Even in England the language of the older generations differs from place to place town to town, add in the youngsters, incomers, other groupings and English as a language fragments into thousands upon thousands of mini dialects.

I have picked up oddments from the Indian sub continent - 'lathy charge', for instance - what the news would call a baton charge by police; pigeon English from who knows where, 'wheelie-wheelie', a bicycle; I occasionally bring people up all standing using nautical terms.

Most people apparently have the ability to change their vocabulary to suit the situation, having a different dialect to use with parents, peers, maybe teachers or managers at work.

Most slang seems to be used deliberately - dialect is more a local habit, and there tends to be a lingua franka for interactions with strangers. Perhaps it is more a lingua telephona these days. It can be quite interesting listening to someone on the phone changing their whole way of speaking between calls.

Without the visual input of conversation people tend to put more effort into what they say and try to create a verbal persona grata. It can be embarassing, though, just listening, because it is so obviously, audibly, false.

I realise I tend to use bits of Latin out of habit and have made a conscious decision to use them where they are natural to me. It used to be a dialect, when I was younger, but now it would have to be catagorised as slang.


Anne