One expression that I find interesting... "and then ..... turned round and said" (or turned around and said). I didn't even notice this expression at all until Judge Rinder (British answer to Judge Judy, except he also does ballroom dancing* - posh accented barrister with sharp, witty sense of humour does small claims court on TV) made a joke about it, i.e. about how many people in his court are turning around, after the people in the court kept using that expression.
*not in the same TV programme though
I associate it with SE England and think it's probably cockney in origin and has got into other accents from there. It definitely sounds working class and I've never heard anyone posh say it. It's not a literal turning around, but a metaphorical one. The expression's used when someone disagrees with you or says something that somehow thwarts what you're trying to do. For example:
See them custard creams, they're well dodgy. Says best before June 2018 but they're all soggy so I went to Asda, right, and I said to the lady, what you doin' sellin' me dodgy custard creams? And then she turned round and said they're not even from Asda. They're Tesco ones. An' I said I don't even bloody shop in Tesco's so how can they be from Tesco's? So there's me, bloody stuck with a pack of soggy custard creams. And then the man in Tesco's turned round and said I can't have a refund without a bleeding receipt.
I've seen 'turned around and said', but never in the context of someone disagreeing or trying to thwart another person. Whenever I've seen 'turned around and said', the people literally, physically, turn around to look the other person in the eye. That's a really interesting SE England uses the phrase in a metaphorically belligerent-way.
I'm from Yorkshire, Barnsley born and Barnsley, strong in t'arm, thick in t'head. As the saying goes.
We also say 'touched in t'head', but I've Irish heritage so it may have come from there. Pop too. Pop, coloured fizzy sugary water delivered in reusable glass bottles, on a big red truck, by the reet honrable William Hague's dad, I shit you not.
When it comes to regional variants, the different words for Snickets and ginnels used about the country never ceases to amaze. Long narrow passageways, with a firm boundary, a fence, wall or high hedge, connecting two separate streets.
I read somewhere once that the /th/ sound is only found in English, Greek, and Icelandic (someone correct me if I'm wrong) And that roughly 80% of Irish cannot pronounce the /th/, although they're English-speaking. Maybe because they have Gaelic roots? But Irish tend to only pronounce the /t/. Thirty-three = tirty-tree. And I totally had to look up snicket and ginnel; I've never heard anyone use those words in New York!
Well, let's see. I'm from New York City, where we tend to pepper our sentences with glorious curse words. Also, we mumble. I think we're supposed to sound nasally and/or guttural. Any word ending in "-ing" is very likely to end in "-in'," but if you grew up speaking Yiddish, German, or Polish, you might come down hard on the "g" in an "-ing" word.
Truth is, we're very diverse, so our accents are a jumble. I cringe at the exaggerated New York accents on TV and in films, though. I also hear them on local news and pray that I don't sound like that. If anything, New York grammar is pretty wonky. I find myself transposing parts of sentences and having weird syntax.
Particularly New York City-ish words:
stoop--from Dutch. Basically, the front steps to your apartment building.
Metrocard--our transit pass.
"The city"--Manhattan
"Man'att'n"--The way we say "Manhattan." We don't say the "h" and the "t"s don't really get said either.
bodega--from Spanish, but for us, bodega is the corner deli. Any corner deli.
I hear people dropping the 'g' in 'ing'-words a lot around here. The 1st time I heard the word 'stoop' it was on Hey Arnold! Lol. We actually don't have very many corner delis where I am. We have one butcher shop that I'm aware of that will sell sliced meats. The other deli where I go is inside the supermarket.