“Mek thisen at ‘ome, lass,” says Rod Dimbleby, shortly after the Guardian arrives at his Yorkshire dialect class. He introduces the group of nearly two-dozen mostly grey-haired students.
They pipe up cheerily: “Na then,” and “ey up!”
“Are we reyt?” he asks before beginning the course, which the Yorkshire Dialect Society has created with the aim of increasing awareness of its rich linguistic history in an effort to preserve it.
This is the fifth session of an oversubscribed six-week course, Let’s Talk Tyke!, taking place on a drizzly Friday morning at Keighley library in West Yorkshire.
The class is part of an increasingly popular movement to revive the vernacular, which was once spoken by millions of people but now has almost died out.
“We’ve got to get more young people involved,” says Dimbleby, a member of the society, which was established in 1897. The feedback so far has been incredibly positive, but the class is mostly made up of retirees. He is hoping to run another course on Saturday mornings, when younger people are available.
“Most people’s experience of dialect is what they heard from their grandparents. They’ve never read it or written it, so it’s been a new experience for them.”
Today the class is learning about the difference between the West Riding and East Riding dialects and we begin by listening to a poem written in East Yorkshire dialect in the 1930s by the poet F Austin Hyde.
Dimbleby is a retired German teacher and teaches Yorkshire dialect as he would any other language, with a focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening.
There are some challenges in making it accessible though. As it was always a spoken dialect with many different variations, the written aspect is not formalised, so it tends to be an imperfect approximation.
“You write it as near as you can, but it’s not always possible,” he says. “For example, ‘nothing’ in Yorkshire is ‘nowt’. How do you spell ‘nowt’?” It is usually written “nowt”, he says, but some people would read that to rhyme with “out”, when in most of Yorkshire it has more of an “ohwt” sound that is hard to get across without resorting to the phonetic alphabet.
When the group attempts some translations, it is clear how much the dialect seems to cling to its Old Norse roots, maintaining links to modern Scandinavian languages.
The Yorkshire “bairn” for child is similar to the Norwegian barn, the pronunciation of “sner” for snow in East Yorkshire mimics the Norwegian word snø and “broon” for brown is pronounced the same as brun. As for the Yorkshire Dales – a “dale” of course is a valley, or as Norwegians would say, dal.
The word “eventually” has come from the romance languages, characterised by its four syllables, less common in Yorkshire dialect. One might instead use “bih t’end” – by the end – or simply “at last”.
”Miserable”, another romance word, would become the poetic “heart-sluffened” when translated into Yorkshire.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the Yorkshire dialect and I think it’s important to keep it going,” says Joanna Kaye, a retired counsellor who is taking the course.
She said previous generations had always spoken in Yorkshire vernacular, but that hers had been discouraged from following in their parents’ footsteps. She added that television and radio featured few regional accents or dialects, and there was a sense that it was not possible to succeed speaking in a Yorkshire dialect.
“When we were children it was drummed out of us and it was all Queen’s English. If we spoke in Yorkshire accents it was frowned upon,” she said. “My mother, although she taught me to speak properly, she could speak in the dialect.”
She said she was increasingly trying to speak more dialect at home with her husband.
It is a similar story for Jean Crampton, here for the first time. She has brought a small notebook to write words used by her parents, who died more than a decade ago.
“When I dressed up for the first time to go to grammar school, my dad said ‘dun’t she look grand’,” she said. “And that’s why I’ve come, to be reminded of them. After bereavement, that immediacy fades, and language is one of the things that can help bring it back into your mind, which is fabulous.”
Test thisen wi’ these Yorkshire phrases:
1. Sumbdy’s got ter keep band in t’ nick.
2. Ah’ve bin laikin fer awmost a wick.
3. Just hark at that! Asta ivver heard owt ser daft?
4. Tha dunt expect mi ter eyt that – it’s clap-cowd.
5. Ah wor flayed ter deeath at fust.
Answers:
1. Somebody has to keep things running smoothly.
2. I’ve been laid off for almost a week.
3. Just listen to that! Have you ever heard anything so daft?
4. You don’t expect me to eat that – it’s stone cold.
5. I was frightened to death at first.
