Talk:Norfolk dialect

Heh ye got a loight boi ?
I can understand how people can maybe confuse the Norfolk accent with those from the West Country, but they really are quite different. The WC accent, to me, is the one that's most often 'put on' by people wanting to create a sterotypical 'rural' voice, and this often impacts on any attempts by non-Norfolkers to affect a Norfolk accent - and it's usually unsuccesful ! I think the key difference is speed; to my ears, the WC accent is particularly slow and drawling, whereas Norfolk people can often talk surprisingly (to outsiders) quickly - and this is not just in the Norwich area as the article suggests.

A couple of things not on the vocab list that I can remember my grandmother using : can anyone else remember 'tricolate' meaning to tidy up (maybe using a dwile !) and a slightly odder one (which I found myself accidentally using the other day !) - fagarian (not sure on spelling - pronounced fa-gair-ian) referring to details, complexities, or even an appliance or tool (as in 'I can't be doin wi all this fagarian', or 'press the button on the fagarian to switch it off' etc)

Phlegmatist (talk) 22:31, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Some people in norfolk speak with westcountry type accents.

Eh?
No they don't. People from the West Country talk with west Country accents, those of us who come from Norfolk speak with Norfolk accents.
 * Hmmm. I note the article states that Broad Norfolk has all but died out (FOND notwithstanding) - what's spoken there now? Kinitawowi 15:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC) (Hunstanton 1980-2001)

By my understanding, the surest way to tell a West coutry accent.. from a norfolk one ,is the letter R from the west country, is long. ie; caRRRR and aalmost rolled..... but is short when in Norfolk. ie; Car. just my perception, but have picked it up so many times.. Rodger, from Melbourne..(61.68.134.146 (talk) 06:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC))

Another phrase?
I remember my Grandma talking about her Mother saying "your in my dark" or some thing like that when some one blocked her light, Any one else heard Norfolk talkers using this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.12.241.11 (talk) 19:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Rhoticism
Is it rhotic? The examples seem to indicate it is, which would distinguish it from RP. This indicates that it is not. This is a major subdivision of English accents that should be mentioned in the consonant category. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.198.12 (talk) 09:25, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Difficulties encountered in rendering Broad Norfolk on TV etc.
The following text was included in an earlier version, but was cut by an editor named Aunt Entropy. In my opinion the original, below, is an accurate statement of the position. Though I am not familiar with the TV series 'Kingdom' I well remember the effort made at Broad Norfolk by the distinguished actor Alan Bates in 'The Go Between'. It seemed to come out more as a Derby/Notts accent. If Alan Bates could not imitate Norfolk, who in the world can, other than genuine Norfolk folk? 'The Norfolk dialect is notoriously difficult to imitate, and a general-purpose Mummerset yokel accent is often substituted in films and television plays, for example in the British television series Kingdom. This may be acceptable to television directors, but to those familiar with the genuine thing it sounds appalling.' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Strangerbird (talk • contribs) 10:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Ws and Vs, THs and Ts
I grew up in Norfolk and have travelled around the county a fair bit, but I've never experienced anyone pronouncing their Vs as Ws or their THs as Ts. Tell me if you know of a part of Norfolk where this does happen but I'm not convinced the reliability of the one reference provided. I've only ever heard Vs pronounced as Ws by an Indian man and the TH prounced as T seems more of a Carribean or Irish thing (or ting!). Matthewcgirling (talk) 23:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Wiki has to be based on cited references and not on personal opinions. Pronunciation of V/W/(F) and TH/T/(D) is an interesting, and probably much discussed, aspect of variants of the Germanic languages. I don't think the Nofolk V as W is as obvious as in Dickens' Sam Weller for example. However, for what its worth, I feel it is hard to speak with an authentic Norfolk accent without some softening of the V's and some hardening of the Th's. Motmit (talk) 21:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The Boy John letters have "wickerage" for vicarage and "tru" for through. The use of "troshing" for threshing is well known.GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm aware that Wikipedia is based on citations and not opinions, but... the term "reliable source" is extremely subjective so involves opinion. Anyway, this is a difficult issue since I don't think we would find a reference countering the argument - nobody would write an article about how Norfolk people pronounce their Vs as Vs. It might help if we could find what part of Norfolk the V/W thing comes from. Matthewcgirling (talk) 11:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * "wittles" (victuals) appears in this OCR of Broad Norfolk : being a series of articles and letters (1893). And page 89 of the pdf states "tree" as the usual pronounciation of "3". GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:21, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Good find Graeme, should we say "historically..." then with reference to the above?Matthewcgirling (talk) 22:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I certainly remember v pronounced like w from the 1950s. My great-uncle Ernie (or Arnie, as he was better known)(1887-1972), who lived his life in Hainford, 7 miles north of Norwich, used to say e.g.he had to git the 'wetinary'(veterinary surgeon)to come and see to his sow! Also he would talk about 'eatun his wittuls'.Strangerbird (talk) 11:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

