Ooh, I would join that one.
Whilst is cool.
And if it annoys a Canuck even cooler.
I thought flautist was a sexual term, my horizons are obviously getting expanded on this forum.
A word that should be taken out and crucified is “notwithstanding.”
I have the hammer and the nails and the attitude.
Paul
Every Brit friend I have uses whilst. It was strange at first, but being in touch with English-speaking folks around the world, I’ve gotten used to the little oddities and differences.
Now the big question is, for the word ‘aunt’ do you say ‘ant’ or ‘awnt’? Do you say tomahto, while I say tomayto? You say potayto and I say potahto?
Is it soft or hard ‘g’ for genmaicha, as in the tea? It’s followed by an ‘e,’ but many use a hard ‘g’ nevertheless.
These things are very important and I think we should all decide and speak in exactly the same manner or surely chaos will ensue and we will all die. 
Alexandria
A few years ago, I noticed that my journalism students were all using “amidst” instead of “amid.” In best Occam/ Strunk & White fashion, I prefer the simpler of two options, and that extra “-st” somehow sounded a bit … affected, I guess, coming from American students. OTOH having different ways to say something provides writers with more variations – more colors in the palette. I guess it depends on context, and in most American contexts, the “st” probably sounds affected to me.
You`re mixing it up with, ‘flauntist’. Katherine, Pink and Alexandria, are three obvious examples that spring immediately to mind. Most flauntists are female.
Your horizons have plenty of scope for expansion, and your standards raising, notwithstanding the depths to which they have heretofore bottomed out. 
I grew up in Northern Ireland which for the most part speaks English.
Some of the English words used in Northern Ireland are quite unique to the province.
Studies have shown that many of these unique words date from the 16th and 17th centuries.
One word I remember very well that I used as a child, “mitch”, “mitcher” and “mitching” for truancy was used for this purpose in 16th century.
I don’t know if that word is still in use by Northern Irish schoolchildren today, but I think it might well be.
The above information comes from a BBC Radio Four documentary methinks, so it must be true.
Your horizons have plenty of scope for expansion, and your standards raising, notwithstanding the depths to which they have heretofore bottomed out.
I resemble those remarks. I have yet to bottom out.
There is yet a long way to go. Notwithstanding.
Paul
If you got it, flaunt it!!! 
I always wanted the word “vex” to come back into fashion, as I always loved it coming from the mouths of 19th century literary heroines: “Oh that gentleman really has rather vexed me,” declared Charlotte Honeybee. Unfortunately the word “vex” has come back into fashion, but it’s not quite the same coming from the mouths of South East London hoodies: “You is vexin’ me, innit?” Sigh
I assure you, Keith, that my institution of internment on the North Downs was anything but posh. But many people, especially the citizens of Catford, Lewisham and thereabouts, think my accent posh and a substantial number would be happy to beat me up because of it!
And I wouldn’t recommend a boarding-school to anyone!!!
I’m with you there … and have always been irritated with myself for allowing others to educate me out of spelling it like that. I do get to use the X on my keyboard a considerable amount of the time, living in a city whose name begins with it … even if it is pronounced more like /hs/!
If I have a “button” for extreme irritation, it is pressed by people who make no effort even to approximate the pronunciation of words in foreign languages* … that has to be a hard ‘g’**, it could not be anything else. But I think I should do something about that response, as not everyone has had the experience of living round the world and in many language environments that I have.
But here in Xiamen, on the other side of the river mouth there is a district called “Haicang” — ‘c’ is the pinyin romanisation for the phoneme /ts/ in Mandarin. One problem is that speakers of southern dialects confuse a number of sounds in Mandarin, noticeably substituting /t∫/ for /ts/ and /s/ for /∫/ — the latter means you have to listen carefully because 4 is /sə/ and 10 is /∫ə/ both with a very short vowel and local speakers pronounce them both /sə/, though with a tone difference — so local people speaking putonghua (Mandarin) will pronounce it /hait∫aŋ/ and those whom come from somewhere north of the Yangtze — 50% of the residents of Xiamen have immigrated from other parts of China — and the well-educated pronounce it with the standard /haitsaŋ/. The ones who press my button and who I’d like to throw off Haicang Bridge, are the many westerners who pronounce it randomly, sometimes using both pronunciations in the same sentence. To me, that is a level of arrogance towards their host country that I find hard to take. It’s not as if it’s difficult to find out how it should be pronounced, or at least to be consistent.
Yours with his dander up.
