BS: UK dialect help

Subject: BS: UK dialect help
From:
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:18 AM

In a historical linguistics class, we're currently working on the decline of the thou/thee forms in English. The evidence is very sketchy for America, but I've been told -- not sure how much to trust the authority -- that thee/thou are still used among intimates around Sheffield; my informant says Sheffielders are sometimes called "dee-dahs" on this account. The info is at least twenty years old, and I have only the one source. Is it accurate today, or was it ever? Is the distinction still in operation? Any data is appreciated -- best if you can give me a city and a year.

Adam

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Fingerbuster
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:21 AM

Thee, thou, thine is part of everyday speech on the Shetland isles, off the Scottish coast.

Nic.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Ritchie
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:29 AM

'thou' is still used quite a lot in the Washington area of Durham.(I can't abide all the tyne & wear nonsense)

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:35 AM

"Thou" and "thee" almost died out in the Back Country (English Midlands) before the end of the 20th century, but you still find the occasional old 'un saying "do'[n't] let it be so long before I see thee". The complexities of "thou'thee" seem to be beyond a lot of folks these days, even the ones who don't have trouble with "I/me". I'm afraid if I ever had to spend time with quakers who said "the" all the time (when they should say "thou") I'd become offensive ...

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 10:03 AM

Yes, the forms are still used in and around Sheffield, though not so much as formerly. Quite a few people I know will move between them and "you" several times in the course of a conversation, so it isn't always consistent.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: C-flat
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 12:25 PM

The use of "Thy" is still common in Yorkshire and Tyneside. Although when spoken, it comes out "Tha".
"Tha'll not understand a word of it, tha'knows"

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 01:51 PM

'Ahl Sithee' (I'll see you) is still a common parting around these parts (Lancashire). As is Tha'll not and Tha' won't. I reckon Thees Thous and Thys will continue in the dialect for a long time to come - and long may they live!

I remember my Grandad, on seeing my hair parted down the middle, as was the style around 1968, commenting 'Thi fathers a stafferdshire mon' (Tr: You resemble a man from Staffordshire - why is whole different story!)   

Try to dig up a book by Dave Dutton and Bill Tidy called 'Lancy Spoken 'ere'. I used to have but gave it to a fellow mudcatter from foreign parts (East Midlands if I remember rightly...) to try an' teach 'em 'ow fer't talk proper.

Good luck in the research

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From:
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:09 PM

You folks are great -- the Dutton ref was helpful; I'll hunt for the book (a record too, I gather). There's a bit on the web, and it appears that the verb-forms (art, hast, dost) survive too--http://www.homestead.com/pendle/TWANG.html

For the US, I have a c. 1800 grammar book that lists the forms, but notes that they're only used by farmers and the uneducated (approximate quote from memory).

Adam

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: smallpiper
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 08:50 PM

erm I 've heard Thee and Thou being used around Hull as well as Durham and Northumberland

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 08:58 PM

My grandfather regularly used thee and thou, and that was in Dorset, south west of England.

Basically, what Thomas Hardy wrote about in Tess of the D'Urbervilles is about it.... except my grandfather only died in 1974..... Dorset always was a bit behind the times...

I've occasionally used thee and thou, but people in London don't understand me when I do.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:29 PM

G'day Adam,

I see that C-flat has mentioned the Yorkshire "tha". From this distance (Sydney, Australia), I was just going to mention an expatriate Yorkshire friend who remarked that his mother's motto was: "If tha'ld do owt for nowt ... do it for tha'self!".

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 03:16 AM

Another Dorset peculiarity (i.ie., not heard it anywhere else) is thee'm a contraction for thee am, or you are... as in 'thee'm puggled' = I have doubts about your sanity.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 03:36 AM

You can certainly hear it in Derbyshire. When I drove buses you heard it every day. At the end of a shift a kindly inspector might say, "Get tha'sen down th' pub youth." (Go to the pub son.)
(The reflexive verb is alive and well there too). One of the funniest things I ever heard - although it was not funny to them - was two bus drivers having a flaming row. One yelled at the other,"Tha c'n get tha'sen fooked off!"

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: greg stephens
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 04:18 AM

Certainly in use in Cheshire and north Staffordshire now.Nothing wildly archaic about "bring thi tools with thee".

