CLUB GOSSIP

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 19 June 1931, Page 9

CLUB GOSSIP

BY A LONDON CLUBMAN DIALECT IN GENERAL Having told you a number of stories in the Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Devonshire, and Dorsetshire dialects, I proceed to fulfil my promise to gossip of dialect in 'general.^

There is an impression by many that dialect is vulgar speech, and that a dia-lect-speaking person must, of necessity, be a common person, an ignoramus. The impression is altogether erroneous. A dialect, says Professor Skeat, is “a local variety of speech differing from the standard or literary language.” A speaker of dialect, then, is one who uses a form of speech which is strange to readers of books and newspapers.

It would be a mistake to imagine that dialect is a mere heathenish jargon, unworthy of the attention of cultured people. It is not, moreover, simply a corruption of speech, due to carelessness or ignorance. There arc history and meaning in it, and there are, too, quaintness and humour, though I am bound to confess that there are in some dialects expressions which in some respects, are coarse, broad, and inelegant.

Take history : When the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago, they, of course, brought with them their language, parts of which are permanently identified with the English language to-day. The speech of the peasantry of Devon and contiguous counties is said to be the purest remnant of the Anglo-Saxon tongue in England at present, though there are renlnants in the dialect ot Sussex and other counties. For instance, the suffix en, to pluralise, as hose-eu, ox-cn is Anglo-Saxon. Jo this practice is to be attributed the word “shoon” for shoes.

Many olfl Anglo-Saxon words used to begin with hi. For instance, the spelling of lord used to be “hlaford.” Hie hi sounded much as if an aspirate were prefixed to the h, or as the Welsh 11 is spoken to-day, JAan church iiyn, lake Our words “children ancl “brethren” are really double AngloSaxon plurals—child-r-en and breth-r-en In Lancashire to-day children are stilt called “childer.” Also Anglo-Saxon jS the practice, in the West Country and in Kent, of substituting /. for s, in such words as zo, zee. In Kent, by uie bye, tlie word “sins” is pronounced zcnncs with the c substituted for i. • * * *

Then think of the many Scandinavian words which are ill our language, standard and dialectal. In Lancashire there is in common use the word “sknkc, a Scandinavian word meaning shriek, a shrill cry. “Stop that skriking a mother will exclaim to her crying child. In Sussex there is still heard the word “shruck” for shrieked. A woman who was accidentally locked m a church at nmht said, “I shruck till I could shruck no longer, but no, one coined, so I up and tolled tlie b #

When the weather is misty or humid, we exclaim, “How muggy! is the Scandinavian word for Scandinavian, too, is the word gawk for clown. Of a hobbledehoy kind of man wo say that lie is gawkish, meaning clownish. Other _ Scandinavian words in our dialects include dowd.,, dump, bawl, addle, fey (‘fated’), gomcril, intake, lake (play) ooze slop, muck, lig (lie down), kelp (iron- book ill the cl) mi lie v to hold pots), and tarn (moun-

tain pool). Many words, too, are derived from foreign tongues. For instance, kitchen, chalk, kiln, folk, Latin; imp, devil, copper, bishop, martyr, Greek; (1 am a martyr to tooth-ache); jar, senna, sofa, Arabic; jack, joeke.f, bedlam, balm, canal, Sabbath, Hebrew; chocolate, tomato, Mexican. So much for history in dialect. • * * *

Let us not forget that even our finest writers have not disdained to use dialectal words. “Our voices,” says Tennyson—who, you will remember,, was a Lincolnshire man—“were thinner and faiyter than any flittermouse shriek.” Hoy many of you can say what a flittermouse is? It is a but. “And giddy flittevinice with leather wings” is a line of Ben Jonson. ° * * # *

Shakespeare contains many dialectal words. There is, for instance, “bloodboltered” in Macbeth. The meaning is caked, or clotted. In counties as far apart as Devonshire and Lancashire they talk of “cater couzins,” quarter cousins, meaning good friends. .Mon find this in “The Merchant of Venice” “His master and he are scarce cate, cousins.” In the ordinary dictionary you will not find “casing,” to mean skinning, but it is dialect, and in “All’s Well” Shakespeare uses this word, too: “We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him.” Again, in “The Winter’s Tale,” there is asked “Is it a boy or a child?” The distinction between a boy and a girl exists to-day ill Shropshire, where an anxious father, upon the birth of an offspring, will ask, “Is it a boy or a clieel?” * * * *

If you wore to ask me in which parts of England dialect is most pronounced to-day I should instance Northumbria, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. # * * *

One finds dialect even in Scotland, though I should have thought that the Scotch tongue was sufficient for the dialect-loving person. The Scotch language is, I fancy, the only language in which it is possible to conduct a conversation in vowels only. A Scotsman entered a shop, looked at an article therein, and there ensued this conversation: “Oo?” “Ay, oo.” “Aw, oo ! “Ay, aw oo.” “Aw ae oo?” “Ay, aw ae oo.” * # • *

How often will you find in the dialect of one county a word or words which are common rather than particular? This, I suppose, is what could bo expected. Take the word “nesli,” meaning susceptible, or tender. I heard the word used as a hoy in Cheshire and Lancashire, and I’ve also heard it in Shropshire and elsewhere. In Devon the word is “niash.” Then lake the word “sweal.” In Westmorland it is applied to a blaze; in Cheshire and Lancashire to a gassy flare in the lire; in Devonshire to a (ire in which there is more smoko than flume. My mother used to say to me if I were toasting bread, “.Mind you don’t sweal it”— moaning hold it in front of or above a gassy blaze, which would simply smoke "the bread. In Devonshire the burning of gorso which emits a thick smoke is termed Jkswahng.

There is dialect —much of it—in “Darset ” wherein tea with a dash of rum is called “Milk from the brown cow”; the dead are “put to bed with a shovel” ; a noisy old man is a blaze wig” ■ a. fat and pompous follow is a “blow-poke”; the gallows is . the. “black horse foaled by an acorn ; and the thoughts of a flighty girl go a-oell wavering.” # , , ,

I shall have more to say on the same subject in my next column,. Dialect has long possessed a fascination for me