I finally figured it out....

Coronation Street takes place in Manchester England. The dialect is so thick, they offer subtitles on the screen if you watch it on the tee-vee machine. I'd first thought it was supposed to be in London somewhere.

Other than Scots, which is incomprehenisble, it rates third on my list of how not to speak the English language. My Manchester wasn't a borne of well-spoken English either, lots of broad vowels, and some Frenchisms thrown in if you were 'just speaking everyday stuff', but England? Oh wow. It takes a lot of fine tuning for the ear to 'get' it.

The two Manchesters have one thing in common, language-wise. They swallow most of their words, and it takes getting used to. In my Manchester, a common exchange would be, 'J'eetyet? No, d'jew?' You try that one out on someone who speaks English as a second language, and they say 'Wha?' In real English, it means 'Did you eat yet? No, did you?' In the mother ship Manchester, they are even more lazy, and swallow half the words that come out of their moufs.

Which is another thing. th becomes f if it is in the middle of a word. It's worse than rocket science. But once you crack it, and your ear adjusts, it starts to make some sense.

In Manchester, 'thank you' becomes 'ta'. But if it is in the Dales area and elsewhere, it becomes 'cheers'. Which I find oddly unsettling for some reason. Scots is up there at number one for the most incomprehensible English spoken on the planet. I had a neighbor who emigrated from Scotland, and in all the years I knew him, I did NOT understand two thirds of what he said, and he was garrulous. He scandalised the hell out of me when I was young, and he went out on a bender one evening wearing a jacket that was oh-ful. Sort of a baseball jacket in blue with bright yellow letters across the back. What I read, or thought I read was 'Ladies from Hell'. So I thought he was out looking for hookers, and his wife was the primest lady you could imagine. I know now that I mis-read it, and it must have been 'Laddies from Hell', which makes more sense. With the rolling 'r's and being a bit ribald, he was a very colorful person... and the burr? I was lost the minute he opened his mouf.

Oddly, my cousin Jeannie seemed to understand everything he said, and they seemed to take a shine to one another. We lived in the same brick dreary tenement block, so she was about four or five and would march over and pass his door next to ours and seemed to find him fun. Which resulted in the famous/infamous evening she spotted him on his porch from hers and yelled, 'Hey, Mr. Purdy! Ya gonna come over for dinna? My Mom is making chicken boobies!' (Way to go, cousin L...) He found that so hilarious, he nearly pissed himself.

But language isn't always universal. The second worst dialect is 'Jordy', which comes from the Newcastle area in the north of England. During my summer in Munich, I hung out a lot with three lovely girls from there. It was an excercise in frustration. I spent most of my time saying 'I beg your pardon? What do you mean?' 'Whatsamatta, you got a sneck on your netty?' 'Excuse me?' 'Do you have a lock on your toilet'... which was a way of saying you're bottled up and being anal retentive... They also had some problems.

'Can ya do me a favour tomorra... knock me up at half ten?' Upon which I looked at her sternly and said, 'Don't EVER say that to an American.' I knew what she meant, but she didn't know how it sounded. And fell apart when I told her how that would be perceived.

One of my favorite trips into town with them was on the subway into the center of Munich, and Pam was a show-off. So she spots this vicar in collar, and what you did if you were English to break the ice, one of the first questions after introducing yourself was the question that didn't make you a 'tourist'. So Pam had on her high English hoity toity posh accent, and said, 'And have you beeen to Dachau yet?' Whereupon her friend Sheila wasn't having any putting on airs stuff, elbowed her and said, 'ERE, whatcha talkin' like THAT for?' In pure cockney.

Gawwd, I wish I had had a camera with me just to record the look on the vicar's face. Luckily we got off at the next stop and hilarity ensued.

It's fun to be young. But Jordy is the second worst dialect in English that I know of.

So Manchester places third. Or 'fird'. Whatever.

It takes effort to train your ear, and it applies to any language. Get me with someone Swiss or Tyrolean... I get lost. Italian? Oh. My Gawwd. Just because you 'think' you speak the same language doesn't mean you do at all.

But I think I got the Manchester part down now so I know what's going on.

Just sayin'