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: HuwG
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 09:12 AM

Another delightful piece of South Yorkshire idiom (which I often heard while working in the moribund steel industry there); the word "while" actually meant "until". As in, for example, "I were in pub while closing time, I were never near [the scene of the crime]".

Some trainee computer programmers I knoew had trouble with this one; their "do ... while" loops never executed. Also, it is rumoured that there was trouble when automatic half-barrier level crossings were introduced, with their warning notices, "Do not cross while lights are flashing".

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 10:32 AM

Liz, is "puggled" the same as "puddled"? I always assumed it came from the iron-making industry. Puddling was done by poking and stirring the soft iron to remove the impurities (to make "wrought" iron). It was done with a l-o-n-g pole through a small hole in the wall, to protect the puddler from the fierce heat. Large quantities of beer were provided to make up the water that was sweated out. The heat cooked your brain (and the beer probably didn't help), and given that anyone with a ha'p'orth of intelligence would get themselves less unpleasant work, puddlers must have been at the Toc H lamp end of the brightness spectrum.

Of course, I could be wrong ...

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 06:49 PM

Possibly.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Bill
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 07:19 PM

Hi Fingerbuster
I see thee be on the net again. Where have ye been?
Bill (the sound)

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 09:29 PM

Is it still current at all in Scotland? (forbye the Shetlands)

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Wyrd sister at work
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 03:57 AM

Don't thee tha' me, thee tha' thisen an see how tha' likes it!

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Scabby Douglas
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 04:56 AM

I don't think that apart from the Shetlands "thou" is used in Scotland. I'm unaware of it, at any rate... Bear in mind that for a large part of the Highlands and even as far south as the Trossachs, English did not become widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries.. by which time thee and thou were virtually dead in Standard English..

"Puggled" is interesting to me though... in Scotland, "puggled" is used to mean drunk - or more specifically, confused and befuddled through drink. That meaning is so similar to LtS's Dorset usage that I wonder if they are connected?



Cheers


Steven

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 04:57 AM

Folk song writers and poets often write in the idiom utilising a dying dialect. Many dialects are now diluted because of the way in which people migrate from town to town, a thing that didn't occur very much until the 60's. In Manchester, from whence I hail, I could tell which town people came from and accents would vary over a distance of as little as 3 miles.
However where I live now, The West Riding of Yorkshire, many people still speak with quite bopard accents and utilise such words as thee and thou although they are generally pronounced thi, tha, as in "are thi cumin' t'pub" or "tha's a gobbin" meaning you are gormless.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Pied Piper
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 05:18 AM

Quit a few older people in the North West still use "thee" ( ee as in Tea)"tha"(a as in hat or in some places a as in RP father) along with many other dialect words such as skrike(to cry)which has the same meaning in Norse languages.
One of the sad losses from these dialects is "my'n or thy'n" (y as in why) as:-
"Whose is it; my'n or thy'n?"
Much more musical than "mine or yours".
All the best PP

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 07:31 AM

Oft heard in parts of Yorkshire well beyond Sheffield - for instance Keighley and points west. And note that the definitive textbook on Yorkshire dialect, by Adrian Mitchell MP, is called "Teach Thissen Tyke."

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Bassic
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 08:06 AM

I think he is called Austin Mitchell, MP, former TV presenter and MP for Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire. The book appears on the book shelfs around August 1st each year which is Yorkshire day so may be connected to or published by the Yorkshire Ridings society (?) who promote Yorkshire day.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Bassic
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 08:26 AM

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Cid
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 08:27 AM

I'm from Clitheroe in Lancashire originally and thee and thou are still used by a lot of people around the area. As mentioned above the local dialect also uses a number of loan words from Old Norse (The area was settled by Norwegian rather than Danish Vikings way back when)I often used to hear "tha mun rive at it lad" (Tr You must pull very hard at it). Swedish food packets still say Riv on the tab where English ones would say pull.

I currently work in Swindon (Wiltshire) and don't hear Thee/thou forms at all around here.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Bassic
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 08:35 AM

A local expert in The East Riding of Yorkshire dialect is Ernie Teal from Walkington, near Beverley. He is a regular contributor to the local scene in both print and on BBC Radio Humberside, you could probably contact him through the BBC Radio Humberside Website and he may have a book out which could help. (Did try to check this myself for you but dont have the opportunity to do a thorough search).

