BS: UK dialect help

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Mr Happy
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 09:19 AM

'ee a'm ah'lus glad t'see a man like thee,
tha's as welcome lad, as welcome as can be,
pull thy chair reet up t't tehrble,
stop as long as thou art able.
for ah'm ah'lus glad t'see a moan like thee!'

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 11:01 AM

Dermod of Salisbury raise a very interesting point, that's made me think. people are quite inconsistent, perhaps using thee in one sentence and you in another. And the y/th interchangability is obvious in a lot of speakers. Old-fashioned Cumbrians(and many not so old-fashioned) will always say "yon" but they'd never say "ye", only "tha/thee". And there is nothing incongruous in a Stoky saying "Take thi coat off. Drink your tea".

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 12:13 PM

Hi, Tis The Other Dorset Liz to stick her tow peneth in...

"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 ..."

This is an interesting thought, but I find it unlikely as Dorset's never been a major Mettle county, we go in more for Farms, buttons & Stone. & I definately Agree with LTS Dorset has, & I expect always will be rather behind the times (Just Like me *grin*)

The thing about dialect I find is for a longtime you never realise your speeking it, cos to you what you say is just normal...
I've lived in the same house in a middle of nowhere village since I was 18months old (20 odd yrs) & the biggest School I whent to was in Dorchester (the smallest county town in England) 10 miles away, where we almost all spoke with some degree of Dorset Bur or other, so no1 blinked an eyelid when you used words like "gurt" "brimble" "dimpsey" or "Scammy" but then you wander into the wider world & people start getting confuzzled!

as for thee, thou, thy, ect... I dont think I've noticed them perticularly amongst youngsters down here, but then it might simply bee that my ears are used to them I nolonger hear. but one thing I do say is "aye" and "arr" especially before a but, when I plan to disagree, & Again I'd never noticed this till some1 picked me up on it t'other day

~Lizabee (t'other1)

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From:
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 01:28 PM

As a young American passing through Heathrow on my first trip overseas, I stood with my suitcase, waiting to get on a shuttle. A stewardess, descending, looked at me and said, "Catches fall off." I checked the catches on my suitcase, and they seemed to be fine, so I started for the bus again. She planted a hand firmly on my chest and said, pretty sharply, "Catches fall off!" It took a long time to perk through my brain that what she was saying was "Coach is full, luv."

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: CraigS
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 04:21 PM

I've spent time in a lot of bits of England, and can say that thee/thou are in use up to the Scottish borders, from at least as far south as north Derbyshire (Alfreton, Matlock, Clay Cross, Chesterfield). The vowel sounds tend to be shorter in the north-west, more thi and tha, changing to thee and thar ( or even thoo ) as one moves east. The North-Eastern dialects are divided on these issues, and are distinguished by the locals as to how they go to places - there are "ganners" and "gaers", which roughly distinguishes the fans of Sunderland and Newcastle football clubs. What is fascinating is that, whether they use the archaic forms or not, midlanders tend to understand them on first hearing, whereas southerners do not. Lancastrians are unable to say baht, as in Ilkley Moor Baht 'At, and insist on saying bowt in Burnley, Accrington and other places where they still point at passing aeroplanes.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: lady penelope
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 05:37 PM

Penny S. - "Yews don't like to grow on clay" well, there are plenty of yew trees in the south east growing on good "London clay" and chalk downs, so I'm not sure about that statement.

It may be a family peculiarity, but my mother ( mind you my dad does it too ) and her sisters regularly use 'ye' and 'thee'. These terms are only used when special emphasis is wanted, so I'm not sure this is an actual "dialect use" of the terms. I have heard other Glaswegians using these terms, but not frequently or regularly. Just thought I'd throw that in.

TTFN M'Lady P.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 07:03 AM

GUEST,[e-mail]
isogloss - what a good word. I used to be able to place a person in the Black Country (mid - England - industrial - NOT Birmingham) to the nearest town and in years gone by (20c) there were people (eg salesmen) who could place them to the nearest street.

Curiously I got confused by Dudley and Coventry until I realised there was a mass migration in the mid 19c from Dudley to Coventry.

I may have been losing the ability with age or the homogenisation that is the media but I do feel that living in Canada and then NZ killed that ability very quickly. And yes I did take on a lot of Kiwi in the first few months - it is called survival. Too right mate!

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Orac
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 07:53 AM

Steve Parker... thanks for the link. I'm very surprised that the person writing this had never come across the word highth (or heighth)when he was still in England as its still very common but maybe not in the south. As I'm a draughtsman maybe I hear the word more often than most so I notice when the use of the older form accurs. Until fairly recently I said it this way myself as all my family did .. I probably still do sometimes.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Mr Happy
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 08:53 AM

'And yes I did take on a lot of Kiwi in the first few months'

blacking up mr red?

