I’m a US Citizen - have lived a year in the (good) Melbourne in Australia, nigh 'round Dublin for about two and just last week have been in the UK for seven years.
I’m from Long Island, New York yet since I was 16 avoided having either accent and I guess my accent is commonly called “Mid Atlantic” as in sometimes people think you’re Canadian and other times they don’t know. I can inflect a pretty passable Irish accent yet most Irish can detect the county you’re from so I don’t do it.
Yet my pitting is this fuckingly common British phrase, “Leave it with me”. Perhaps it doesn’t rise to the American level of me giving you my word, yet in my experience it nearly always means, “Good luck with whatever we’re on about and maybe it will happen; and I will soon forget having said anything like that”
Where I come from, giving you “my word” means it is going to happen or you will hear why not. Where I live “leave it with me” means nothing.
Heh. Maybe it’s meant like “Leave your concern with me. Walk away from it. I won’t tend or water it or anything but you can come pick it up later if it’s still alive, so just let it go for now”.
Kind of like the kid’s story where the mom says to the child, “OK now, mind how you watch those cakes I put in the oven” and the child obligingly watches them burn.
This is very confused. In your last paragraph you seem to be pitting the fact that the phrase does not mean the same thing as “giving your word” - why would it? Or that the phrase doesn’t exist in your dialect - so what?
Every dialect has a selection of phrases representing varying degrees of commitment to doing something. “Leave it with me” (if sincere) is more committing than “I’ll get back to you”, but well short of giving your word that something will definitely happen. Or is this about culture rather than semantics? Are you suggesting that British people are actually less reliable, or more inclined to be insincere and use weasel words?
And what does any of this have to do with your accent?
I suspect that if you find British people are frequently responding to you by saying “leave it with me” it’s because they have no idea what the fuck you are on about.
It’s not especially British, either. I’ve heard it here in the States and may have even used it myself. It’s not particularly common but not surprising to hear, either.
To be fair, I hear it often from employment agents so perhaps it is often used as a “so-long-but-really-goodbye” kind of thing. I’m just dense to the real meaning when it’s used that way.
I’m not saying it’s always meant to really be some subterfuge. Tradespeople (carpenters, mechanics) are more likely to mean it literally when they say it. Yet outside of that, it often - me being me - comes across as “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”
I think it depends on who you are talking to. In that case, yes, I’d say it is another version of “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.
If it’s someone you know or have worked with, I’d be inclined to interpret it as meaning: “that’s rather a difficult one. I’ll look into it but I make no promises”…
I’ve used it on occasion (always at work), usually when I get the gist of what the person is asking for but they won’t stop talking about it. So a way to end the conversation without wasting time.
When Inspector Lewis says it, it means, “I’ll take this burden off your shoulders, solve the problem, and get back to you if there’s anything else you need to bother about.”
So if that is a Britishism, what is the US equivalent? “You have my word” is clearly not the equivalent (there is absolutely no implied definite commitment that the matter at hand will get fixed, only that it will get looked at)
Its clearly a useful phrase but “i will take over this matter and spend some amount of time to attempt to resolve it (but no guarantees). You are not required to spend any more time on it.” is quite a mouthful.
In the UK that’s a standard greeting and perfectly normal. It means as much (or as little) as the US “have a nice day”. These phrases are called phatic communication: harmless social lubricants.
I’m curious: is it a regional/age thing? None of the other repairers on the show use it when greeting clients (if they had, I probably wouldn’t have thought it strange.).
ETA: Sorry for using “strange” was at a loss for word.
