(no subject)

[moominmolly]

"Bear with me...": I had one guy respond to that sentence with "What part of London are you from?" (I try to tone down the American-ness of my accent when I'm here because it just leads to lots of questions.) It seemed perfectly normal to me, but he swore up and down that ONLY British people ever say that, and mostly only people from London and environs. Hm.

"You are very welcome": I just never thought of this as odd at all. But, maybe one person out of ten who hears me say it (on the phone) either laughs or is audibly smiling. Really, I'm not trying to be clever.

Comments

[ectropy.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm told I have odd speach patterns -- combinations of accents from several non-American English-speaking countries, other-language-isms, using foreign words. Some Americans pick up on it quite quickly, most seem to not notice at all.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I try not to mention it when I notice people's speech patterns, since it makes people self-conscious: "damn you linguists! always watching my speech!" ... really, I *love* seeing usage variations.

Re:

[ectropy.livejournal.com]

It doesn't make me self-conscious; but it surprises me in a "wow, someone noticed!" kind of way.

Seems Normal to me

[baronet.livejournal.com]

Both of those phrases seem perfectly normal to me, so maybe it's a midwestern thing? Not that I understand what "you are very welcome" is supposed to mean, other than "polite thing to say after 'thank you'"