannerisms from specific friends that I’ve picked up just from being around them–but then, I’m also a giant nerd when it comes to linguistic stuff (among other things, yeah) and more than a bit of an Anglophile, so I may well be picking up more than I would otherwise because I just like their linguistic quirks.
Of course, there are certain drawbacks to understanding a good part of British slang. I would rather have not understood it when somebody in the most recent Creative Writing Society workshop made a play on words with “skullduggery” and came out with “skullbuggery”. Because…ew. (He later clarified that the orifice in question was the ear, although that really doesn’t make it much better.)
