East Midlands English

East Midlands

East Midlands English is a traditional dialect with modern local and social variations spoken in those parts of the Midlands loosely lying east of Watling Street[n 1] separating it from West Midlands English, north of a variable isogloss of the variant of Southern English of Oxfordshire and East Anglian English of Cambridgeshire and south of another that separates it from Yorkshire dialect. This covers approximately the East Midlands of England (Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Northamptonshire).

Origins

The Five Boroughs of the East Midlands distinct from the Kingdom of Mercia in the early 10th century[1]

The Eastern English Midlands were incorporated in the Norse controlled Danelaw in the late 9th century by Ivar the Boneless. With their conquest, the county towns of the East Midlands counties were converted into fortified, Viking city-states, known as the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. The region's dialect owes much of its grammar and vocabulary to the Nordic influences of its conquerors. For example, the East Midlands verb to scraight ('to cry') is thought to be derived from the Norse, skrike in modern Scandinavian, also meaning to cry.[2]

East Midlands dialects in literature

The romantic novelist and East Midlander D. H. Lawrence was from the Nottinghamshire town of Eastwood and wrote in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Coalfield dialects in several poems as well as in his more famous works such as Lady Chatterley's Lover and Sons and Lovers.[3]

Though spoken less commonly today, the dialect of the East Midlands has been investigated in texts such as the Ey Up Mi Duck[4] series of books (and an LP) by Richard Scollins and John Titford. These books were originally intended as a study of Derbyshire Dialect, particularly the distinctive speech of Ilkeston and the Erewash valley, but later editions acknowledge similarities in vocabulary and grammar which unite the East Midlands dialects and broadened their appeal to the region as a whole.

"Ey up" (often spelt ayup / eyup) is a greeting thought to be of Old Norse origin (se upp) used widely throughout the North Midlands, North Staffordhire and South Yorkshire, and "m' Duck" is thought to be derived from a respectful Anglo Saxon form of address, "Duka" (literally "Duke"), and is unrelated to waterfowl.[5] [n 2] Non-natives of the East Midlands and North Staffordshire are often surprised to hear men greet each other as 'M' Duck.'

Grammar

Those who speak traditional regional dialects are not trying unsuccessfully to speak Standard English. East Midlands English follows a series of distinct grammatical rules. Some examples follow below.

Formal address

Until the mid-20th century, it was not uncommon to hear the use of informal forms of address, Thee and Thou, as compared to the more formal You. Use of the informal form of address is now uncommon in modern speech.

Personal and Possessive pronouns

Personal pronouns differ from standard English as follows:

yorn
yours
mine
mine
theirn
theirs
ourn
ours
hisn
his
ern
hers

Example "It eent theirn; it's ourn!" (It isn't theirs; it's ours!)

Reflexive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are characterized by the replacement of Self with 'Sen' (From Middle English seluen)

Y'usen – Yourself, Mesen – Myself, Thisens – Themselves/Yourselves, Ussens – Ourselves

Example "We sh'll ay to do it ussens." (We shall have to do it ourselves)

Miscellaneous

It is very common to hear people replacing the word "of" with "on". "There were two on em'" (There were two of them). "Get hold on em'" (Get hold of them).

Dialectal words

Humorous texts, such as Nottingham As it is Spoke, have used their phonetically spelled words to deliberately confuse non-natives of the region.[8]

Alrate youth?
Are you alright young man? Here, ⟨alrate⟩ is a spelling designed to convey the phonological specification in the traditional dialect of ⟨right⟩, which is /riːt/, and a slight diphthonging of /i:/.
Avya gorra wi'ya?
Is the wife with you? (lit. "Have you got her with you?). The pronunciation /wɪ jə/ with weakform WITH is alleged to be more common in Nottingham and the South East Midlands; pronunciations with th-fronting in WITH are alleged to be more common elsewhere. TH-fronting became a potential feature of the accents of the region in around 1960.[9] The humourous spellings are designed to indicate H-dropping, the ’’Northern T-to-R rule’’ and /wi/, the non-Standard weakform of ⟨with⟩, which is common to many dialects in England.
It's black ovver Bill's mother's
It looks like rain. (lit. "It's black over Bill's Mother's.") – a common, if somewhat old fashioned, Midlands expression implying impending bad weather. The spelling ⟨ovver⟩ chosen to indicate the phonological specification in the traditional dialect of ⟨over⟩: /ɒvɚ/.
Thez summat up wee im
I think he may be ill. (lit. "There's something up with him."). The spellings here chosen to indicate the ‘‘Northern’’ feature that /eə/ is a monophthong, the non-Standard English word /sʌmət/, which is historically found in many dialects across England (cf. its use by the London boatmen Gaffer and Riderhood in Our Mutual Friend and by the farmhands in Far from the Madding Crowd), the weakform of ⟨with⟩ previously mentioned and H-dropping.
Yer norrayin no tuffees!
You aren't having any toffees (sweets)! Humorous spellings here were chosen to indicate the Northern T-to-R rule and the phonological specification in the traditional dialect of ⟨have⟩, which is /eɪ/.

