A lot of it is exploring the very idea of British idioms from opposite sides, as it were. Some phrases are shared across the Anglosphere, and some are regional within Great Britain.
Ok. I think Frome's reputation for 'roughness' goes back further. We even had a faint whiff of it across the Bristol Channel in South Wales.
It's all relative of course. A friend who was born in Bath and grew up there in the '60s and '70s (he now lives in Frome) told me that it had a reputation for pub fights and teenage pregnancy back then.
Over in South Wales it wasn't particularly on our radar but I remember comments about 'inbreeding' and it being the rougher end of the Somerset spectrum.
Mind you, my friend says that Bath was more socially-mixed back then. His street had a broad social demographic. You'd need a King's Ransom to buy a property there now.
Anyhow, this is a tangent and as @Nick Tamen reminds us, such things are off-topic for this thread.
Part of the problem though, and I don't think this is a particularly British phenomenon but is accentuated by the relatively short distances, is that whenever British people discuss these things they almost invariably start making comparisons between regions.
I'm sure Americans, Canadians, South Africans and Caribbeans do likewise but perhaps with greater geographical distances involved.
Where I live now the local accent changes considerably within a distance of around 11 miles.
Changes within 5 to 7 miles are not unknown in rural Northumberland even today.
I'm told that differences are even more acute on Greek islands and in the Alpine valleys of Northern Italy.
Then there's the whole social class thing...
Part of me thinks that if an American had a question about a particular British idiom - or vice versa - they could easily Google it or ask AI. Whether they'd (or we'd) get an accurate answer is another question.
I know the links between Appallachian English and Tudor or Jacobean speech or the dialects of Western Scotland or Ireland can be exaggerated, but I can certainly detect elements of those in Southern US speech. Not that there is a monoglot Southern US accent or dialect and there are other cultural influences in some areas such as Creole etc.
I can certainly detect Ulster and some West Country English accents in US speech, and this may be because those regions retain more 17th and 18th century idioms than other parts of the UK.
And then you have increasing use of Americanisms here, of course.
Comments
90s into early 00s. Which may count as going back a bit, but not quite a fair bit.
It's all relative of course. A friend who was born in Bath and grew up there in the '60s and '70s (he now lives in Frome) told me that it had a reputation for pub fights and teenage pregnancy back then.
Over in South Wales it wasn't particularly on our radar but I remember comments about 'inbreeding' and it being the rougher end of the Somerset spectrum.
Mind you, my friend says that Bath was more socially-mixed back then. His street had a broad social demographic. You'd need a King's Ransom to buy a property there now.
Anyhow, this is a tangent and as @Nick Tamen reminds us, such things are off-topic for this thread.
Part of the problem though, and I don't think this is a particularly British phenomenon but is accentuated by the relatively short distances, is that whenever British people discuss these things they almost invariably start making comparisons between regions.
I'm sure Americans, Canadians, South Africans and Caribbeans do likewise but perhaps with greater geographical distances involved.
Where I live now the local accent changes considerably within a distance of around 11 miles.
Changes within 5 to 7 miles are not unknown in rural Northumberland even today.
I'm told that differences are even more acute on Greek islands and in the Alpine valleys of Northern Italy.
Then there's the whole social class thing...
Part of me thinks that if an American had a question about a particular British idiom - or vice versa - they could easily Google it or ask AI. Whether they'd (or we'd) get an accurate answer is another question.
I know the links between Appallachian English and Tudor or Jacobean speech or the dialects of Western Scotland or Ireland can be exaggerated, but I can certainly detect elements of those in Southern US speech. Not that there is a monoglot Southern US accent or dialect and there are other cultural influences in some areas such as Creole etc.
I can certainly detect Ulster and some West Country English accents in US speech, and this may be because those regions retain more 17th and 18th century idioms than other parts of the UK.
And then you have increasing use of Americanisms here, of course.
* I know that's not quite the right word, but I'm not sure what is. Colonised? 🤔
Someone else suggested that "...found himself in..." is better than "discovered".
Brought to the attention of white people?