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Hey, you British folks...

post #1 of 7
2/1/05 at 2:36pm
Thread Starter 
Please explain to me how "Fancy a butcher's?" translates into "Would you like to take a look at this?".

See, the ad campaign for the new Getaway game features a bunch of people in a pub with what I can only assume is some sort of Brit slang (near as I can tell, someone just threw a bunch of funny words together). The ad then folds out to show the same picture with "translated" comments. The most mind-boggling, of course, is the butcher comment which has been on TV ads for the past month and has since driven me insane.

Thanks for your help!

Love,
Ignorant American.
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post #2 of 7
2/1/05 at 2:42pm
While not a brit I understand that it comes from the annoying propensity for the cockney people to invent slang based only on rhyme. It comes from butcher's hook rhyming with look.
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post #3 of 7
2/1/05 at 2:56pm
I just want to clarify that 90% of people in London, or even in the most cockney areas of the south do not speak like that. At all. Damn Guy Ritchie!
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post #4 of 7
2/9/05 at 9:36pm
My wife was totally puzzled by rhyming slang at first, but she thought it was amusing once I explained some of it. She knows its as common in England as people who sound like Conan O' Brien's version of the Dick Van Dyke character that Rock_Bollocks mentioned. I haven't managed to get her to try it though ! Although my one stepson does a good Harry Potter. I've given up trying to tell him they don't all sound like that either. Hell, my own accent varies from a bit of Gloucestershire to Australian & now to Texan !
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post #5 of 7
5/29/05 at 4:24am
Rhyming slang began in the East End of London as a way for the criminal classes to talk (rabbit & pork, 'rabbit) without the police being able to understand them. 'I'm going up the apples, get me whistle and titfer, and scapa'
(I'm going up the stairs [apples & pairs]), get my suit [whistle & flute] and hat [tit for tat], and go [scapa flow])

Click on 'cockney' below.

Cockney..........
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post #6 of 7
6/3/05 at 7:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurusch
Rhyming slang began in the East End of London as a way for the criminal classes to talk without the police being able to understand them.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the whole idea was based on a faulty assumption.
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post #7 of 7
6/3/05 at 3:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Foster
Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the whole idea was based on a faulty assumption.
Ha! Correct.
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