By happenstance, I stumbled upon the words cha, char and chai in the dictionary today, all defined as meaning tea in informal British English. I lived and worked in London for some time, but never ... Are what-cha and arent-cha examples of elision?

Context Explanation

Ask Question Asked 11 years, 6 months ago Modified 4 years, 10 months ago The pronunciation of ch as /k/ is generally found in words borrowed from Greek (where the ch stands for the Greek letter chi). See Wikipedia: English words of Greek origin: Ch is pronounced like k rather than as in "church": e.g., character, chaos. It's annoyingly hard to find a non-Wikipedia reference, but this borders on common knowledge. Loanwords from a few other languages have ch ...

Insight Material

Pronunciation Rules for Ch words - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange I, having lived most of my life in the American South, have heard this expression a lot (though I would tend to spell and pronounce it "'preciate 'cha" I.e. "Preeshee-a-chuh"). Having also lived in other regions, though, I'm well aware that it's as peculiar to Southerners as "y'all." Idk the etymological details of the idiom, I think it's very typical of southern warmth and friendliness. It ... Gotcha actually has several meanings.

Final Conclusion

All of them can be derived from the phrase of which this is a phonetic spelling, namely " [I have] got you". Literally, from the sense of got = "caught, obtained", it means "I've caught you". As in, you were falling, and I caught you, or you were running, and I grabbed you. It's a short step from the benign type of caught to the red-handed type of caught ... Contrary to what you seem to think, wouldn't and won't are almost never interchangeable. The simple negative won't is used for future negative actions or for refusals.

I won't go to the store tomorrow if it's raining. (Future negative.) I won't go to the dance with you. (Refusal.) The negative wouldn't is used for counterfactual statements, and for future statements embedded in a past-tense ... @AndrewLeach I saw the word 'bloke' in the computer game, referring to the Nazies: 'those bloody blokes'.