2005-02-08

The Process of Assimilation

�continues apace. Along with my accent, my vocabulary is becoming Anglicized, due in part to a desire to be understood and in part to blatant Anglophilia. In addition to the expected �flat�, �lift�, �crisps�, �queue� and so forth, I find my speech peppered with the following expressions:

Mate: The standard equivalent to �dude� or �friend�. �Alright mate?� means �Can I help you?� (Correctly pronounced by dropping the Ts.)

Love: �Thanks ever so much, my love� � once said to me by a bus driver. Everybody is everybody�s �love� in this country! What a lovely bunch! Very warm and affectionate, when they�re not drunkenly punching bashing each other�s faces to mush!

Trolley: Instead of �shopping cart�. I don�t know why I find the word �trolley� funny, but I do. �Off your trolley� means �drunk�. TROLLEY!

Piece of piss: Typically scatological variant of �piece of cake�. As in: �This job is a piece of piss.� How or why one might come across a �piece� of piss is, as yet, a mystery to me.

Taking the piss: It�s like a country of urinologists! In this case, the excreta in question indicates that one is �having someone on�.

Arseholed: Moving along a few inches from piss territory � means �drunk�, of course, along with �wankered�, �bolloxed� and the classic �pissed�. Why the genital fixation in conjunction with inebriation? We can only speculate.

Trainers: Makes more sense than �sneakers�, doesn�t it?

Jumper: Makes less sense than �sweater�, but is more fun to say.

I�m also very proud of my budding English elitism, by way of accent snobbery. These days, when I hear someone choke up an unintelligible string of glottal stops, instead of thinking �Oh, what a charming regional dialect,� as I once would have done, I think �Fucking Chav.