LL-L: "Idiomatica" LOWLANDS-L, 01.MAY.2001 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Criostoir O Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L: "Idiomatica" LOWLANDS-L, 01.MAY.2001 (01) [E]

A chairde,

Hauke wrote:

> I also seem to remember it from my University days
> in Sheffield in the North
> of England.
> Where it was in use (mostly jokingly) among speakers
> of local Yorkshire
> dialect
> mainly used by porters, cleaners, secretaries etc.
> to humourously undercut
> the posh speaking lecturers and students Higher
> university admin folks.

In the Nottingham English-speaking area we did use
innovative wordplay - I don't think it's necessarily
that difficult nor that it may be related to idiomatic
substrata in all cases (we must remember how
innovative we as mother tongue speakers can be
sometimes) - but Hauke reminded me of a special device
we used in this context.

When someone was issuing a mock admonishment with that
subtextual threat (as in the examples Ron gave), it
was always transmitted through using a rising tone on
the personal pronoun, e.g. "Ahll gi ye an aidinn"
['áelj: gi^j ji: @n: naidi^n:] (I'll give you a
hiding). This tone was the only device used to
distinguish this threat from a real one. Apparently
the comical rising tone (which is impossible to render
here - even [ááá] would be insufficient) is all that
is needed to iterate the "threatingly dismissive" or
"dismissively threatening" nature of the phrase.

I am certin though that this is an innovation of
Nottingham English and not beholden to substrate - for
once *laughs*

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Críostóir.

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