Ey up!

I'm back in the fine city of Norwich. No prizes for guessing where I have just been on my little UK holiday.

I do love the fact that language varies so much around the UK even though we are all crammed into a tiny slice of the big wider world. I also love it that the way people speak in their everyday lives can directly correspond with the way they write language down, even on official signage. This little - or litter - gem made me chuckle:

It's fantastic that Sheffield City Council decided to go full Yorkshire with their bin campaign*, meaning you can hear the voice of a local telling you exactly what to do with your empties. How could you possibly refuse? Something as mundane as litter, made a little brighter and more entertaining, catching people's attention in the process. Great work!

Communication or confusion?

It is arguably totally fine for locals to understand, but I wonder what foreign visitors make of it. Would they have a clue what message was being conveyed? Is the sight of a bin itself enough to make the wording slightly irrelevant even?

Imagine a foreign visitor trying to work out what they were reading, frantically translating this phrase on their devices to find out what it meant for fear of using this street item incorrectly. Just for fun, I have put the phrase into Google Translate and chaos ensued, as predicted.

First, I translated the phrase "purrit int bin" (written just like the signage, rather than "put it in the bin") into French, and then translated it back to English again, and behold the result:

Aside from the word "trash" which is clearly a blatant Americanism in the system, the word "purrit" has obviously caused havoc here and a foreigner would still be none-the-wiser as to what was going on! Purr-haps this translation would hint at some sort of secret cat lair within the guise of a rubbish receptacle...

Finally, there's the small matter of the grammar police and the lack of punctuation going on, especially where the contraction "int" is concerned. But, I think this little quirky bit of fun is so charmingly Yorkshire that even I can let that go!

What do you think of idiosyncratic regional behaviour like this? Fun, silly, or just plain inappropriate? I'd be interested to hear, so do get in touch. Ta.

*I realise I am rather late to this party, as it seems they launched this campaign in 2023, but I enjoyed it very much more recently. Never mind 'eh.