My English speaking friends and I often say, how our spoken English is sort of stuck in a 70s time-warp.
We've all lived in Italy for so long and don't regularly speak to people who actually live in an English-speaking country.
When I return to the UK,people often correct me, I might say Canadian geese, instead of Canada geese,
or anti beeotics instead of anti by otics.
I'll find myself peering at the coins, to see which is 5p or 10p
Recently, a fellow ex-pat, went back to London. She was early for an appointment. The receptionist said "Oh, you're previous". My friend looked puzzled. "You 're early", the receptionist tried again.
None of us,here had ever heard before.
Another friend told how she had been in the UK and described someone as "a bright spark", everyone looked amazed and said no-one used that expression any more.
A Language is constantly being enriched and added to, words being discarded or gathered all the time.
When I was young, we said wireless, then radio, now the wireless is back again.
My Mum said gramophone, we said record player, our children say stereo, or Ipod or whatever.
This last year has seen the creation of lots of new, interesting words.
The selfie ,derp, dappy,twerk, buzzworthy,bitcoin,megadata,binge watching.
The ones I like best are meggings (leggings for men, it used to be long.johns),and babymoon-which is like a holiday for parents before their baby is born.
I'd only just managed to understand GSOH (good sense of humour), but now there is BYOD (bring your own device) LDR (Long distance relationship) and FOMO (fear of missing out).
So I'm feeling rather dappy because I'm trying to twerk while my husband is binge-watching "The Sopranos" wearing meggings, and my daughter is on a babymoon with her husband.
Does that sound buzzworthy ?
Brilliant!
ReplyDelete