If you came from Birmingham...

[Rustyoznail]

what name would you call it? Brummie?

Eg. "The curries here are not as good as the ones back home in XXXXX"

 

[SamScribble]

what name would you call it? Brummie?

Eg. "The curries here are not as good as the ones back home in XXXXX"

I don't come from Brum myself, but that's what my Brummie friends tend to call it: Brum.

 

[NotWise]

I don't come from Brum myself, but that's what my Brummie friends tend to call it: Brum.

The Google machine confirms that.

 

[Rustyoznail]

The Google can make you look like a complete birk... A quick question here can save a heap of sarcastic comments.

Thanks Sam

 

[NotWise]

The Google can make you look like a complete birk... A quick question here can save a heap of sarcastic comments.

Thanks Sam

If you were talking about Birmingham, Alabama, then you didn't get saved.

 

[yukonnights]

If you were talking about Birmingham, Alabama, then you didn't get saved.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Birmingham. Alabama nicknames:
B'ham
The Magic City
The Pittsburgh of the South
The Steel City
The Tragic City

I have no idea why or what any of them allude to — maybe B'ham … I understand that one

 

[Rustyoznail]

If you were talking about Birmingham, Alabama, then you didn't get saved.

True. I should have emphasised Birmingham UK.

 

[Ginlover]

what name would you call it? Brummie?

Eg. "The curries here are not as good as the ones back home in XXXXX"

I'd go a step further. They wouldn't say back home or are not

Curries shit, they're not like that in Brum

They do call it Brum but people further up the social eccominic scale wouldn't unless they were mocking their fellow brummies. Your 'The curry' line is too well spoken for the character to then use the slang Brum.

To keep the sentence structure

Curries here ain't good as back in Brum.

To use a slang word without the correct colloquial context makes any native reader get pulled out of the story for the unusual unnatural language.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I'd go a step further. They wouldn't say back home or are not

Curries shit, they're not like that in Brum

They do call it Brum but people further up the social eccominic scale wouldn't unless they were mocking their fellow brummies. Your 'The curry' line is too well spoken for the character to then use the slang Brum.

To keep the sentence structure

Curries here ain't good as back in Brum.

To use a slang word without the correct colloquial context makes any native reader get pulled out of the story for the unusual unnatural language.

Good point. I cringe when I hear an "Orsetrailyan" accent in movies, so it makes sense others feel the same.

Thanks - this is the stuff Lord Google can't teach.

 

[SamScribble]

They do call it Brum but people further up the social eccominic scale wouldn't unless they were mocking their fellow brummies. Your 'The curry' line is too well spoken for the character to then use the slang Brum.

I'm not sure that I would be brave enough to tell my friends from Brum that they are down-market. They already think that West End Londoners are a bit uppity. Especially West End Londoners who grew up in The Cotswolds.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Hubby has a bunch of friends from the UK midlands, mostly soldier-buddies from The Rifles regiment he knew back in Afghanistan who hailed from what's known as 'the Black Country' (Dudley, Walsall, Wolverhampton and parts of Stafford.) They refer to themselves as 'Yammies', and when they get talking in the Black Coutry dialect it sounds to me like they're speaking some kind of Norwegian or Danish dialect; none of it makes any sense, and the vowel sounds are weirdly distorted.

Will is also a culprit; he's from the Somerset town of Wellington, in the West Country, and when he starts speaking in the Somerset Levels dialect he grew up with it's only vaguely like English; listening to him makes me wonder whether that's what Chaucer and Shakespeare would have sounded like back then.

 

[silversword]

Agree that Brum would be how a local would refer to it.

Although I have to say that I find it one of the worst UK accents, up there with Scouse and Geordie!

 

[RetroFan]

Agree that Brum would be how a local would refer to it.

Although I have to say that I find it one of the worst UK accents, up there with Scouse and Geordie!

I personally like a Scouse accent especially on women, and in my most recent story 'Banging Cousin Becky in Blackpool', the characters are from Liverpool.

In Australia, while I have met plenty of people with accents from all over the UK, I forget the last time I met a person from Birmingham. And I can't name that many famous Brits with Birmingham or 'Brummie' accents; TV presenter Cat Deeley is the only one I can name off hand.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Birmingham. Alabama nicknames:
B'ham
The Magic City
The Pittsburgh of the South
The Steel City
The Tragic City

I have no idea why or what any of them allude to — maybe B'ham … I understand that one

Birmingham, Alabama was a unique city. It was the first major industrial city in America not built on a navigable waterway. It was called steel town because it was built there because of a lucky confluence of having iron ore, limestone, and coal (for coke) all nearby and accessible - the basic ingredients for steel.

 

[NotWise]

Birmingham, Alabama was a unique city. It was the first major industrial city in America not built on a navigable waterway. It was called steel town because it was built there because of a lucky confluence of having iron ore, limestone, and coal (for coke) all nearby and accessible - the basic ingredients for steel.

I understand all of those but "Tragic City." Maybe it's a word play on "Magic City." It earned "Magic City" by growing so quickly after it was founded. The other's, other than B'ham, are references to it's largely defunct steel industry.

