YORKSHIRE (and by extension the north)

[Phil]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/10/accentism-yorkshire-regional-dialects-english-snobbery?fbclid=IwAR2kNLOjVxdryku0OPmnlkVdM439qSVTPhDotDWm7K62Ngh3V-CAP6iGgh8

 

 

Brilliant article about a subject I could go on and on and on about - which means i am going to do a bit. It ALWAYS gets me that, every now and increasingly frequently again, us Yorkshire types have to justify ourselves. When I moved to London it was like learning a foreign language - I had to stop using most of the words I had grown up with 'cos the buggers couldn't understand me (my favourites are when I walked into a newsagents and asked for a Mars bar and got given a carrier bag "because its what you asked for" and then perplexing my new buddies by inviting them to the feast at Kennington Park; they thought they were going to get well fed, I was after a kicking ride on the Wall of Death). 15 years later, back in the Promised Land, I had to unlearn all these southren (yep, that's how we spell it you lot) words and start all over again because, contrary to the academics bemoaning the arrival of Estuary English (by which they meant Thames, not Humber) my native vocabulary was STILL in use. You can still buy the dialect dictionaries and, from that mucky ##### Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" to Ross Raisins "Gods Own Country" (published a few years back to immense critical acclaim).

you can STILL read proper literature in dialect and not the cod stuff. As far as the voice itself goes, this article reminds me of how actor Wilfred Pickles was hired by the BBC as their first Yorkshire speaking newsreader in the 1930s and got sacks of hate mail because of his Halifax accent. One woman told him "I don't like you Mr Pickles - you sound just like Mr Hitler" and "can't we send this dreadful man back to where he comes from?" Which is EXACTLY what the BBC did - Pickles was shafted back to "the provinces". Well, its where the Matinee Idol belonged. When that snob of all snobs, Virginia Wolf, called J B Priestley "a tradesmans writer" she was telling us that this scintillating socialist was nowt more than a bloody Tyke and not worth bothering with. When Tony Harrison wrote the poem "Them and Uz" he insisted on the validity of Yorkshire speech as, too, did the inimitable Richard Hoggart in his "Uses of Literacy" in the 1950s and in a string of books beyond. The Angry Young Men (and a few riled women) who erupted into the literary mainstream in the 1960s made a MASSIVE contribution to modernizing the cultural mainstream of the UK and (often overlooked) when the Beatles did the same thing with POP they were, lets not forget, another bunch of Northerners - John Lennon could NEVER have come from Surrey.

And then along came Thatcherism and we were all thick Northerners once again having to fight our corner - and still it goes on. Yvonne Fletcher, that ravishing red headed Egyptologist from Barnsley who you will have seen on the TV from time to time, told me how she "had to fight tooth and nail" as both a woman AND a working class YORKSHIREwoman when she was at Oxford to get where she is now. And so it goes on and on and on and, when the media luvvies (funny how Channel 4 is having the same problem with its relocation from London to Leeds as the BBC did when it Went To Salford - "WHAT! You expect me to move UP NORTH???". And odd how such outrage never greeted that arch Tory ###### Norman Tebbit when he advised unemployed Northerners to "get on yer bike" and move South in search of work in the 1970s) wake up to the fact that - hello - there's a HUGE part of England that doesn't give two ###### s about The English because the The English don't give two s about it. And that's Yorkshire. its no coincidence we joined with the rest of the Northern press yesterday with front page tales of GIVE US THE CASH - AND the trains - then we'll do the rest. But no. So we just get on with it and behave like a nation state with its own flag, national day and, yes, we STILL speak English but PEPPERED with dialect. If you don't understand, just ask. We'll either translate for you or nut you. 'Al sithee!

[Leeds Wire]

Yorkshire people themselves have to take at least part of the blame for being parodied, banging on incessantly about "God's own county" and all that. 

Katie Edwards is also at pains to tell us how amazing and wonderful her broad accent is, which goes some way to backing up my point. 

Oh and "Strong as Yorkshire Tea"? Give it a rest, eh? 

[Padge]

How you speak is only small part of being northern. 

[Phil]

12 minutes ago, Padge said:

How you speak is only small part of being northern. 

Absolutely, but, imo an important part

[Trojan]

36 minutes ago, Padge said:

How you speak is only small part of being northern. 

 

[Bearman]

Its not always just one way.

At Whitehaven on Sunday one of our volunteers ( from Oxfordshire) who was just doing his job was sneered at and told by a couple of 'Haven staff members " We can't understand you". Just to be awkward.

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Leeds Wire said:

Yorkshire people themselves have to take at least part of the blame for being parodied, banging on incessantly about "God's own county" and all that. 

Katie Edwards is also at pains to tell us how amazing and wonderful her broad accent is, which goes some way to backing up my point. 

Oh and "Strong as Yorkshire Tea"? Give it a rest, eh? 

Presumably you’re originally from Cheshire  a county famous for, what was it again? Oh aye, nowt

[GUBRATS]

Yes but how many other counties have their own ' Airline ' ?

[Leeds Wire]

16 minutes ago, Phil said:

Presumably you’re originally from Cheshire  a county famous for, what was it again? Oh aye, nowt

I'm sorry but can you type that again, this time in English please?

[Shadow]

I have been to the north.

It’s ghastly.

Gravy on chips

beer with bubbles on top

lard

and it rains

[Padge]

16 minutes ago, Shadow said:

I have been to the north.

It’s ghastly.

Gravy on chips

beer with bubbles on top

lard

and it rains

There.are far more good points than the excellent ones you listed.

[Phil]

18 minutes ago, Leeds Wire said:

I'm sorry but can you type that again, this time in English please?

No you’ll have to learn Yorkshire 

[Shadow]

15 minutes ago, Padge said:

There.are far more good points than the excellent ones you listed.

And some deluded fellow started calling a bap a tea cake 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

Which Yorkshire accent are we talking about?? 

[silverback]

33 minutes ago, Shadow said:

I have been to the north.

It’s ghastly.

Gravy on chips

beer with bubbles on top

lard

and it rains

get thi sen some tripe darn thi.

[Padge]

Just now, Shadow said:

And some deluded fellow started calling a bap a tea cake 

You mean barm cake, tea cakes have currents in them

... And we're off

 

[longboard]

2 minutes ago, Shadow said:

And some deluded fellow started calling a bap a tea cake 

..... and they are off.....................

 

There used to be a shop in Roberttown named Helen's Baps.

[Phil]

most of this proves my point, the jibes of lesser men mean as much to us as the quacking of some strange species of duck

 

[Shadow]

And they have their dinner at lunch time

[Padge]

1 minute ago, Shadow said:

And they have their dinner at lunch time

Lunch is a time of day not a meal. 

[Bearman]

2 minutes ago, Shadow said:

And they have their dinner at lunch time

What's a lunch?

Breakfast, dinner and tea. If your still hungry at bedtime you can have some supper.

Isn't 4 meals enough for you?

[longboard]

3 minutes ago, Padge said:

Lunch is a time of day not a meal. 

What do have in your time of day box?

[Padge]

1 minute ago, longboard said:

What do have in your time of day box?

My dinner. 

[Bearman]

1 minute ago, longboard said:

What do have in your time of day box?

At work I had my dinner in my snap tin.

[Shadow]

Sunday Lunch