words words words

So...my muse has returned...and many early morning musings with him....today's early morning musing concerned words and pronunciation..of course it did. What else would one consider in the morning????? As mentioned many a time and oft, I hail from Cornwall but my mother was from Yorkshire and so, many of my words as I was growing up, were a mixture of the two. Of course I had no idea that these were not received English pronunciation until I crossed the border on a permanent basis and found myself in an alien world beyond the Tamar. Take the word 'almond' for example. I managed to spend at least 18 years pronouncing the word as it is written 'ahl...mund'...apparently, the 'l' is silent and it should have been 'ahmond'. Another word which I had apparently been saying all wrong was 'forehead', pronounced 'fore head'....it is, I was told, 'forrid' otherwise the rhyme about the little girl with a little curl in the middle of hers, wouldn't make any sense. For some time I assumed I was just wrong..until it occured to me that I wasn't necesarily wrong, just dialectically different. There were words which didn't translate the border crossing at all..such as the time I went into a bakery in Coventry and asked for 'six splits'.....my request was met with blank looks and a certain amount of derision....'splits' are, of course, bread rolls/baps/cobs or batch which is the Coventrian word(so M says). I had to point to the item required in order to complete my purchase and therefore be able to make lunch. Another word is 'grammersow'..which i thought to be in common usage until I emigrated...yes, this is the Cornish word for woodlouse. Even to this day there are some words which I have to ask M ,"Is this word English or Cornish?" Of course my mind has gone completely blank so I can't give you any examples at all....and there is always the possibility that the word could have been from Yorkshire!!!!

So thank you to my muse for enabling these brain tickling thoughts.

(M is now in debate with himself as to whether 'batch' is a filled roll or just the bready item......I don't know!! Just call them a split and be done with it!!)

The End