slang and HP - Reckon

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Ali" <Ali at z...> wrote:
> Steve BBoy asked:-
> 
> >>> I'm curious about the word 'reckon'. 
>  
>  Do people in Britain actually use that word as much as we see it in
>  the book? 
>  
> The only people I know who ... use that word ... (are cowboys).
>  
> Of all the language, Brit-speak, slang, etc..., 'reckon' was 
> the one word that struck me as the most odd.<<<


> 
> I use it very regularly. I know lots of other people who use it to. 
> I'm not sure if it's a word I've picked up out of context, but it's 
> never struck me as at all odd that Harry and Ron use it.
> 
> Ali
> 
> (who reckons that the slang that JKR uses is more reflective of her 
> generation than current day teenagers, simply because language 
> changes so rapidly).


bboy_mn:
Thanks for the reply, and thanks to the people who replied off line.
There is very little Brit-speak that I don't know or can't figure out
realative to understanding the story, so when I encounter things like-

using AS instead of SINCE (USA: Since it was getting late, we... UK:
As it was getting late, we...)

Using AS WELL instead of TOO (UK:I like chocolate as well. USA: I like
chocolate too.)

phrases like blimey, bloody, bleeding, ruddy, codswallop, Oy!, Oi!,
gerroff, jumper instead of sweater, garden instead of yard or lawn,
crikey, marks instead of grades, biscuits instead of cookies, pudding
instead of desert, etc...

..none of that bothered me. That all seemed perfectly in place, and I
had no trouble understanding the meaning from the context. So very
little caught me off-guard or left me confused. But every time I came
to the work 'reckon' it seemed disjointed or out of place. I learned
to accept it as part of the way JKR wrote the story, but I still had
this odd feeling that the characters should break into a Taxas dawl
whenever they spoke the word. 

This isn't really a problem, it's just that of all the unique British
speech patterns and phrases, this least significant one ended up being
the one that bothered me.

RE: Slang in general-
There is some slang that is somewhat universal and timeless like
'blimey'. I would guess that 'Blimey' has been British slang for
something like 500 years. The same could be said for 'bloody'. Or in
contemporary language, the term 'cool' spans several generation. I
would guess that most of the slang JKR uses is of this universal
timeless form. If she used a lot of generational slang, that could
make her books seem very dated in the not too distant future. 

One last slang question, how promenent is the term 'Luv' in
contemporary British language? Based on old movies and Telly shows,
there was a time when everybody called everybody 'Luv'. "Hey luv, pass
 the salt.", "Luv, could you bring us another round of ales?", etc...
Just curious.

bboy_mn