English as spoken in Northern Ireland (long)

[John Cowan]

Jon Hanna scripsit:

> In my
> home-town "I doubt it will rain" means, bizarrely, "I believe it will
> rain", but that doesn't exist even a few miles away from there

For the record, this is a traditional Scots/English lexical difference:
from the Border to the Six Counties, "doubt" for "believe" is commonplace,
though certainly not universal.  I don't know if it exists in Orcadian.

-- 
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan at reutershealth.com
"'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull
as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the
large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will
jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'"
        --the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake