| linguistic idiosyncrasies What have you heard others -- or yourself -- say that makes you go 'hmm'?
I've just spent time with my mother, who I've noticed once again use a phrase that I've heard from no one else. It's a few words that can preface all kinds of stuff that follows, in the form 'That's what I call...X'. X can be 'proper home made bread', 'a good outdoor jacket' or all kinds of things.
Also with my mother, but this time noticing my own words, we were in a cafe and realised that though she had ordered soup, she and the serving person between them had neglected to order something to follow. As I backtracked in my mind to that point of the interaction (they'd also been having a friendly chat, which is how I suspect the failure to order anything else happened), I thought 'There's a hole in my memory where that should be...', which I dare say tells you something about how I conceive of my timeline.
Anyone else got examples of words at work in interesting ways? |