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True, dialects differ. My father was a cockney in London and my mother was Irish, we lived in Wales during WW2 and my father was a Major on the Burma Road - cam
by aurizon 5y ago
True, dialects differ. My father was a cockney in London and my mother was Irish, we lived in Wales during WW2 and my father was a Major on the Burma Road - came back with a love for curry that the cook soon adopted. We often had Canadian and Australian officers stay with us.
The net result is I am fluent in all British dialects, and adapted to the Canadian dialect in school - kids who spoke funny soon learned Canadian-speak.
Once, on the phone, my mother asked me a question, and back I went to Oxford English to answer that question - when I returned to my call, the called asked me who was that? I had switched back to UK-speak and back to Canadian-speak instantly. I also learned Yiddish - my father was a stained glass artist, and while he was in Burma the home office asked him if we could accommodate a family from Poland who had given my father as a reference. It was Mr Berger, my father's art glass supplier in Poland who had escaped via Spain as a DP family. Father and mother, 2 children and their grandmother - we had the space and my father agreed by telegram. My mother and me at 4 were immersed in a Yiddish family. It was great, I soaked up the language like a sponge. In 1946 my father returned and the Bergers went to live in a house they rented.
In 1948, we came to Canada. Many of the storekeepers in Toronto were amazed at my Yiddish fluency, as we often shopped in Yiddish store - no supermarkets then, we shopped 2-3 times/week. Butchers, fishmongers, bakers, grocers, greengrocers all a melange of differences - I still long for these aspects as I wander Costco these days.