I'm doing some research for my coursework and was wondering if people could give me some sayings from different places (manchester/liverpool/yorkshire/london etc....) sayings that are only really used just in that individual city.
Where do you start, there's the rhyming Cockney slang which is still used eg apple and pears = stairs, dog and bone = phone. My grandfather from Stockport near Manchester used 'right champion' for saying something was very good. Old Berkshire folk said said 'me duck' for 'my dear'. Forest of Dean people said 'you didn't orta do that did us' which means ' you shouldn't have done that' as used by my husband's old aunt. Good luck. I did a degree at age 59 in English and loved it!
I've lived all over the country, and unless you are talking about local dialect, expressions are becoming more common all over, as people move about.
I remember when I first went to live in Birmingham, I found it odd that people I worked with would greet me with "You all right?" The only time people used to say that to me at home was if I didn't look well!
The Liverpool Echo website recently did a feature on local sayings. I'm sure you'll be able to find a link to it on their website. As I have lived in other places (Lancashire, London and Devon) I am able to say that quite a few of their 'local' sayings are heard quite a few other places aswell.
One that I have not heard anywhere other than Liverpool is 'alright der la?' meaning 'alright there lad'. (Or girl if female). Also in Liverpool Police are called the bizzies. In Manchester they are known as rozzers.
An odd Scottish one is using "stay" for "live" I have Scottish friends who, when I first met them, confused the hell out of me by asking me where I stayed; not where I lived!
The other one that springs to mind is the use of "see you later" I was born in London and when i lived there "see you later"meant later that day; whereas "see you later where I live now (Hampshire) "see you later" means "goodbye"
Do the people in Bristol still speak "Brissle"? When i lived there, local locals used to pronounce words ensing in "st" as though they ended in "ss" Pub locals would talk about how much a beer "cosses me" Apparently it links directly back to elizabethan times when the word was "costeth"
When i travelled at sea with my late DH, one of the other wives was from Newcastle and very broad in her speech indeed. We didn't see a lot of each other because our husbands were on different shifts. One day however, we were sat together and she said something to me. I didn't catch it at all so pretended i hadn't heard her and asked her to repeat it...and i still didn't understand it...not the third time or the fourth. Very embarassing....Eventually I understood that she was asking me if I thought she was losing her accent........
A relative of mine grew up in Bristol. Referring to a night on the town he used to say he'd been out "dancing and dicking". It sounds good with Westcountry accent.