verb declension
If that is the right phrase. I believe this largely covered by the first entry under grammar, but I recall our Spanish language teacher illustrating the lack of different endings in dialect speech (compared to Spanish) with the following

Verb: "To go"
 * Present tense
 * I go down city
 * you go down city
 * he/she/it go down city
 * we go down city
 * they go down city


 * Past tense
 * I go down city yisty
 * you go down city yisty
 * he/she/it go down city yisty
 * we go down city yisty
 * they go down city yisty

and future tense was much the same. Now I expect this is an oversimplification since "gone" is used and comes out a bit like "gorn" (but then "going" comes out a bit like "gorn" too). But is there anything on dialectal grammar and verbs. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Many other verbs conjugate in this way in the past tense e.g. 'come', 'run', 'say'. Just one other point: in Norfolk don't we go 'up' the city, when we go to Norwich? I've never heard anyone talking of going 'down' the city!Strangerbird (talk) 09:00, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

"Accent; General"
I'm sorry to say that I don't think the five bullet points in the "General" section of "Accent" are up to the standard of the material on vowels and consonants. I would be happy to explain why I don't feel these points add anything to the reader's knowledge about the Norfolk accent, but if nobody disagrees with me, I suggest that the "General" section as it stands be deleted. There is a case to be made for adding a new section on prosodic aspects of Norfolk speech (which "General" attempts to address), but this would have to be written by someone with a scientific knowledge of the subject. RoachPeter (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Norwich

There is no doubt in my mind that the leading academic authority on the Norfolk dialect is Professor of Socio-Linguistics, Peter Trudgill, who is president of FOND and a Norfolk 'boy'. His book 'The Norfolk Dialect', (2003), covers much of what is in this article and considerably more. I would certainly be prepared to accept him as 'referee'on any issues.Strangerbird (talk) 09:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I have now deleted the General section. I will shortly be revising the Vowels and Consonants sections, again in consultation with Profs Trudgill and Lodge of UEA. It is important that this material should use accepted phonetic terminology, be verifiable and be backed up by references to published sources. RoachPeter (talk) 17:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't worry about "up to the standard" of the rest. Vast swathes of the article are wholly unreferenced. GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:09, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

M — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.24.231.138 (talk) 20:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Famous speakers
An anonymous editor has added the name Dr. Maud Hills to this rather odd list, without explanation. Can we be told who Dr Maud Hills is? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoachPeter (talk • contribs) 20:40, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Now removed. Also S. Fry. RoachPeter (talk) 16:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Accent: principal characteristics
Recent edit by KariakSlayer has removed mention of yod-dropping from the "principal characteristics" list. The heading for this list still refers to five points. As I see it, this introductory section sets out the most striking characteristics of the Norfolk accent in brief, and then these are returned to in detail later. You can certainly argue that this is redundant, but in that case I think the whole of "principal characteristics" should be removed. I would say either remove that section, or reinstate the bit about yod-dropping. RoachPeter (talk) 16:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Point 5 now reinstated. RoachPeter (talk) 11:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

