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Quite late to this, but "well" is used in American English the same way you say "so" is used in Northern Irish English. And in fact "so" is also used that way. I have a vague sense from speaking to my elders that "so" is a recent phenomenon. "Well" has been around the block, and sounds both young and old-fashioned at the same time. Perhaps it skipped a generation.
That's interesting. Maybe it did skip a generation! Certainly I know 'well' can be used that way in General American, but I had the impression – one that, for what it's worth, is shared by some of the Old English scholars whose posts I read when writing this – that it's old-fashioned and clunky. Which would fit with it being something an older generation used. But I'll take your word for it that it's coming back!
This is speculation based on my own experience, but I wonder if there are quite strong, but generally hard to notice, cultural or religious divisions around use of "what" in that way. I ended up with some quite hyper-protestant and very American quirks to my English due to my unusual education and upbringing, which I've gradually realised are odd as other people have been confused or amused by them. One of the most common (and an ongoing source of ribbing from my wife to this day) is my vastly greater propensity to use "what" in the manner you're describing here (as well as "how", though the grammar is a tad different).
Of course, I can generally defend myself by pointing to examples like "what big teeth you have", as you've done here, and I also tend to use "What a week! / Captain, it's Wednesday", but I generally get the sense when I do this that people are frustrated and think I'm being deliberately obtuse, as if these examples don't really count. I wonder if this form of speech has sort of got isolated in a few stock phrases which have started to feel more like idioms than natural constructions, so that when someone comes along and constructs a sentence that isn't one of the standard examples, it comes off like someone saying they "painted the bus red" to mean they had a riot of a time on a bus specifically, and then defending this based on the idiom "panting the town red".
But to me, the constructions feel perfectly natural, not preserved in just a few phrases, so I use the manner of speech in all sorts of ways without really thinking about it. And boy, do people often find this tickling!
Any examples of a sentence with this construction that you'd say but those around you wouldn't? The analogy of 'painting the bus red' is really interesting. Certainly in my idiolect this way of using 'what' isn't _productive_, to use the linguistics jargon; but I'm not sure I would find it weird if someone else used it productively. But maybe that's just my imagination not being as good as JL Austin's! So examples would be helpful.
Quite late to this, but "well" is used in American English the same way you say "so" is used in Northern Irish English. And in fact "so" is also used that way. I have a vague sense from speaking to my elders that "so" is a recent phenomenon. "Well" has been around the block, and sounds both young and old-fashioned at the same time. Perhaps it skipped a generation.
That's interesting. Maybe it did skip a generation! Certainly I know 'well' can be used that way in General American, but I had the impression – one that, for what it's worth, is shared by some of the Old English scholars whose posts I read when writing this – that it's old-fashioned and clunky. Which would fit with it being something an older generation used. But I'll take your word for it that it's coming back!
“My beloved Ronald Hutton” 😍
This is speculation based on my own experience, but I wonder if there are quite strong, but generally hard to notice, cultural or religious divisions around use of "what" in that way. I ended up with some quite hyper-protestant and very American quirks to my English due to my unusual education and upbringing, which I've gradually realised are odd as other people have been confused or amused by them. One of the most common (and an ongoing source of ribbing from my wife to this day) is my vastly greater propensity to use "what" in the manner you're describing here (as well as "how", though the grammar is a tad different).
Of course, I can generally defend myself by pointing to examples like "what big teeth you have", as you've done here, and I also tend to use "What a week! / Captain, it's Wednesday", but I generally get the sense when I do this that people are frustrated and think I'm being deliberately obtuse, as if these examples don't really count. I wonder if this form of speech has sort of got isolated in a few stock phrases which have started to feel more like idioms than natural constructions, so that when someone comes along and constructs a sentence that isn't one of the standard examples, it comes off like someone saying they "painted the bus red" to mean they had a riot of a time on a bus specifically, and then defending this based on the idiom "panting the town red".
But to me, the constructions feel perfectly natural, not preserved in just a few phrases, so I use the manner of speech in all sorts of ways without really thinking about it. And boy, do people often find this tickling!
Any examples of a sentence with this construction that you'd say but those around you wouldn't? The analogy of 'painting the bus red' is really interesting. Certainly in my idiolect this way of using 'what' isn't _productive_, to use the linguistics jargon; but I'm not sure I would find it weird if someone else used it productively. But maybe that's just my imagination not being as good as JL Austin's! So examples would be helpful.