And indeed
the rapidity with which all slang and all catch-phrases can be
disseminated offers a rather alarming prospect. For whereas, before the
war, slang at its silliest was often quite local, nowadays its
restriction within given localities has in the nature of things become
impossible. A war hospital such as ours contains inmates from every
county in Britain, as well as from every colony. The same intermingling
occurs on an infinitely greater scale in training-camps and at the
various fronts. All these centres are hotbeds of slang: the men go home
from them, carrying to their native places slang which would never, in
ordinary times, have penetrated there. In the army you will hear a
Scotchman doing what he never did before--dropping his aitches. He has
caught it from his English comrades. You will hear him say "Not
'arf"--an inane tag which, despite its popularity in London, failed to
find any foothold north of the Tweed before the war. "Not 'arf" was
mouthed by Sassenach comedians on the music-hall stages of Edinburgh
and Glasgow, and was grinned at for what it was worth: the streets did
not adopt it.
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