Talk:Yorkshire dialect/Archive 2

Yorkshire dialect is dead
Come on guys. Dialect Yorkshire is dead. It was all but dead well over half a century ago. Not even my grandparents who were Yorkshire millworkers a hundred years ago, before the first world war, spoke Yorkshire dialect (well not much anyway). Virtually no one today speaks Yorkshire dialect as part of normal life execept for a few farmers and old coal miners, and then only as part of being in 'the club' They speak normal English the rest of the time - today they, and all the rest of us Yorkshire folk just speak normal English with a Yorkshire accent, and with a few odd dialect words chucked in. Stop winding up all those poor foreigners with tall tales. The situation is the same all over Britain - for all practical purposes all of Britain's regional dialects of English are dead or as good as dead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.14.25 (talk) 20:28, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The article doesn't say much about words. You're right that most of the words have disappeared from everyday life, but the article is more concerned with pronunciation.  The pronunciations of Yorkshire are still different from other parts of the country.  Epa101 (talk) 11:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Whilst living in West Yorkshire, I found that a plethora of people spoke like this, even the police. It's not so much old people as much as class; I lived in Wakefield which is full of working class people. 82.32.11.95 (talk) 11:08, 3 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes but the first poster in this section says "dialect is dead" not "accent" (pronunciation) which is what the two above replies are talking about.And the second person has ironically picked a place (Wakefield) as their example which is symbolic of how both dialects and then accents disappear with dramatic demographic changes in the past few decades caused at least partly by its new status as a commuter town for Leeds and the fact that a former strongly Labour constituency is now a very close (Labour/Tory) marginal.


 * I live near Wakefield as well. I think that there is a serious point here though.  It's no use to reference the Survey of English Dialects in this day and age.  Even in Wakefield, they don't speak quite like that any more.  Most of the article is now referenced by sources from more modern research, but the problem here is that post-SED research has been more patchy.  Do rhotic accents still exist in the western fringes of Yorkshire?  No research has been done in those parts.  I took that part out of the article owing to the lack of a reference, and it has been put back in.  I'm not familiar with that region.  How are we to know which elements of traditional dialect have died out and which are still going strong?  Epa101 (talk) 09:12, 2 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I can only think that you, 92.5.14.25, don't get out from your house much, and haven't heard actual people talking for quite a while. People have their accents the same as they ever have. As far as specific dialect words, or sentence structure, it might be that you haven't noticed. Until you hear lots of different people speaking, you might well think your local dialect is the "normal" one, and that everybody uses words the same way you do, albeit with a different pronunciation (aka accent). The same way many Americans sincerely insist they don't have any accent at all.


 * "Snicket" is the obvious one, though moving from Yorkshire to the South East, I've quite often had to translate the odd word I use from Yorkshire into Southerner or RP. You don't notice how strong your own dialect (and accent) is until you spend a lot of time somewhere else. After a while, either I've got used to speaking in a way they understand down here, or they've got used to how I talk. My accent still sounds quite strong (and proud!) to me. 188.29.164.244 (talk) 21:06, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

But who uses RP in the south east (or anywhere else) even the Queen hasn't for decades. And snicket isnt even used all over Yorkshire.I've spent a fair bit in the South East and can only think of a few words off the top of my head that are used in Yorkshire that you would have to explain ('while' for 'till', whatever alleyway word is used in the part of Yorkshire the speakers from, breadcake (although again that not used all over Yorkshire), fishcake (means something else outside Yorkshire), nesh but again only used in some parts of Yorkshire and once used all over England (see Thomas Hardy's Woodlanders for Dorset use in 19th century), mardy, gip. Can anyone think of any others? if time can't re  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.98.80.38 (talk) 12:08, 18 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Maungy is used instead of mardy in some parts of Yorkshire (e.g. Wakefield). This is one of the few words I can think of that has a very local connection.  Mardy is really a Midland word that creeps into South Yorkshire, and it is used over a very wide area.  I don't think that it's ever been in the case that the majority of words used in Yorkshire were not common English words (or at least not for several centuries anyway).  Certainly most words in Joseph Wright's transcriptions of Windhill dialect were common English ones, but usually pronounced differently.  It's a bit arbitrary to say when a dialect dies.  As there is a sizeable literature on dialect research in Yorkshire, it's right that it has its own article.  It's just important to include comments from the likes of Petyt who said that most people don't speak like Joseph Wright any more.  Epa101 (talk) 15:46, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

