Making phone calls on mobile/cell phones here is pretty expensive unless you have one of the silly minute plans, so most folk rely on text. Having never got my head around predictive texting combined with a decidedly Yorkshire/Scottish attitude of wanting to get as much message in as I can for my brass (money) I end up using a fair bit of txt shorthand.
However I find myself continually flummoxed as I realise that words that are obvious to me aren't so obvious here, some people like Marion and Fran would get most of them given our Scotland and Newcastle overlaps in life but even then there's no guarentee and I'd certainly not expect them to understand 'Zummerzet' speak.
Classic example, when Jon and I were trying to meet up a couple of years back he texted me 'wer b 2?' Were be to? being perfectly understandable to both of us (Where are you? Somerset dialect). D'you think I could use that to find anyone here? Other than when Mum & Dad were over as the advert says 'Yeah right...'
Owt (anything), sumat (something), t'.... (the), gan yem (gone/going home), drukit (drookit - drenched), thysen, ursen (yourself), awa (away), wi (with), a' (all) gie (give), awfy (awful).... the list goes on. So, next time I use them in a text you'll know what I mean won't you? =)
I guess that's what I get for absorbing so much of the language that is around me over the years.
3 comments:
Hey, *I*'d understand it ;-) but I guess it'd be a bit like being a code talker to Kiwis
have mobile costs rocketed over there then ? i'm sure frances used to phone me from there on her mobile because of international calls on a mobile being almost as cheap there as domestic calls on a landline are here !
If you get a calling card it's cheaper to phone abroad than it is to phone a cellphone down the road, maybes that's what you are remembering, as far as I can gather cellphone calls were never cheap here.
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