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Steve
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 09:06 AM

A friend from the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire) I know still uses not only thou/thee but the special verbal forms to go with them so:

how bist (thee)?   how are you? and where'st thou from?

He's in his fifties, and still speaks the old Forest dialect. The use of thee/thou has pretty much died out among the younger generation although they still have a distinctive west-country accent.

Probably a westward creep as I know that around 1920s the forms died out in the Slad Valley (near Stroud - source: Laurie Lee. My mother in law who was brought up in that region doesn't use them. She was born in the 1930s.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: ossonflags
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 03:31 PM

a phrase I have heard no were else but in hull is
"sileing down" meaning it is raining heavily, any one else heard of it?

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 05:42 PM

Just remembered another - I think it is my Mum - I will ask when I next speak to her.

'Well now, there's only me an thee an if I had mi clogs on there'd only be thee'

Never did make much sense...;-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Snuffy
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 07:38 PM

Ossonflags, my wife's family come from round Bolsover, and I remember several of the older generation in the 1970s using "siling" for rain .
"Thou/thee" was also fairly common.

WasaaiL! V

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 07:47 PM

Austin Mitchell - didn't he announce thta he was cahnging his name to Haddock as a gesture of support for the fishing industry, or what's left of it (being as he's MP for Grimsby).

Another promise scrapped by a politician, it appears.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 08:22 PM

Thanks Bassic, and in fact it's actually Dr Austin Mitchell I think. I knew I was doing something wrong even as I typed it, but the name sounded familiar because Adrian is Britain's self-styled alternative poet laureate. The book is published by the Dalesman magazine company, jointly with Yorkshire TV for whom Austin used to work.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Concerned of Huddersfield
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 08:03 AM

Horseancart .............you little devil you ..........I use siling down for heavy rainfall aand have done all my life. I heard it both here in Cleckhuddersfax and in my native Lancashire

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Concerned of Huddersfield
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 08:07 AM

The Yorkshire saying alluded to earlier goes (I think)
See all, 'ear all, say nowt
eat all, sup all, pay nowt
an if tha ever does owt for nowt
do it for thissen

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Wobbly Bob
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 08:26 AM

What do you mean 'older generation' in the 1970's using the word siling? We in Liversludge still use it. older generation....hah.
Bob

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Mr Red from the Black Country owr kid
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 09:04 AM

I once read an article in the Readers Digest on this kind of thing (so it must be true) but what stuck in my mind was one simple fact. The regional variations of you,yours, thee/thine and you/youm could be traced to a dividing line along the A5. I can't remember all the other nuggets but the logic became clear as it was explained.

Basically the A5 was an important road for nearly 2000 years and trade routes would have been along it far more than across it - particulalry as it pointed to London. And jurisdictions and policing would have had their demarcation along the route. So it would be no surprise that some aspects would polarize about such a landmark and in the case or you/youm thee/thine it was noticeable well into the 20th century.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From:
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 01:02 PM

What you're describing is an "isogloss." The linguistic atlas projects (U.S., Hans Kurath, 1930s) showed that certain forms and pronunciations could be mapped with amazing clarity, and the trends might reveal very old settlement-patterns, migration and trade-routes, or subtle geographic dividers. It's not that people stay in the same place so much as language is a naturally chameleon-like behavior -- we have strong tendency to norm to whatever pepole are doing around us, even if we regard it as "wrong." Do I remember correctly hearing that A5 was once a Roman road?

Music and stories once could be mapped in a similar way, but not many researchers today have the resources for that kind of fieldwork, or even an interest in the historic-geographic method. And I doubt the results would be anywhere near as dramatic, given today's distribution through electronic media.

Adam

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Orac
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 05:10 AM

Just a slight variation. The use of highth (instead of the more modern height) is still common, certainly in the midlands, yet it is no longer found in dictionaries as if it either does not exist or is obsolete, which it is not. I have a 1920's dictionary and it says of height ... "a corruption of highth" ..

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 07:03 AM

For more on "hight", a href="http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-hei1.htm">have a look here.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 01:28 PM

Plenty of theers and thouers amongst the kids I teach in Barnsley! Hence 'I dun like thee n'moor, tha's not laikin' wi'me!!'

