Twitter is useful for many things—including (unexpectedly) for studying dialects
Learning from fingered speech
“THAT’S pants!” says the exasperated Londoner, confusing Americans. Why would anyone swear by pants? Transatlantic types know the reason: in Britain, pants are undergarments, in America they are mere trousers. Or at least that’s what the New York-London jet-set believes. But in the north-west of England, “pants” are trousers, just as they are in America (and just as they were first elsewhere in England). “Pants” as underpants is the newcomer.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Learning from fingered speech”
From the July 8th 2017 edition
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