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Dialects

Ah. I see. Is my fault entirely. Elephant and Castle is a place in London. Not a place you'd want to visit, but known to the natives.

Edit: Beaten to it. :p
 
Martin said:
No, no, no.

I just still don't get the Elephant bit. Does or does it not rhyme?

Cheers
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The entire phrase rhymes - its a bit like taking apple and pears = stairs - if you just take the first part, ie apple, then that won't rhyme with stairs much in the same way you're just taking elephant which obviously doesn't rhyme with arsehole.
 
So, to sum up; 'Elephants and Castles' as a whole is cockney rhyming slang for 'Stick it up your arsehole', but 'Elephant' an sich isn't cockney rhyming slang for anything.

Cheers
 
Ice said:
much in the same way you're just taking elephant which obviously doesn't rhyme with arsehole.
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Though I did once meet a particularly talented elephant who knew a rhyme for orange.

I think maybe those two cans of coke after a 6 month abstinence from caffiene may have been a mistake. I apologise to everyone affected.
 
Martin said:
So, to sum up; 'Elephants and Castles' as a whole is cockney rhyming slang for 'Stick it up your arsehole', but 'Elephant' an sich isn't cockney rhyming slang for anything.

Cheers
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Correct (though it's just 'Elephant and Castle' no s')
However as Novella said, it is often abbreviated to just the first word when used - which does confuse matters if you have no idea what they are talking about :p
 
Freya said:
See, I knew this would be fun :)

The Scottish are up next!
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Lol - I have trouble understanding the Scots, and anyone who come from northern England :eek:
 
Martin said:
So, to sum up; 'Elephants and Castles' as a whole is cockney rhyming slang for 'Stick it up your arsehole', but 'Elephant' an sich isn't cockney rhyming slang for anything.

Cheers
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It's really just for arsehole. The whole thing was me doing quotes.

Generally, in rhyming slang, only the last part is the rhyme, and only for one word rather than a phrase. But the slang is a phrase that at some point made some sense to someone. It's either based on a place or a saying or an object. Newer slang tends to be more topical and will have a vague irony about it.

Good ship Venus = penis
(why do I only know the rude ones?)

Good ship Venus is a phrase (I only know it from a dirty song, but it might have a more legitimate origin elsewhere).
Venus is the rhyme.

Just as Elephant and Castle is a place name, and Castle is the rhyme.

China Plate (mate) is an object, mate is the rhyme.

Everything other than the last word is largely incidental, and is mostly there to confuse the tourists. ;)
 
Half of it confuses me. I don't live in London anymore and visits to my brother's house can be a truly bewildering experience. I know some of you think I don't make any sense, so imagine the gibberish he must be talking.
 
The Comic Strip Presents!! :) Brilliant stuff! Five Go Mad in Dorset was one of my faves - a great p-take of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books and all the "-isms" levelled at her work. :D I wish they'd repeat them.
 
They put them out on VHS. A quick search on Ebay came up with a big long list, including 5 Go Mad, which was hilarious.
 
You're reading Porno? Give us a shout if you want some translations - I lived in Edinburgh and Leith for 8+ years and picked up a lot of the local dialect during that time.

Sorry if this is veering a bit OT (again), but on the subject of dialects, the thread's been talking about Yorkshire, Cockney etc, but within Yorkshire are there local variations? I'm wondering because that's what its like in Scotland - I grew up in Fife which is 20 minutes from Edinburgh yet has a completely different dialect and local terms. Likewise, Glasgow is different yet again. Is this "fine-grained" level of dialect peculiar to Scotland? What about outside the UK - what's the sort of granularity of local dialects?

Kev

PS. Martin, in Crow Road and Porno, its Scots, not Irish, but I'll forgive you ;)
 
Speaking for my county (Lancashire ), just going 5 miles down the road you get a whole new set of words and accents.

People from Darwen pronounce it 'Darren' - much confusion when the annual Darwen Day comes round... the unintiated often believe Darren Day is coming to visit.

People from Burnley seem to over-pronounce words with 'ai' in them - for example chair becomes 'chey-er', hair becomes 'hey-er', fair becomes 'fay-er'. (They also insist on calling all girls bonny, or rather 'bonn-eh'). People from over my way speak in the typical moronic accent associated with the north-west - 'churrr', 'hurrr', and 'furrr'.

I have 'no accent' compared to most people round these parts, and I find it pretty hard to understand them sometimes. They all hate me as soon as I open my gob. Ha ha ha :D
 
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