As a young person from Yorkshire, Yorkshire dialect is not at all dead. I'm from Leeds and you hear it all the time, my teachers in school even spoke it very broadly. My Science teacher went as far as teaching us the old (Cumbric, I think) Sheep Counting numbers (Tethera, Methera etc.) Someone made a good point that you realise how broad a speaker you are when you speak to non-speakers.

Also, I think we should add more about Cumbric. It's added quite a bit to the dialect, the sheep counting is a good example of it. Yorkshire Dialect makes sense to have a lot of Celtic influence, too. (Yr Hen Ogledd, the Brigantes and another example is Dewsbury's etymology having Welsh origin which correlates with Yr Hen Ogledd). 86.2.213.86 (talk) 07:14, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm sure it would be a good idea to have more about the history of the origin of Yorkshire dialects. Though I'm a bit puzzled about references above to Cumbric and to Celtic influences. As I understand it Yorkshire dialects are in fact remnants of Northumbrian or Northern English the English language variety once coterminous with the old Anglo-saxon Kingdom of Northumbria (i.e. north of the Humber) which stretched as as far as the Forth of Forth. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.232.128 (talk) 12:26, 30 March 2017 (UTC)


 * With regards to the survival of dialect, opinions vary widely. I find that one person will say that dialect is as alive as ever and then another person from the same area will say that it is virtually dead.  In terms of the influence of earlier language, this would be on words rather than on pronunciation.  Petyt's research on Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield in 1970-1 found that "very few items now in common usage are regionally specific and worthy of inclusion in a 'dialect dictionary'" (see page 340).  I know that these towns were likely to have been amongst the first to lose their dialect, but surely even the most rural areas must be at a similar stage by 2017.  Any section on the influence of Cumbric or Norse or any other lexical influence would have to include this caveat.
 * There is then the question of what source to use. There is a section in Kellett's Yorkshire Dictionary.  This is not an academic publication, but Kellett was a linguist and his account does not seem to have been challenged by specialists.  Joseph Wright gave thorough details for the Windhill dialect, but I'm not sure how applicable that would be to the rest of Yorkshire.  Epa101 (talk) 11:36, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Though I don't doubt that many modern school teachers in Leeds speak with a distinct Yorkshire accent, and may well use the odd dialect word from time to time, still it must be a century or more ago since any Yorkshire teacher said anything like 'Eeh lad tha knows nowt dost tha? If tha dun't start to frame thissen tha'll be getting a leathering from t'eadmaster". In fact I doubt that even a hundred years ago any teacher in Leeds could get a job if they didn't speak approximate Standard English. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.173.147 (talk) 16:38, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Definite Article
The section on the Definite Article refers to the Yorkshire definite article t as a contracted form of 'the'. Is this right? Is it not a relic of the Danish definite article 'het'? It seems to me far more often pronounced as eht (where eh is the schwa vowel) than teh. The dropping of the initial h would be regular in Yorkshire dialects, as it says elsewhere in the article, but I don't see why th became t if it is really from 'the'. 90.240.104.251 (talk) 12:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/darhp.htm Here is an academic view on it. I can see what you mean here, but I think that it was said as teh about fifty years ago.  If you type in "Skelmanthorpe" on http://www.collectbritain.com/collections/dialect, you can find a very, very broad Yorkshire accent, and this says it as teh.  Epa101 (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * www.collectbritain.com has moved, you will find the audio dialects at http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects - view by county S-Z and select Yorkshire Kildwyke (talk) 06:53, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I concur with the OP on the likelihood of descent from the definite article "het". However, I am not sure that this would have come from the Danish language. As a linguistics layman, it seems to me that what the Scandinavian languages have contributed to English is vocabulary rather than basic elements like articles. Is it not more likely that the "het" concerned should be the neuter definite article from the Frisian language? The Frisians, after all, were part creators of Yorkshire English, their ethnonym being reflected in places like Friezland and Monk Fryston. This definite article in modern Dutch, certainly, is found reduced in surnames such as van't Hek and van't Hoff. Taylormc52 (talk) 20:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Taylormc52 (talk • contribs) 19:44, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Nowt
"Nowt" does not sound like note. The Bradford version, the one that doesn't rhyme with "out". I can't actually think of any English RP word it does rhyme with, and no other Yorkshire word except "owt". Do the lovely people of Bradford have a unique phoneme? I bet the Danish or somebody use the phoneme.

