:( :( :( :( :(

[steve_earwig]

Are you talking about English or Polisczsh?

[DiscoPol]

English!

a phrase I use with wife a lot these days.

she seems to be slipping into perfect "Ponglish" a lot recently, my 2 year old son is the king at Ponglish, it is his native tongue

[steve_earwig]

Oh, so it's got nuffink to do with being a mixture of two languages (Anglo-Frisian & Saxon) that some idiot in the dim and distant past tried to force the rules of Latin (the original lingua franca) onto

(I'll be asking the wife about it later, then you'll be for it )

[DiscoPol]

(I'll be asking the wife about it later, then you'll be for it )

Still waiting for my dressing down

anywho,

52mm socket..............99 zloty
500mm breaker bar.............85 zloty
3/4 to 1/2 reducer..............15 zloty
circlip pliers......................12 zloty

tight nuts.........................PRICELESS

yay i fixed my trattor

[steve_earwig]

Actually, she kind of agreed with you But it was in comparison to languages like Portuguese and Japanese She says all the past and future tenses are a complete mess but the articles are the hardest to get, although most people that speak to me in English here don't bother with them. Come to think of it, my mate I came here with lived in England for 28 years and still didn't know how to use them.

[sirwiggum]

To those of you who dabble in other languages:

Is everywhere like the UK and Ireland in terms of accents?

For example, someone learning the Queens English would be stumped by a Cockney or a Liverpudlian, or a Welshman, or a Geordie, or a Glaswegian, or a Teuchter, or a Belfast man, or a Ballymena man, or a Kerry man.

Do you find yourself learning bits but stumped by the language in different parts of the country?

[steve_earwig]

Yes. It's worse than that though, as the dialect changes a few km up the road, not really with the "standard" language (which they're constantly arguing about ) but slang words can be anything.

[FarmerPug]

how is that that here we have completley different accents up the road, wheras in the whole of america there is very few accent variations.

[sirwiggum]

how is that that here we have completley different accents up the road, wheras in the whole of america there is very few accent variations.

The USA is only a relatively new country, and has always traditionally had good levels of communications with horse drawn wagons, railroads, SUVs etc. compared to the likes of some village in the middle of Co Antrim that historically would not communicate with outsiders for decades. (Some of the villages on the coast spoke more with the West Coast of Scotland villagers travelling by boat, than the others across the Antrim hills, hence the part-Scots accent in that neck of the woods.)
There are some variations in the USA - compare the deep south to New Yeowrk, to California, to Colorado.

[DiscoPol]

The accents here in Poland are bloody terrible, in the north they sound German in the south they sound completely different to anywhere else and here near the capital its become a kind of homogenised version of the language as there weren't any true Warsawians left after the war as Adolf saw to that and everybody is now an incomer to the city so has brought their own little influence to the language.

I tell all my students that i am from Manchester and proud of it but i do have a strong Manc accent and if there are any words they dont recognise they must tell me as it may well just be my accent interfering with their comprehension,

as an example i say "bus" as it should be pronounced with a "U" in the middle not the southern fairies way of saying it that almost sounds like "bas" the mancs and other northern types have a very guttural sound on the vowels so unfortunately "money" also sounds like it is "mUney"


but i do say to all the jams trying to get rid of their accent in favour of an English on "just which part of England do you want your accent from?" after that they accept that it wont be that easy.

[FarmerPug]

Some slight variations but nothing as noticeable as the difference between a man from Ballymena and someone from Cullyhanna, but its strange if i talk to someone from belfast they occasionally get confused by what im on about, or what this Pew-joe device is. There is a Polish man who lives close to me and its amazing this blend of the local accent and the polish accent hes picked our accent up very quickly

[sirwiggum]

Some slight variations but nothing as noticeable as the difference between a man from Ballymena and someone from Cullyhanna, but its strange if i talk to someone from belfast they occasionally get confused by what im on about, or what this Pew-joe device is. There is a Polish man who lives close to me and its amazing this blend of the local accent and the polish accent hes picked our accent up very quickly

I hear some great blends of Eastern European / Chinese / Indian and local.
One of my favourite comedy characters is Navid from Still Game - his accent is part Indian part Glaswegian, adds to his character

[FarmerPug]

do you remember the bbc show 'dry your eyes' the mc dowell brothers were a good laugh

[sirwiggum]

do you remember the bbc show 'dry your eyes' the mc dowell brothers were a good laugh

Mid-dow "Spelt McDowell, but pronounced Quinn!"

[highlander]

Is everywhere like the UK and Ireland in terms of accents?

Do you find yourself learning bits but stumped by the language in different parts of the country?

Apparently, when The Terminator was going to be dubbed into German, Arnold Schwarzenegger asked to be allowed to speak his own part, as being Austrian, he speaks German fluently. They refused, apparently, because to a German person, his Austrian accent makes him sound like a farmer.

This is yet another Thing I Learned By Watching QI.