 

[Ginlover]

I'm not sure that I would be brave enough to tell my friends from Brum that they are down-market. They already think that West End Londoners are a bit uppity. Especially West End Londoners who grew up in The Cotswolds.

Posh Brummies dont say they're from Brum -- to be fair they often wont say they are from Birmingham -- Solihull appears to be the place these non-brummie brums live

 

[jehoram]

Locals have a strange way of pronouncing their cities.

People from Baltimore call it "Balmer." If you're really from there, you transmute it into a single syllable, something like "Balmr." And if you add "Maryland" to it, you get a three-syllable thing I can only render as "Balmarland" or even the two-syllable "Balmarlnd."

Folks from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania call it "Wilksbury."

Folks from Waco, Texas don't call it "Way-ko." Instead, it's more like "Wah-ko."

I could go on, but why bother?

 

[SamScribble]

Posh Brummies dont say they're from Brum -- to be fair they often wont say they are from Birmingham -- Solihull appears to be the place these non-brummie brums live

I didn't say that they say they are from Brum (although they are). They give their address as Edgbaston - which, of course, is a district of Brum.

 

[Hypoxia]

San Franciscans do not call their city Frisco. It is The City, as if no others are worth noting. Residents of Los Angeles ae Angelenos, even the devilish ones. And Barstow CA really is Barstool.

 

[Handley_Page]

what name would you call it? Brummie?

Eg. "The curries here are not as good as the ones back home in XXXXX"

"The curries here are not as good as the ones back home in Brum."

 

[Rustyoznail]

Posh Brummies dont say they're from Brum -- to be fair they often wont say they are from Birmingham -- Solihull appears to be the place these non-brummie brums live

Lol... I immediately thought of the Solihull Project from "Yes Minister."

YT - The Solihull Project

Thanks all.

 

[SisterJezabel]

I didn't say that they say they are from Brum (although they are). They give their address as Edgbaston - which, of course, is a district of Brum.

That’s only so they can get to the cricket easier, isn’t it?

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Lol... I immediately thought of the Solihull Project from "Yes Minister."

YT - The Solihull Project

Thanks all.

Birmingham is such a legendarily unlovely place, too; I love the comment a pundit made about whoever built Birmingham having really cleaned-up on the cement contract, and the cab drivers are the surliest, laziest creatures in all of God's creation, especially the ones who haunt New Street Station. It's often necessary to change lines, from New Street to Snow Hill stations, to arrive into different London Termini, and Snow Hill is about 500m from New Street, but trying to get one of those lazy jobsworths to take you from one to the other with all your luggage is impossible because 'it's not worth their while'; they'll literally sit and watch old ladies struggle to drag their luggage as they walk to Snow Hill because they'd rather wait for a punter with a longer, more lucrative journey to make than lose their place in the taxi queue.
London cabbies are required by law to accept all fares, no matter how trivial the journey, it's part of their 'ply for hire' Hackney Cab license, but apparently that doesn't apply in Brum.

Driving in Birmingham is horrifying enough, wherever you try to get to you'll end up on the Aston Expressway being funnelled onto the nightmare known as Spaghetti Junction, the Gravelley Hill Interchange, one of the most complicated, clearly Satanic multiple-cloverleaf roadways in the world; people have been known to get old and gray trying to get off that system, I've heard there are drivers who are doomed, like the Flying Dutchman trying to round the Cape, to endlessly circle around that traffic mobius strip sobbing 'where TF am I, I only wanted to go to Shirley...'

 

[Handley_Page]

Oh, dear me, Lori; not at all like that now !

They've sorted out the trains so there's one giant New Street station; what the Taxi drivers thought about it is not recorded. Over a fair period of time, the whole centre of England's "Second City" has been re-built.

I'm tempted to agree with you about Spaghetti Junction; it's not fun !
The M6 toll is even less fun.

But there are other cities with a similar traffic management system; I nominate Salford.

Time for coffee.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Oh, dear me, Lori; not at all like that now !

They've sorted out the trains so there's one giant New Street station; what the Taxi drivers thought about it is not recorded. Over a fair period of time, the whole centre of England's "Second City" has been re-built.

I'm tempted to agree with you about Spaghetti Junction; it's not fun !
The M6 toll is even less fun.

But there are other cities with a similar traffic management system; I nominate Salford.

Time for coffee.

That's true, or Milton keynes, may it never be sufficiently cursed, or Stafford.

I agree that they rebuilt the Birmingham Bullring, making it less of an eyesore than it was, but it's still no prizewinner, let's be honest, and even revamped New Street (but didn't stop to think how people would use the station; the site-map is a confused series of different colored zig-zags and long looping route-marches and didn't have any actual 'you are HERE' indicators; people kept sticking 'Throw a six to start' stickers on the maps, because they just looked like trackless mazes on a chutes and ladders playboard), and you still have to make that trudge from New Street to Snow Hill if you need to train into London Marylebone instead of Euston.

I spent a lot of time on-loan to Birmingham City, Queen Elizabeth Cardiology unit, and Heartlands Pediatric Cardiovascular unit, and I used to dread driving between them, especially Birmingham City, because there's just no obvious way to get there from QEH Sandwell, as they keep changing traffic priorities seemingly at random. I used to arrive home bloody hours after I left work, because the traffic is nightmarish and makes no sense.