188.28.128.115 (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I know what you mean. It doesn't in broad West Yorkshire, but a lot of people have changed how they say "note".  This phoneme is not unique though.  It's the usual vowel in Manchester, Nottingham, etc. for the GOAT vowel.  Epa101 (talk) 11:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

In Sheffieeld owt and nowt ussually rhyme with bolt.I think the same applies to other eord pairs with the same "long-o vs short o" distinction as my teacher called the distinction. There's sometime's a deliberate confusion between court (vb), caught (vb), court(n) and court (as in royal,legal or romance). [source, personal experience]

Also the words owt and nowt rhyme with the word fault

80.195.221.201 (talk) 22:10, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Early History should be a separate section
Hi y'all!! I want to point to this article from A Gest of Robyn Hode, which is a late Middle English poem written in a ca 15th century Northern/East Midlands dialect (think West Yorks. & South Yorks.) But there are only 2 historical sentences in the lead, & only 1 sentence in Early History. (The latter is also confusingly written). That's really not enough to make this article worth pointing to from a history-of-English-&-English-dialects perspective. There is quite a bit of info in Skeats' English dialects from the eighth century to the present day (1911), which is only referenced once in the lead & never mentioned again. Skeats' other book Nine specimens of English dialects (1896) contains an 17th century broadside example & an example from North Riding. I propose splitting Early History from Written Accounts, and expanding Early History with the Skeats' info. This will give my readers a nice solid landing site in this interesting article. I'm working on it now, so it should show up in a week or so. Ta-ta for now! --AnalyticalHistoricalHobbyist (talk) 15:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

While meaning "until"
Just want to say to whoever wrote the last bit about the word "while" meaning "until" has got it spot on. After recently moving to University most southern people looked at me all confused when I used the words... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 150.237.47.4 (talk • contribs) 08:26, 15 June 2005 (UTC)
 * Why is this confusing to anyone? "While" does mean "until"; context is all. Yer Romans knew that, and they weren't the only ones either. Paul Tracyundefined

more tiresome rubbish about someone from Yorkshire not being understood by a Southerner (or for that matter anyone south of Dronfield or west of Keighley!)...unless you're about 150 years old and from the more impenetrable depths of North Yorkshire I can't imagine anyone having problems understanding you (I think I've got a bit of knowledge here being from Wakefield and working all over England). Here again we have this embarrassing folksiness creeping in which so often disfigures articles on the Yorkshire dialect and embarrasses me as a Yorkshireman.Yes "while" is not used in the south-east but unless you have the intellect of a newly born baby its pretty obvious what it means...

