Seems I've got a few things to touch on from this episode. I'll take them one at a time:
- I never had much confusion with toilet vs commode, but I still get in trouble when I refer to washing my hands in the lavatory. Is it just because my father was a plumber that I define the word as what other people call a sink?
- The "discourse particle" that Grant pronounced as er, and said was unique to British English, is actually just the British spelling for the sound we in the US write as uh. Most British dialects don't pronounce R after a vowel as a separate sound but rather as a sign that the preceding vowel is lengthened. (Recall the introduction to Winnie the Pooh where Christopher Robin explains why the bear is called Winnie ther Pooh.)
- I wonder if the practice of calling lizards scorpion is responsible for something I remember from the phase of my life when I dabbled in astrology. In Linda Goodman's Sun Signs, the sign Scorpio is identified as "the Scorpion, Eagle or Gray Lizard". That never made sense to me at the time, but in light of the regionalism your caller described I can see how the other animals might have found their way into the Zodiac. (There actually are both an eagle and a lizard among the recognized constellations, but they're well out of the path of the ecliptic and thus don't figure in astrological matters.)
"First I gave her peaches, then I gave her pears, then I gave her 50 cents and kissed her on the stairs."
Yes, very pretty and sweet and innocent, but optionally dark and sinister, no ?
The genius of the thing !
Examples of using a definite article (or not) can be kind of funny, both in the sense of "peculiar" and in the sense of "humorous." For instance, I've noticed that place nicknames created by college students may or may not include "the." I haven't yet recognized a pattern.
Examples without "the"
- Instead of saying, "We're going to the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant," it gets shortened to "We're going to B-Dubs" (no "the").
- Similarly, they don't go to "the Baskin-Robbins place" for ice cream, but to "Skin-Bins" (again, no "the"). [A friend had to explain that the term comes from Ba-SKIN Rob-BINS.]
Examples with "the"
+ Among University of Michigan students, the Undergraduate Library is affectionately known as "the UGLY."
+ I also read that John Rockefeller had given a large amount of money to a university in New York to build a new library; in return, they named it after him. Students quickly dubbed it "the Rock," but the administration objected (perhaps thinking it was disrespectful) and demanded that students no longer use that term. They complied with this new "law," in letter if not in spirit: Now the library is fondly known as "the John."
Beyond college - omitting the definite article: I remember reading a news story about a company where the employees had cleverly named their conference rooms so they could have some fun with (or at the expense of) co-workers. So if one of the staff members was attending a meeting, the receptionist might say, for example, "He's not in his office at the moment; he's in Sane" or "... in Cognito" or... (you get the idea).
I think the use of the article, "the", is not arbitrary nor is it exclusive to college students. (Although the strange names probably are.) I believe it depends on whether or not the name of the place is possessive. For example: Walgreens is possessive, or at least it seems to be, so people will usually say, "I'm going to Walgreens", no article. Target is not possessive so people will usually say, "I'm going to the Target", article is used. This is just my own observation, not intended to be a rule, and it is certainly not a consistent use since people will say whatever may come to mind.
We used to make fun of my mother because she would leave off the article and make a name possessive even when it wasn't intended to be so. For example: "I need to buy some things at Walmart's".
Lots of times, it's just pure practicality-
You say to someone in the neighborhood, 'I am at the McDonald' -- it can mean if you want to find me, that's where.
You say to someone 100 miles away, 'I am going to McDonald' -- it only means I am going to have burgers.