slang and HP - Reckon

[Lina]

Steve/bboy_mn wrote: 
> 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...

I've never batted an eye "as/as well", as I use them both often, nor the
"codswallop" (one of my favorite vocab words from elementary school),
"biscuits", etc. But especially not "reckon." Although it's not something that
I use when I'm out of the South (also from Louisiana, though from New
Orleans/St. James), unlike "y'all" and "fixing to" (as those words just do
*not* have an equilivent in SAE; "fixing to" has an immediate sense of getting
ready to do something, a tense that other languages have), it is something that
I don't think of as an anomaly. As far as it being taken from American slang,
perhaps from western movies? IIRC, its use was prominate in them. 

And, from OED, for I love it so: 
reckon: 
    6. a. To consider, think, suppose, be of opinion, etc., that. Also with
omission of that. Now usu. colloq., esp. in the U.S. (formerly chiefly in
southern States). 
    b. I reckon, used parenthetically or finally.
  Formerly in literary Eng. use; still common in Eng. dialects, and current in
the southern States of America in place of the northern "I guess". 


Lina

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