I'm a fairly new lass here, but grew up in Yorkshire (Sheffield, to be precise, ducks) and am interested in the project. Is it worth noting in the "popular culture" section that the Sisters of Mercy album "First and Last and Always" includes the song "Nine While Nine"? The band was formed in Leeds, hence the Yorkshire dialect in the song title. Kamagrian (talk) 13:40, 12 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure it's not the word "while" that makes anybody confused. It's the fact it gets said like "wahh" which clearly makes no sense in any context. 80.74.248.142 (talk) 14:17, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

A 'See also' tab should be created and the hyperlink for 'Scandinavian York' should be transferred into that section of the article
In my opinion, a 'See also' tab should be created for the 'Scandinavian York' hyperlink as in my opinion it looks strange seeing a hyperlink on a tab. Xboxsponge15 (talk) 11:10, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

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West Riding examples
Hi I find the West Riding examples useful, but do you have any sources that they are coming from? This might help with specifics about phonetics. It also seems to be from a particular type of speech (early 20th century, perhaps)? Any minutiae could be useful to know, and certainly citations are desired. Thanks! Wolfdog (talk) 18:20, 12 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello, I gave these examples as a council member of the Yorkshire Dialect of a generalised and slightly more conservative West Riding dialect though still modern so I find the changes to the "20th" century dialect somewhat confusing here, since it implies broad and slightly conservative pronunciation features (retention of older /a/ in "mak", "tak" versus recent "mek", "tek") is outdated by today's standards. The corrections that have been given are also strangely incorrect, such as t' being pronounced at the beginning of utterances or after /s/.
 * For some of these sentences I just thought them up on the spot as a dialect speaker, for others I took direct textual examples of dialect. For those texts I took directly and can remember the source of: "it mud ha bin war" is from Rod Dimbleby's flyers on the Let's Talk Tyke course running currently, "hug a poak...", "cowd watter" and "mak moor brass aat on't" are from Arnold Kellett's Basic Guide to Broad Yorkshire, "yo can leead a hoss to t'troff" is from the earliest dialect recordings of Yorkshire dialect, which can be found on Internet Archive. "Here's hauf a craan" is from Tony Capstick comes home (findable in Yorkshire dialect Classics by A.Kellett). "Experience is a dear schooil" is from a John Hartley passage.
 * "Them at eyts t'moast puddin" hardly needs any introduction with how well-known a saying it is.
 * As for phonology obviously there is some sparcity in data collection on broad dialect specifically since not everyone speaks it and even then not all the time and to varying degrees. However, for general features such as long vowel realisations in traditional WR dialect there's data by Wakelin as far as good modern sources.
 * I hope this has cleared some things up.
 * the Fendditokes (talk) 02:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm a bit lost on certain fronts. You say you provide a generalised and slightly more conservative West Riding dialect but are confused that "20th century" implies broad and slightly conservative pronunciation features. Right. Isn't that what you just said?
 * Although I appreciate your personal knowledge as a native speaker, editors are expected to cite reliable sources when asked. I also appreciate the mention of Dimbleby, Kellett, Capstick, etc., but can you actually cite those sources (assuming they're credible) with page numbers please? Also, do you know a source describing no t' being pronounced at the beginning of utterances or after /s/. It's not that I doubt you, but that the page currently doesn't provide those details, so adding such (with a source) would be very illuminating for readers. My foray into DAR research suggests the phenomenon is quite complicated and what you may hear as a lack of /t/ at the beginning of words is feasibly a glottal stop.
 * Could you elaborate on why you feel that using slashes (phonemic transcription) is justified here? Unless we establish a page-wide phonemic transcription for Yorkshire dialect, we're probably confusing readers, for example by having the Phonology section describe certain variants (in square brackets, you'll notice) and then phonemicizing that in your examples in some inconsistent ways. For example, phonetically, home as [uəm] is phonemically something like /oːm/ if we establish a Yorkshire standard or /əʊm/ if we use RP as our standard or /oʊm/ if we use WP diaphonemic transcription. Instead of having to argue all this out, why don't we just go with my original change and use square brackets in your somewhat-narrow examples, which we both agree are based upon a particular era and sub-region of Yorkshire?