However, there are many words in use in the traditional East Midlands Dialect which do not appear in standard English. The short list below is by no means exhaustive. More comprehensive glossaries exist within texts such as Ey Up Mi Duck by Richard Scollins and John Titford.

naught /nəʊt/
nothing (homographic with /nɔːt/ the digit cypher, 0, and the (now only literary) naught /nɔːt/: of General English; /nəʊt/ is a traditional dialect phonological specification and /nɔːt/ is the regular development in General English).
aught /əʊt/
anything (homographic with the now literary General English /ɔːt/)
nesh
a weak person, or one who feels the cold. Found in many parts of England, cf. its use in Hardy.


belt-job
easy job (used in certain coal-mining communities based on watching a conveyor belt)
causie
pavement ("causey" is an older word from which 'causeway' is derived.)
cob
a bread roll (bap), compare to a cob-loaf which is baker's term used across the UK for hemispherical loaf;(as verb:) to throw
clouts
trousers (/klaʊts/, usually pronounced [klaːts]),
jitty/jetty
alleyway.
twitchel
alleyway. Esp. those providing access to the rear terraced housing leading to rear of
larup/larop
to cover with (usually a thick substance)
mardy (or etymological marredy)
grumpy, sulky (i.e. "She's a mardy one!")
mash
to make a pot of tea (i.e. "I'll go mash the tea.")
piggle
to pick at a scab, spot or a skin irritation (i.e. "Stop piggling that scab!")
puddled/puddle-drunk
intoxicated or stupid
puther
to pour out uncontrollably[10] usually of smoke, steam or dust
rammel
rubbish/waste
scraight/scraitin'
to cry/crying[3]
sile
rain heavily
snapin or snap
lunch/food,tekken ta werk[11]
snidered/snided/snied
covered/infested, (DH Lawrence used the word 'Snied' in a description of an infestation of mice in Sons and Lovers.),[11]
wazzerk/wassock
fool (used across the East & West Midlands)

There are also word forms that occur in Standard English but which have additional meanings in some of the varieties considered here.

bonny
In many dialects, this has the sense of ‘looking well’ often referring to a healthy plumpness.[12][13] In Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, there still also exists a transferred sense of plump, robust, stout or overweight derived from this sense. Cf. Samuel Johnson’s comment that ‘‘It seems to be used in general conversation for plump’’ as cited in NED Bonny 2 b as (J.).

(There is a yet older sense now only commonly used in Scots, Northern & some Midland dialects meaning 'beautiful' generally rather than of individuals having a pleasing embonpoint specifically.)[14]

fast
stuck, caught e.g. /ʔoʊz.ɡɒrə.fɪnɡər.fæst/ (who's got a finger stuck)
tuffees
sweets, confectionery
badly
hungover/ill
croaker
doctor
croggie
an (illegal) crossbar ride, "two-up" on the crossbar of a bicycle
duck's necks
bottle of lemonade
oakie
ice cream (common in Leicestershire) see Hokey cokey
pot
a plaster cast
sucker
iced lolly
tabs
ears
yack
to yank
cos
can you

The greeting 'now then' (as 'Nah theen') is still in use in Lincolnshire and North-East Derbyshire, used where other people might say "Hello". 'Nen mate' can also be heard instead of "now then mate".

People from Leicester are known in the popular holiday resort Skegness as "Chisits", due to their expression for "how much is it" when asking the price of goods in shops.[15]

Dialect variations within the political region

Southern Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is in the East Midlands region defined in the late 20th century, and has historically harboured its own dialect comparable to other forms of East Midlands English,[10] particularly among the older generation. However, more recently its linguistic distinctiveness has significantly eroded due to influences from the western parts of East Anglia, the West Midlands, and the South as well as the 'Watford Gap isogloss', the demarcation line between southern and northern English accents.

