If you ever get the opportunity to go to a silent disco...go. It is the perfect type of thing for music lovers. It goes like this: There are two DJs that play a monstrous variety of music that everyone from all over the world can sing along to. They have a typical DJ table with all the equipment. The lights, media screens, and visual elements are all the same, you just can't hear any music without your headphones on. There is a switch on your headphones so you can switch between the two DJs' stations. When you take your headphones off, you hear about half the crowd singing one song and the other half singing another. When the song changes on one station, you hear a roar of excitement for the next song and if you're' not on that station, you have to switch over to hear what all the commotion is about. Then, occasionally, one DJ will talk into the microphone and half the crowd will start screaming or cheering while the other half is singing to Michael Jackson, Guns N' Roses, Usher, Drake, Katy Perry, and yes, even the Spice Girls. Sometimes you have to make a tough decision on which station to listen to because both are playing great songs. Here is a clip I took with my iPhone of, what seems like, the majority of the audience singing along to Wonderwall by Oasis.
Can you repeat that in American?
This afternoon I stopped at a sandwich-type place for lunch. It was a madhouse--tons of people and a whole bunch of different processes and lines, and I couldn't understand anything anyone was saying to me. The point of the story is that I was really feeling like a foreigner. Leeds is located in the west part of the state of Yorkshire. The Yorkshire dialect is famous for being completely incomprehensible by anyone not from Yorkshire, and is most definitely different from a London accent. It sounds like a completely different language to me, and it is far from a pretty sound and might potentially be damaging to the eardrums. I am constantly saying "What?" and "Excuse me?" and sometimes I just nod my head and laugh when I can't make it out after asking them to repeat what they said two or three times. Sometimes when I focus and make eye contact with the Yorkshire speaker, I can understand, but if I am overhearing a conversation between two of them, I'm hopeless.
Here are some examples:
American Yorkshire
House 'Ahse
Round Rahnd
Boot Booit
School Schooil
The Teh
Him/her 'im/'er (never say H)
You Tha (they are trying to say "thee" but the ee sound is always pronounced "a
If you're bored, you should Google/YouTube Yorkshire accents. It's pretty bad. I hope none of my professors are natives to Yorkshire or there is going to be some serious language barriers. For some more entertainment, I've compiled a list of vocabulary differences between British English and American English. My Australian and half-German/half-British roommates helped me come up with this list (because Australians lean more toward British English, and the German learned English from her British mother (mum)) and these are all differences we have noticed just within our conversations.
American English British English
Restroom ("Where is the restroom?") Toilets ("Where are the toilets?") hahaha
"What?" (informal) "Pardon?" (informal)
Line ("Look at the long line.") Queue ("Look at the long queue.")
Pants Trousers
Underwear Pants
Trash Rubbish
Trashcan Rubbish bin
Dinner/supper Tea
"Hi, how are you?" "Hi-ya, Yah'alraght?"
Stove Hob
Laundry Washing
Elevator Lift
Subway Underground
Cookies Biscuits (this one KILLS me)
"Call me tomorrow." "Ring me tomorrow."
Ground beef Mincemeat
College Uni
"It's 10:30." "It's half-past-ten." Never say the actual minutes.
Chips Crisps
French fries/fries Chips (unless they are from McDonald's--then they are fries)
Dessert Pudding (this one also kills me)
As you can see, the languages and cultures are actually quite different (in American English, "quite" means "really" and in British English "quite" means "somewhat"). However, I can understand my roommates much better than the local Yorshirians--that's a bit more of a struggle.
I hope I'm not as bad as this guy.
Okay, now that you've had a language lesson, I promised I would post some photos, but I am discovering that posting videos into this text editor is actually difficult, because I have just spent the last hour of my life reading about HTML coding to figure out how to format photos on here, and I regret even attempting to understand that. Now, I am considering starting a photo blog as well for photos only and having it supplement this blog. Hopefully that will be up soon. More on British customs to come in next post.
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