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,a Dorset boy
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 01:00 PM

http://www.netaxs.com/people/salvucci/EngDialLnx.html

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Snuffy
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 07:18 PM

Although I am familiar with the the use of thou in several areas, it has always appeared to be limited to the auxiliary verbs only - art, hast, dost, canst, shalt, etc. I don't think I've heard people using forms like thinkst, rememberst, singst, runst, etc.

What is other peoples experience of this?

WassaiL! V

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Trevor
Date: 27 Nov 02 - 01:46 PM

Tha canna say munna 'cos it enna right, and
Tha munna say canna 'cos it enna polite

(South Shropshire)

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: the lemonade lady
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 05:56 AM

Trev: I dunna believe it! Ask Val Littlehales.

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 10:00 AM

My father (born 1899) grew up in a rural area in western Kentucky. He spoke a very peculiar dialect. I call it peculiar because I have never heard it anywhere else. I haven't spent much time in Kentucky (other than visiting his close relatives) so I don't know how widespread it is. Also, I know very little about his ancestry.

I've often wondered whether his dialect could be linked to some region of England.

He might say "Y'better gitchee some iodine fer that cut." Gitchee = get you, but I wonder if it is derived from "get ye" or even "get thee"? Likewise, "Cainchee hear that?" = "Can't you..."

Chimney was pronounced "chimley".

The kitchen sink was a "zink". I suspect this was related to the metal zinc. Were galvanized steel washtubs ever coated with zinc, rather than tin?

I recognized a few of his words as archaisms. For example "holp" (pronounced "hope") for "helped". ("Help" was pronounced "hep".)

Does anyone recognize this?

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 10:43 AM

Could be West Country English, Jim. "Getchee" would be "get ye", rather than "get thee". I think "holpen" for "helped" crops up in Chaucer (Middle English, central and south-eastern England).

"Galvanised" means "coated in zinc", btw; steel coated in tin is tinplate ... but I wouldn't think it's connected with the accent. If you can give us a few more examples, we might be able to locate the area more accurately (or no at all!)

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Lizabee
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 06:16 PM

In Somerset 's' is usually pronounced 'z'

hence Sink would become 'zink' without a trace mettle to be seen.

I'm not saying that he'd of had somerset roots, but simple sound replacement is more likely than what an object could possibly be made of

~Lizabee (who needs to reset her cookie me thinks!)

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,guest - Bob
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 06:29 PM

jim

that sounds more like the Norfolk (Naaaf*ck) dialect to me
There is a suggestion that the dialect from E Anglia is closer to the american pronunciation

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: Penny S.
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 06:48 PM

lady penelope - that clay remark was meant to apply only to the glacial boulder clay which I had just referred to - I know that there are a good many venerable yews in the London Basin - some threatened by airport expansion near Heathrow (or Cliffe), on the Gault Clay at the foot of the North Downs, and on the Clay with Flints on the top of the Downs - they seem to prefer that to the bare Chalk in many ways - Hampshire is a bit sparse for the ancient ones. There is a clear difference in distribution between the eastern counties and the western, with the division remarkably close to the A5 and the Alfred/Guthrum treaty line, and the almost coterminus boulder clay. There is one veteran tree marked in Anglia, east of Norwich (can't instantly recall the parish name)and a group of others in the Danelaw around the Peak District - above the boulder clay. There has to be some explanation. I can't quite see the Vikings moving in and attacking these trees, which would have, if the population was anything like that in the rest of the country, included some already large, ancient trees which would have been hard work to destroy - they leap up again if cut down, like coppiced deciduous trees. The properties of the soil and underlying rock type seem more likely. I'd need to check the Atlas of British Flora to see if younger yews are found in that area - I think they may be - but according to the lists held by the Conservation Foundation (I think that's right), there aren't any notable for being older than a thousand years north and east of that line, apart from those in Derbyshire.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: GUEST,Penny S. (elsewhere)
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 12:16 PM

And in that posting I forgot the point of the whole comment - that the A5 divided the English-ruled land from the Danelaw, with its ample place name evidence for Scandinavian language input, so it should be expected to be an isogloss - that this legal entity of a boundary matches a soil boundary is curious, and in my view requires explanation - it doesn't show up on the usual, solid, geology maps, so I had missed it at first. Drift maps show the glacial stuff, which, certainly in Essex, just north of the Thames, shows up as a pronounced positive feature in the landscape. Solid maps show chalk in East Anglia - it's not always near enough the surface for roots to find it.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK dialect help
From: CraigS
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 08:26 PM

Holpen are all men on earth, born is God's son so dear - from the chorus of the mummer's carol Masters In This Hall, which I once had to sing solo as a child.