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 01:55 PM

Until the invention of the zebra crssing in the last century, it was virtually impossible to cross the A5 for 2000 years, which is why it is such an important isogloss for many dialect variations.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Jack The Lad
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 03:56 PM

This is summat I learned in Yorkshire as a lad- (I was lad even back then).

"If tha Bob dun't give ar Bob the bob that thar Bob owes ar Bob,
Ar Bob'll give tha Bob a bob on t'nose!"

Can you all work it out?
Jack The Lad

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Penny S.
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 04:04 PM

The A5 boundary (I may have mentioned before) doesn't just divide dialect. It also divides that part of Britain with ancient and venerable yew trees from that without. Which is odd. It was chosen as part of the boundary between the English under Alfred, and the Danes under Guthrum, which, may have something to do with the dialect divide. And why did Alfred impose this major road link as the boundary on his enemies? It seems to be that between the boulder clay left by the ice and the unglaciated part of the land surface. Maybe he thought it less easy to farm, let the invaders have the difficult farms - keep them too busy to fight? And the yews don't like to grow on the clay?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Hilary, not logged in
Date: 23 Nov 02 - 06:54 AM

Thee as in 'Sit thee down' is definitely still used in the Potteries (N.Staffordshire).

Although I can't 'do' any of them - I can HEAR 8 or so variations in potteries accents.
Some areas use 'SUT' as in 'I was sut down' tr 'I was sitting down'.
' It's just thee & me' is often used in industrial N.Worcestershire -
Greg - is 'Arfur towk rate in staffycher' (or summat like that) still available ????

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Snuffy
Date: 23 Nov 02 - 12:45 PM

Do you mean "Arthur Toecrate in the Potteries"?

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Nov 02 - 06:49 PM

Where I was brung up in Dorset the word "theese" was used a lot,
as in " Iffen theese ud shut up thee chotter box I cud get a word in edgewuds"
But Liz was raised in the lowlands of Abbotsbury, I comes from the highlands of Stoke Wake.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: mouldy
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 03:03 AM

A slight aside from the "thee" in discussion - a word I heard a few years ago here in Yorkshire from a young woman of about 30 - "I've forgotten to put my middings out!" This obviously is a direct descent from "midden" as she was referring to her dustbin. She comes originally from Kippax, between Castleford and Leeds, just to the West of a Roman Road, and an old settlement, by its name.

I am an East Midlander by birth, me ducks, but I have moved round the country during my life. If you read the "Hey Up Me Duck" dialect books by the late Rick Scollins on the South/Derbyshire dialect (Derby, Ilkeston, Heanor, Ripley,&c), you will find "thee/tha" in use there. I have used "siling down" for many years, but not so much of late. I first remember using it when I lived in North Derbyshire (Whaley Bridge) between the ages of 6 and 14, as I daresay much of my language was formed in those years. (We moved up there from a year in Dorset, where I started school, so what that's influenced I don't know!) We moved back to South Derbyshire from North Derbyshire, and all I used to get was, "Doesn't she talk like 'Coronation Street'!"
I think it was mainly Celtic tribes in the north, and Saxon/Danish in the south, if my memory serves me right.

A little extra. When I first went to Grammar School, my English teacher was a graduate in Anglo-Saxon. She told us that the "y" in "ye" as it is written in "Olde English" is taken from the Anglo-Saxon letter pronounced "thorn", which looks a bit like a "y", but more closed at the top. This letter is pronounced "th", which gives us "the" from "ye". Interestingly, "the" is usually lenghthened to "thee" in front of a word beginning with a vowel.

I don't want to make this creep off into a pronunciation debate, so I'm going now.

Andrea

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: dermod in salisbury
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 08:02 AM

Thee and thou are still occasionally heard in association with verbs in the imperative or subjunctive (itself almost but not quite extinct). Be thou...were thee...etc. Yow and Ye are still common personal pronouns in some dialects, the first in west midlands speech, the latter in Northern Ireland country areas. Y and TH are often interchangeable in dialect. For example, Yon and Thon. People tend to form their speech, not in individual words, but in word strings. Sometimes, an archaic phrase lingers on for use in to convey particular contexts.