Mark
[Edit]* This is not a go at you Alex, as I’m sure that wouldn’t apply to you. But I know many, many people, not least here in Xiamen, who make no real effort … including those here who make no effort to pronounce Xiamen properly! Those are the ones I mean.
** Just thought I ought to check the pronunciation of that, it’s actually “xuanmaicha” in Chinese, so it’s been transcribed from some other dialect … I’ve just asked my cleaning lady and it’s “suan…” in Minnanhua. So it’s probably the Japanese pronunciation. Japanese has /ʤ/ but only as an allomorph of /d/ or /z/ before /i/, not /e/, so I still think it should be /gen/ with a hard ‘g’.
Yes, I meant to say that “many use a soft ‘g’ nevertheless” not hard ‘g’. Geez, I was tired and made a typo, for crying out loud. Now I’m arrogant and lazy. It’s been a crappy day and made just a little crappier.
Alex, I hope you read my edit, that I wasn’t actually commenting about you, and certainly not imputing arrogance to you. If you had been the sort of person I was referring to, you wouldn’t have asked that question!
Please, I hope that reduces the crap-level of the day!
Mark
It’s a hard ‘g’ for sure. I’m no linguist but after forty years of inhabiting aikido dojos and Japanese restaurants. . . .
‘G’ in the interior of Japanese words however is a faintly glottal ‘ng’.
Dave
I was in Puerto Rico once, in the hotel swimming pool. The guy handing out the towels asked me if I was French. I wondered why he thought that. ‘Because you speak English with a funny accent,’ he said.
When I first flew out to China, I came on Lufthansa. Towards the end of the flight, the hostess serving my area of the cabin — German, she was — asked me if I was Australian. When I asked her what made her ask that, she said she had lots of Australian friends. I thought, “If you’ve got lots of Australian friends, then you should know I’m not Australian!” I don’t sound at all like an Australian … not that I would be unhappy if I did, it’s just I’m stuck with this RP accent.
Mark
Maybe it isn’t that you sound more like an roo-catcher, but less like vic-k? Is that really such a bad thing?
I am southern by my own admission. My parents tried to make out that we weren’t and took great pains to keep my sibling and I from developing the drawl associated with our heritage. When we relocated to upstate NY my father was crushed when, on the first day here, checking into the hotel before the house was ready, the concierge asked “are you from Arkansas or Louisiana or someplace like that?”
I still get that up here, but when we go south for relief I am accused of adopting the “northern affection of superiority”. Although in fairness it comes out more like “Are you f***in’ serious? you tak lak that up thar? Englsh inn’t good 'nough fer ya?”†
† [size=75]This passage passes the daughditor test for authenticity. [/size]
[size=50]I can rise above this.[/size]
Down here in the South we use the word
[size=200]Y’all[/size]
And yes it is a regional thing and yes it is even in the dictionary on every Mac running tiger or higher.
y’all |yôl|
contraction of
you-all.
you-all |ˈyoō ˌôl; yôl| (also y’all)
pronoun dialect
(in the southern U.S.) you (used to refer to more than one person) : how are you-all?
So is whilst.
whilst |(h)wīlst|
conjunction & relative adverb chiefly Brit.
while.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from whiles + -t as in against .
Regional dialog may appear odd or strange to a foreigner.
Like the use of AYE (Canadian) may sound very strange to an American.
Down here in the South I get this kind of response all the time.
Yes I say “fixin’ to”. Yes I can use it in about any sentence. Yes I can say "Y’all just don’t understand that I’m fixin’ to run up the street and fetch me one of those fancy books on words and show you that whilst is a word and it is ok to use as well as using y’all as another contraction along with don’t, won’t, hasn’t, won’t, it’s, and many other contractions. The understanding is that regional use of words is actually beneficial to other people because that is how we learn new words, aye.
So whilst I was fixin to tell y’all a yarn about old Jaysen and some moonshine I realized once again that I have been yappin my trap so I will come to a close aye?
Ah, yes, God bless the regionalisms! They add so much color to our speech! Up here in the Land of the “Northern Cities Shift,” Wock’s “y’all” becomes “youse.” About 50 miles south of here, it’s “y’uns,” which is a contraction of “you” and “ones.”
My husband, who was born & raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, recently forwarded this link to a skit poking fun at his hometown’s regionalisms: youtube.com/watch?v=7sMI2jb16eo Enjoy! :mrgreen:
And our daughter-in-law is from southern Georgia. I thought her use of ya’ll was more like this:
ya’ll - singular meaning, you in particular
all-ya’ll - plural meaning, all of you.
:mrgreen: