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Give us yer donny

  • Thread starter Thread starter Seabird
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bullring boy said:
Here's another one. In Birmingham we often begin a comment with "Any road up..." or end one with "actually." I've never heard this use anywhere else in the country. Sorry to bang on about the French connection but in France people often begin a comment with "à propos de rien" and finish one with "actuellement." Are Brummies and Froggies closer than we imagine?
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I have heard, but possibly not in Birmingham, a comment starting "à propos of nothing" which is a Franglais version of "à propos de rien".
 
Hi DavidGrain. Why on earth do we Brummies say "any road up?" It sounds like a corruption of something else, rather like "San Fairy Ann." Perhaps I'm trying to stretch a point but "any road up" sounds like a confusion of "à propos de rien." If so, perhaps it came back with the troops after WW1, but if so why just in Birmingham?
 
From what I can make out most of the saying in French came from WW1
LIKE PARLEZ VOUS .THINK EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.
 
bullring boy said:
Here's another one. In Birmingham we often begin a comment with "Any road up..." or end one with "actually." I've never heard this use anywhere else in the country. Sorry to bang on about the French connection but in France people often begin a comment with "à propos de rien" and finish one with "actuellement." Are Brummies and Froggies closer than we imagine?
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na,we are uneek....sorry Mikejee.
 
bullring boy said:
Here's another one. In Birmingham we often begin a comment with "Any road up..." or end one with "actually." I've never heard this use anywhere else in the country. Sorry to bang on about the French connection but in France people often begin a comment with "à propos de rien" and finish one with "actuellement." Are Brummies and Froggies closer than we imagine?
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actually. i have never heard that said."Any road up":confused:
 
Not sure if this was ever used in Brum but I asked my old friend today if there was anything she needed, she replied "Just six penn'orth of god help me."
 
Way and road are the same and I have heard both anyway and any road. However I have heard 'Any road up' on Corry and assumed that it was a Northern expression.

You can also get 'No way' and 'No road' which I did hear many years ago in the Black Country

This on another forum is interesting
english.stackexchange.com

Anyroad and Anyway

As far as I know, anyway is a common word used by both American and British English speakers to mean in any case, nevertheless, etc. I never thought much about the word until I noticed that British
english.stackexchange.com english.stackexchange.com
 
By grandmother regularly used "any road up" and she was born in Aston in the 1870s.
It seems a common expression in the Midlands and the North, and the Steve Gibbons Band even had an album with that title.

Maurice :cool:
 
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DavidGrain said:
Way and road are the same and I have heard both anyway and any road. However I have heard 'Any road up' on Corry and assumed that it was a Northern expression.

You can also get 'No way' and 'No road' which I did hear many years ago in the Black Country

This on another forum is interesting
english.stackexchange.com

Anyroad and Anyway

As far as I know, anyway is a common word used by both American and British English speakers to mean in any case, nevertheless, etc. I never thought much about the word until I noticed that British
english.stackexchange.com english.stackexchange.com
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"Any road" was used in my family, but "no way" I think is pretty national and came into use in the Seventies.
 
When did we start calling Boot & Shoe repairs SNOBS

As a child was always told to take DADS boots to the SNOBS
 
Whilst I knew the Snob was a shoemaker, I have only once heard it spoken and that was in an early job I had soon after I left school when my boss came into the office and asked if there was a good snob in the area as he needed some shoes repairing. When I was in France I saw a men's clothes shop called Très Snob (Very Snob).
 
Most online dictionaries do not list snob as meaning shoemaker but do say the word is of unknown origin. However I have come across this on a website called etymonline.com:
snob (n.)
1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c. 1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and passed then into literary use, where by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" is by 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 the word had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste.
 
DavidGrain said:
Most online dictionaries do not list snob as meaning shoemaker but do say the word is of unknown origin. However I have come across this on a website called etymonline.com:
snob (n.)
1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c. 1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and passed then into literary use, where by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" is by 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 the word had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste.
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I never knew that!
Very interesting, thanks, as they say, you're never too old to learn something new!
 
I remember the saying "A job in the town" being used to describe something good or special. It probably came from the fact that if you worked in the city centre (always called "Town" in Brum) you were a bit "white collar" rather than getting dirty in a factory.
 
JohnJames said:
I remember the saying "A job in the town" being used to describe something good or special. It probably came from the fact that if you worked in the city centre (always called "Town" in Brum) you were a bit "white collar" rather than getting dirty in a factory.
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gi as your donny
 
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jmadone said:
At the risk of straying off topic I think a lot of pseudo french phrases were brought back with soldiers returning from the Great war. Plonk is one example (Vin Blanc), San Fairy Ann (Ca ne fait rien) is another. Those two phrases are known throughout the country so why particular ones such as Donny and Arley Barley are peculiar to Birmingham I have no idea.
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My mother in law, who came from Middlesbrough, used to say "San Fairy Ann", so definitely not an expression unique to Birmingham - "donny", which I and my family still use, is a Brummie-only expression.
 
I still get funny looks when I say I've been all round the Wrekin as I've lived in Lancashire for the last 30 odd years. This thread has brought back to me all the Brummy sayings I grew up with and yes, we did call hands donnies, have arley barleys and 'san fairy ann' and 'any road up' were common expressions in our family.
 
dinah46 said:
I still get funny looks when I say I've been all round the Wrekin as I've lived in Lancashire for the last 30 odd years. This thread has brought back to me all the Brummy sayings I grew up with and yes, we did call hands donnies, have arley barleys and 'san fairy ann' and 'any road up' were common expressions in our family.
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Welcome to the Forum dinah..............wonderful people and lots of very good information with a history lesson thrown in :)
 
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