From John Tarver
Comments regarding American pronunciation in Feedback (11 March), reminded me of my experiences and theorising as an immigrant to Alberta from Lancashire. It did not take me long to discover that a word in common use back there was still in use here, but pronounced a little differently.
Butty had always meant a sandwich to me, and was usually prefixed by a descriptive pronoun: jam butty, meat butty and so on, depending on content. I later discovered that, as used in northwest Ireland, it also meant the work mate with whom one would share ones sandwiches, if he had forgotten his own.
The next step was the realisation that the spread of American mispronunciation had given us what at first appeared to be a new word, but which really had its roots in my own dialect.
I am your long lost Buddy.
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