Originally Posted by daft batty (Post 5730599)

Thats good to know, cos I am sitting here trying to work out how to carry a shed down the alley..................

Originally Posted by annie3-4 (Post 5730620)

:lol: you need one of those lumberjack types for that...
My Dad used to say gan an get the coal out the cree (thats why I thought it was a shed)

Originally Posted by shahzadandkelly (Post 5730616)

If that's all you've got to be pissed off about - :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Originally Posted by daft batty (Post 5730629)

Where are you from then? I was born in Murton.

Originally Posted by annie3-4 (Post 5730634)

Born in Sedgefield (before it became posh, and Tony's constituency)
Lived in Trimdon for a while.

Originally Posted by Yes-can-do (Post 5730622)

I reckon that down through the passage of time I will sound more and more like Mrs Doubtfire :eek: :rofl:

Originally Posted by shahzadandkelly (Post 5730655)

ooh, a bunch of Northerners!

I'm a Monkey Hanger born & bred

Originally Posted by Biiiiink (Post 5730661)

Shall I shoot you if you ever get to sound like Sheena Easton?! ;)

Originally Posted by daft batty (Post 5730658)

Have you heard Alan Price wing the Ballad of Trimdon Grange? I heard it once and came over all ethnic.

Originally Posted by daft batty (Post 5730664)

Its posh there now as well.

Originally Posted by dbd33

I am greatly saddened by the loss of my accent. I haven't gone native to the extent of using "hockey" to mean "ice hockey", I don't drive on "tires", and I don't end my sentences with "eh?". Nonethless, me voice aint what it was. I now have to concentrate in order to give Americans orgasms verbally.

Originally Posted by annie3-4 (Post 5730763)

i think I have, is it about the Pit disaster where all those folk were killed?
my mam was from Trimdon Grange, still got some family there.

Originally Posted by Mr Lee (Post 5730449)

Don't worry Annie - I'll stick up for you...


...to an extent!;)

In my former life we had a guy from Stoke come and visit the office where I worked in Manchester. He was a big boss in the Head Office in the states and had obviously succumbed to the disease of which you speak. Everything was "awesome" and it sounded like he was putting a stateside drawl onto his north-midlands accent. That combined with his polished white smile and the fact that he looked like he spent three hours a day on a sunbed merely added to the impression that this was someone trying too hard to fit in with his American puppet-masters. He'd only been over there three years.

As for me: Well - here in the backwaters of the fringes of the GTA I noticed some people struggling to understand what I was talking about - so I found myself using some North American words in order to get them to understand...

One thing I steadfastly refuse to do, however, is change my accent so they get, in effect, their language spoken with a Mancunian accent. I feel then that everybody wins.

So it's "gaaahbidge" not "goirbedge" I put out on a Monday night, when I need a pee I go to the "woshroom", not the "warshrum" and I "line-up" at the counter with everybody else - the word "queue" not being in in the vocabulary here.

I still ask for "toMAAAHtoes" on my sandwich though. My mouth is just not built to say "toMAYtoes".

On a more positive note to my fellow Northerners, I've already got one of my most steadfastly Canadian work-colleagues swearing like a true Manc - "You're talkin' SHITE!" now being a part of her vernacular.