The Danelaw split the present county into a Viking north and a Saxon south. This is quite plainly heard, with people in the south speaking more like people from Oxfordshire or Cambridgeshire and people in the north sounding more like people from Leicestershire.

Corbyite

Also of note is the anomalous dialect of Corbyite spoken around Corby in the north of Northamptonshire, which reflects the migration of large numbers of Scottish and Irish steelworkers to the town during the 20th century. The dialect is often compared to Glaswegian.

Derbyshire

The dialect of Coalville in Leicestershire is said to resemble that of Derbyshire because many of the Coalville miners came from there, and the dialect of Glossop in North West Derbyshire has similarities with Manchester dialect due to its close geographical position to Greater Manchester.. The dialect of the Derbyshire Dales is near identical to that of the bordering North Staffordshire.

Lincolnshire and East Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire has long been an economically relatively homogeneous, less industrial more heavily agricultural county and is in part naturally separated by the River Trent divorcing its largest market town, the City of Lincoln from Nottinghamshire. East of the Lincolnshire Wolds, in the southern part of the county, the Lincolnshire dialect is closely linked to The Fens and East Anglia, and, in the northern areas of the county, the local speech has characteristics in common with the speech of the East Riding of Yorkshire. This is largely due to the fact that the majority of the land area of Lincolnshire was surrounded by sea, the Humber, marshland, and the Wolds; these geographical circumstances permitted little linguistic interference from the East Midlands dialects until the nineteenth century when canal and rail routes penetrated the eastern heartland of the country.

Nottinghamshire

Minor variations still endure between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Though all native speakers sound similar, there are noticeable differences between the accents of residents of, for example, Nottingham and Derby, or Mansfield and Bolsover which is pronounced locally as /boʊzə/.

In North Nottinghamshire [and North-East Derbyshire], the dialect is very similar to South Yorkshire, including the occasional use of the pronoun thou amongst older people. See Stephen Whyles's book A Scab is no Son of Mine for examples of speech of the Worksop area.[16]

Counties in which East Midlands English is spoken

Notes and references

Notes
  1. ↑ Also termed the A5 or London – Shrewsbury road
  2. ↑ There are also other suggestions for the origin of the term 'duck': one being attributed to a group of young children who would congregate in the River Derwent in the Morledge area of Derby in the early 19th Century, a time when the flow of the river was much slower. People who watched them sometimes remarked that they could "swim like ducks", an observation Joseph Masters once remarked in his memoirs. The children soon greeted each other with 'Ey up, my duck', calling themselves the 'Derby ducks' not long thereafter.[6] This story has to be scrutinized against the word duck having been a term of endearment since at least the 1580s.[7]
References
  1. ↑ Falkus & Gillingham and Hill.
  2. ↑ "BBC Inside Out – Dialect". BBC. 17 January 2005. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  3. 1 2 Pavel, John (23 April 2008). "Dialect poems by D.H. Lawrence". Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  4. ↑ Scollins, Richard; Titford, John (1 September 2000). Ey Up Mi Duck!. Countryside Books. ISBN 978-1-85306-658-0. Retrieved 24 July 2011 – via Amazon.co.uk.
  5. ↑ "History of the Potteries dialect". BBC. 2005. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  6. ↑ "Opinion: 'A quacking definition of Derby famous 'mi duck' greeting'". Derby Telegraph. 29 March 2015.
  7. ↑ Harper, Douglas. "Duck". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  8. ↑ "Books". The Old Meadows.co.uk. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  9. ↑ Kerswill, Paul (2003). "Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English". In Britain, D.; Cheshire, J. Social Dialectology. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 223–243 – via Researchgate.net.
  10. 1 2 "Local Dialect Words and Usage". Sulgrave.org. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  11. 1 2 Sons and Lovers Archived 30 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  12. ↑ A New English Dictionary (1888) Bonny, adj., 2. b. (https://archive.org/stream/oed01arch#page/987/mode/1up)
  13. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. (1989) Bonny, adj., 2. b.
  14. ↑ A New English Dictionary (1888) 2nd Bonny, adj., 1. (https://archive.org/stream/oed01arch#page/987/mode/1up)
  15. ↑ Leicester Mercury, 16 July 2004
  16. ↑ Whyles, Stephen (18 September 2014). A Scab is no Son of Mine. Xlibris UK. ISBN 978-1-49908-9-585.

Bibliography

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