 * "Them at eyts t'moast puddin" hardly needs any introduction with how well-known a saying it is. This statement presupposes a lay reader's knowledge, which is unwise. For example, as an American, I'm not familiar with the phrase at all.
 * Thanks for processing all my comments! I hope you take it all in good faith. The article needs a lot of cleanup in general. Wolfdog (talk) 23:13, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * By conservative features I mean of older but still living speakers. An example of a truly outdated feature from the beginning of the 20th, for example, would be use of /eː/ for ME /ɛː/ in polysyllabic words of French origin such as "dacent" rather than modern "deacent".
 * For those sentences I can cite directly, I can cite the books where they were collated. I am unsure however about a pamphlet.
 * For DAR, yes the article can be rendered as a glottal stop allophonically but it's still not realised phonetically in the contexts given. Like in any English dialect with the presence of allophonic glottal stops, you phonotactically cannot have a glottal stop after /s, d, t, z/ in the same syllable in coda and you cannot have /t/ as a glottal stop in syllable onset.
 * The only exception to pronunciation of DAR is the Holme Valley area where, like in Lancashire dialect, /θ/ may be found before words with initial vowels, but that's a different phoneme.
 * For the square brackets Vs slanted: I understand that creating a phonemic table would prove helpful, but there hasn't been establishment of phoneme data in West Riding dialect by linguists as in, say, Scots. The only thing that comes close to consistently mapping out proper phonemic data was work on the Windhill variety of WR dialect by Joseph Wright, but this was before IPA in the 1880s.
 * I take issue with the use of sets like the ones proposed for home. Firstly it implies that dialect developed from Standard English in London which obviously isn't true. Secondly Standard English vowel sets don't map very well at all onto West Riding dialect if any traditional dialect. Yes /uə/ is the most commonly found equivalent of the /əʊ̯/ GOAT in RP, but then there are many examples for instance of Standard English words in the GOAT set which use other regularly occuring vowels in their cognates in dialect. You can have /oː/ as in "knaw", /ɒɪ̯/ as in "coit", /ɒ/ as in "ovver", /ə/ as in "windo" etc...
 * I will have a look at using sources I can give for those sentences that have them and review what research that has been conducted on WR dialect phonology for use in sources, but until then I ask that no changes be made to the transcriptions as they are.
 * I will also need to address the phonology section when I have time, since although some traditional features are given, many features are non-traditional and this is confusing as to what Yorkshire's dialects exactly are. I believe it's best that this page focus purely on traditional speech, in the same way that you wouldn't write about Standard Scottish English when writing about Scots.
 * Since North and East Riding dialect on the one hand and West Riding dialect on the other differ so much from eachother, it may be best to create separate pages for the two of them. At the very least this page needs a large rework but at least it's further along than most of the other pages broaching traditional dialects in England.
 * Thank you.
 * T
 * There's also variation, some speakers for one example may merge the vowel in "cooit" (coot) and "coit" you say Fendditokes (talk) 02:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, adding citations would be great, thanks. Let me know what your research unearths.
 * So again, some of the trouble with you using slashes/strokes instead of square brackets is that we're getting into some level of detail/nuance/specifics here rather than keeping the transcription strictly phonemic. I approve of this! I think you and I are both very much on the same page about worries over creating a phonemic table. So, can I go ahead and make the change back to square brackets?
 * I'm not necessarily against your North-and-East Riding vs. West Riding split idea. However, you should certainly be ready with formal academic sources that affirm your split into those two topics as something more than arbitrary. Thanks! Wolfdog (talk) 13:14, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * thank you, I'm looking up my sources as I write this: go ahead with the square brackets but leave the actual phonological details to me.
 * As for the split across Yorkshire there's already a Wikipedia Article on the Humber-Lune which is the isogloss that splits the dialects of Yorkshire though it isn't the most detailed possible. Fendditokes (talk) 16:01, 15 April 2024 (UTC)