Derbyshire Times has this list of nine words allegedly not
understood beyond Derbyshire. The comments suggest otherwise and as far as I
know the comments are right. What is it with journalists and made up lists?
1. Duck: Greeting as in ‘ey up m’duck’.
2. Ay up: Greeting as in above.
3, ‘Int’ it’: Isn’t it’
4. Lug: A knot in your hair.
5. Cob: A round bread roll.
6. Jitty: An alleyway.
7. Me’sen: Myself.
8. Ta: Thank you.
9. Mardy: Sulking.
10 comments:
1. "duck" also used in Leicestershire in 1990s at least, and in Oxfordshire in the 1970s to my knowledge.
4 and 6 are the only ones I haven't heard in Yorkshire.
Yep, was going to say Yorkshire too.
I remember young doctors were once trained in Northern vernacular and that 'feeling reet mardy' was a cue for the happy pills or the trickcyclist. Going back a bit though - shortly after Jim Dale retired.
Almost all of these are similar to Potteries dialect, especially the Duck. The only possible difference is that 'mardy' means spoilt or fussed over (maybe from mothered). Ta is common to my early upbringing (which was Essex)so I guess is widespread.
Broseley's the place for Jitties, a complex of small houses amidst alleyways that originated in a man building a hearth and chimney twixt dusk and dawn, and thereby allowed habitation.
Leicester is not far from Derby and these words were all common in Leicester in the 1940's as part of the day to day speech. But you had to be able to talk English as well especially when explaining to police constables that someone else had broken the window with their football in the street.
All - from your comments it sounds as if the Derbyshire Times article wanna woth a gleg.
@Derek: interesting about the building of a habitation, I read that that was the rule for the Forest of Dean also.
Sackerson: It may even have been countrywide. Immigrant miners in the 1590's were encouraged to build cottages on the common land on the edge of Broseley. I stand corrected in the time span, it states "within a day", but the effect is the same.
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