DIALECT AND OTHER REGIONAL MATTERS

[Stanley]

DIALECT AND OTHER REGIONAL MATTERS

17 November 2004

Anyone who saw the splendid exchanges earlier this year on Oneguy about the North/South divide in Britain will have realised that regardless of the origin or scale of the divide, there is certainly a difference. What is also clear is that there are local variations, a Colner regards himself as a different being than a Barlicker.
As many of you will know I have several theories about this. The difference between the experience of Roman Civil Rule in the South and Military Rule in the North, the genetic differences resulting from inter-marriage with invaders, the cultural differences rooted in climate and the political and religious differences generated by experience and more significantly in the days of difficult transport, the remoteness of the North from the seat of power in London.
One of the key features about the history of the Isles is the manner in which a reasonably civilised accommodation was reached very early on in the process of amalgamation. It’s almost as though the collective common sense realised that as we were all inhabitants of a relatively small island it would be as well to convert internal, often tribal, antagonism to regional rivalry. How that process was conceived and accomplished is far too big a subject for this short piece but it could be an interesting field for research.
It’s true that on occasions some vitriol creeps in, attacks on Welsh holiday homes spring to mind but on the whole we shy away from such excesses. The recent ‘No’ vote to the creation of a North East Assembly is evidence of this. For whatever reason the electors decided that the status quo was preferable to another expensive layer of government.
Ideally, anyone who looks at these subjects should be detached, objective and dispassionate. I have to confess that I am badly qualified. I have an English mother, one of whose ancestors was arrested for ‘seditious riot’ in Ashton under Lyne in 1847 and my father was Australian. I have a healthy suspicion of authority and a strong leaning towards independence and individuality. It would be as well to work on the assumption that whilst striving for objectivity I am genetically programmed towards bias.
What triggered this piece off was that as I was writing an article I wanted to use the word ‘maliking’, I’ve never seen it written so the spelling is a matter of choice. It’s a dialect word and means mischievous play. It occurred to me that it might be related to ‘laiking’ a Norse word we use for play. Could a better spelling be ‘malaiking’? Laiking with a prefix suggesting bad? It fits, ‘Stop malaiking about!’ is a common injunction to children who are being too high-spirited.
As usual, other examples of completely unique words came to mind. ‘Slur’ for slip. ‘Slape’ for slippy or quick. ‘I’m just going to pop in the pub for a slape pint’. ‘Wick’ for being quick, alive or even infested. ‘That dog’s wick wi’ fleas’. ‘Twined’ for being bad-tempered, irritable.
The language difference isn’t limited to the use of unique words. There can be some interesting differences in the use of common words. My favourite is ‘while’. The best example I know of this is a notice that British Railways put up at minor level crossings protected by flashing red lights and no gate. The sign read ‘Wait while lights flash’. It wasn’t until there was an accident that the planners realised that whilst in the south this sign clearly meant wait during the period when the lights flash, in the north it was understood as ‘wait until the lights flash’. A simple but fundamental difference that resulted in a fatal accident. I’ve always been struck by the American use of the word ‘momentarily’. Their understanding is that ‘I’ll be with you momentarily’ means in a moment, in a short while. In Britain it means ‘for a short time’.
Add to these regional differences the existence of languages such as Gaelic, Cornish and Welsh and it becomes easy to understand why those in authority see standardisation of language as an essential tool of governance. ‘Received Pronunciation’ or as many people regard it ‘Talking Posh’ was promoted as the standard language. In the early days of the BBC this pressure reached its peak to the extent that no person with a regional accent was allowed to broadcast except as an example of a curiosity. A broadcaster called Wilfred Pickles was installed as a news reader shortly after WW2. He spoke standard received pronunciation but with a pronounced Yorkshire inflexion. He lasted about a week. About five years ago a programme that Newton Pickles and I made for Radio 4 with Phil Smith was heavily edited to remove Newton on the grounds that ‘people wouldn’t be able to understand him’. I remember a senior civil servant being with me when I was talking to Newton once and as we walked away he said “I take it you were speaking English?” He was pulling my leg I think but had been totally confounded by the combination of dialect and technicalities, we were of course talking about steam engines.
Language isn’t the only difference of course. You will commonly hear words such as ‘blunt’, ‘direct’ and other descriptions implying tough, abrasive or even unmannerly behaviour used when describing people from ‘The North’. Part of this is connected with a perception that a harsher climate and distance from ‘Southern culture’ automatically resulted in coarse behaviour. I always remember some advice I was given by David Moore when I was regarding meetings in London with senior civil servants and funders with some trepidation, after all I was a naïve north country person and would be hopelessly out-gunned by these professional negotiators. David told me to work on the assumption that they would actually be more worried about me than I was about them. He said that they thought that Northerners were tough, efficient and formidable negotiators. He told me to do my homework and present a convincing case but use the ‘blunt Northerner’ persona to reinforce this. It seemed to work, I got over £5million out of them in eight years!
I can still remember how reassuring it was for me when as a very nervous mature student I started on a course in English and Linguistics at Lancaster. The tutor, a bloke called Professor Mowatt took me on one side one day and reassured me by telling me that he was fascinated by my use of language and my dialect and congratulated me on how accurate I was in my speech. He’d picked up the fact that I was very conscious of the fact that I had a dialect and went to considerable pains to let me know it was OK. I’ve never forgotten that kindness.
It seems to me that the barrier against regional accents is crumbling and this pleases me. In many ways, dialect is a truer form of English than RP. We retain many old constructions and who is to say what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I love the way that our local dialect still uses Norse and Old English words. Look up ‘boose’ and ‘boskin’ and then search for other words that agriculture has preserved, laithe for barn, mistal for cowshed, there is a long list of echoes from our past preserved in these words and place-names. Let those who regard culture as being synonymous with speaking ‘correctly’ have their way. We should stick to our dialect and actually display a deeper level of culture by doing so.

17 November 2004