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Um, 'keep you a dewun'
In the 4th paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_dialect#Grammar, the first about the word 'do', does the illustrative clause 'keep you a dewun' represent the more usual keep you a-doin'? Or if not, what? GeorgeTSLC (talk) 20:57, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * None of the other examples use "dew" so I think it would be clearer to use "do" consistently. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:30, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Split of the article into an article about the dialect and another about the mixture of the standard language and the dialect
Hello, this article covers both the dialect and the mixture of the standard language and the dialect. Kind regards, Sarcelles (talk) 09:08, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Uy/Oy sound
Why was this removed from the page, as it not pronounced like standard /ai/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by DustyRedSkies (talk • contribs) 22:21, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

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Merge to East Anglian English
Norfolk dialect is a sub-type of East Anglian English, e.g. as defined by Wells' (1982) Accents of English (he actually specifies the sub-type as Norwich dialect). I see a very natural merge occurring to that page. The dialect seems to have been on the wane after the 19th century. Is there any reason to keep it separate? If we do so, perhaps we could bolster it better with academic sources like Wells. This seems like the typical dialect page of some gung-ho local-pride editors, involving an infodump where much of the grammar and phonology sections are unsourced -- a bit shaky at the moment. Wolfdog (talk) 11:09, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It won't be a while until I get access to my computer so please bare with me. There are few thing I'd like to say about this and I'll do that when I can get my computer. I am also willing to put some time and effort into the article as that is clearly needed. cheers. Willbb234 21:24, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

The first point here that I'd like to make is the fact we are talking about dialect here and not accent. As such, Wells' definition isn't so relevant, especially seeing as the Norwich dialect slightly differs to the dialect from the rest of the county, especially with regards to rural speak.

Secondly, and I believe more importantly is the fact that the Norfolk dialect is distinct to the dialect of the rest of East Anglia. The county is bordered to the west by the nearly impassable fens, which has made the dialect very much different to that of cambridgeshire (also in East Anglia) and to the south by the waveney, which prevented some dialect leaking between norfolk and suffolk.

As for some sources, I have been very interested in this one from 1893 and of course Peter Trudgill's work. Wells' work also seems good for the phonetic side of things. I'm not sure how much Wells travelled throughout Norfolk, or whether he did at all? Due to the size of the county it has lead to slight variations in the dialect in different regions, especially in the modern day where more rural areas or those areas with a more elderly population have stronger accents, while those closer to norwich or to London have weak accents. It would be a real shame to lose this article; the dialect has been on a decrease for a long time and I find it sad to see something that has developed over centuries come to an end in a much shorter space of time. My guess is that Broad Norfolk will be extinct by 2050 and only faint whiffs of the dialect will exist in about 70 or 80 years time. Anyway, I hope my emotions do not get in the way of this discussion. I will try my best to improve this article if we do decide to keep it, and I think the first course of action is to buldoze large parts of the article. cheers. Willbb234 19:16, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) You make a decent point that dialect and accent are not exactly the same, but accent (phonology) is one of the major ways a dialect is delineated in linguistics, so Wells' work is indeed fairly relevant.
 * 2) This is the kind of thing we'll need solid sources to confirm.
 * 3) An 1893 source is great for showing the existence of a historical dialect-- one, as you say, on the decline. However, I want to reiterate that I'm not trying to promote that Wikipedia "lose this article", so much as just merge the information to East Anglian English. Is Norfolk dialect distinct from East Anglian dialect or, in fact, a sub-type of East Anglian dialect? Wells and I believe even Trudgill, whom you mention, treat it as a sub-type. In many ways, actually, Norfolk dialect seems to be the extreme or more representative or most salient variety within the East Anglian dialect family (like how Cockney is historically the same within the London/Estuary dialect family). I think your bulldozing idea is a good start too. Wolfdog (talk) 16:41, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest that this is a case for the WP:PM considering the disagreement over the proposed merger. My two cents, for what it's worth, is that it's perfectly possible to have both an East Anglian English article and a separate article documenting specific features of the Norfolk dialect, especially any historical aspects of it. If there are issues with this article then they should be raised and dealt with separately, but merging it without following the correct process and without obtaining consensus is a clear overreaction. Antonine (talk) 22:27, 30 September 2023 (UTC)