...and for the same reason it's not sailer, which would refer as verb or adverb to an action, not a person, I suppose. Mind you, in Notts, at least, "neighbour" IS a verb, as in "I don't neighbour," which means that you aren't always popping round next door. When we moved into our last house, the woman next door said that, then added "...but if you need anything, just ask and I'll come".

I suppose it's all to do with language roots, and the passage of time, through fashions of speech. (I mean, look what's happening with modern spoken English!)

I suppose what you have to remember is that English isn't a pure language, but a cosmopolitan blend from every invader that staked claim to the place, mingled with the spoken language of the indigenous people. The wealth and spread, or conversely preservation, of local dialect is dependent on how far they got, and perhaps how far the resident population moved to get away from them! They say the nearest to the Viking era language is spoken dialectically in the NE, which is logical. I met a Geordie woman a few years ago, who has a pottery business with a Norwegian friend. They found they both used the same or similar dialect words on odd occasions! English has then been exported around the world and evolved further in both spelling and pronounciation by the blending with other languages.

(I also heard someone once say that the nearest to the mediaeval style of pronounciation is to be found around Barnsley!)

You've only got to link pronounciation to phonetic spelling in the days before Samuel Pepys and his diary, and you have immediately got lots of variations. Then get somebody like Pepys to devise what becomes an "official" version, and that gets gradually imposed over all the others.

But that still hasn't sorted out why it's "-or" at the end of words. It just is!!!

Andrea