1 : Foreign Parts
Regarding Caveat (a) :
Although it was more than 50 years ago,
I still vividly recall one Norfolk journey.
It was with ten other young Norwich lads,
travelling all of nine miles into the countryside -
to play football against a village team.
(And have a poin(t)-a bare ar(t)er !).
This gave a rare opportunity to hear a couple of dozen
true "sons of the soil", in their own environment,
conversing loudly.
Particularly during the game - when Norrigers
were not meant to take part (in the talking, that is).
The overall effect stays with me : they could have
been using a foreign language or a system of code,
to keep their opponents totally in the dark.
Wal, moi harr(t) aloive !
2 : City Slickers
The Norwich dialect is, one may suppose,
to the Norfolk as the Birmingham dialect is
to rural Warwickshire.
I will attempt, where possible, to point-out instances
of clear departure from the broader (in every sense?)
dialect towards a separate Norwich vernacular.
Readers from outside Norfolk (who else would bother
to read this??) need to be reminded of - or acquainted
with - the centuries-old rules for the
pronunciation of the two main place-names :-
(i) Norfolk : as in the banned f-word (!),
but with the
Northern u [
See 4 below ]
Don't be scared . . . .
(ii) Norwich : as in porridge
(see the old Nursery Rhyme).
Often rendered, in the City itself, as Narge.
Good, now we can start, together.
3 : Vowel Movements
Regarding Caveat (b) :
We are pitched headlong into the all-important realm
of vowel-sounds; as in almost all dialect issues
throughout the country/world.
George Bernard Shaw, for one, invested much
time and effort in trying to expand the alphabet to
include more varieties of vowel-sounds.
I don't intend to invent anything : most of
the actual sounds uttered can be found in
different and unrelated words, but as
normally used by speakers of the Queen's English.
If not, an approximation will have to suffice;
as we cannot allow things to get too academic
or pernickerty . . .
If only it were as simple as AEIOU!
4 : The Northern "U"
In this cavalier spirit, let us define just one (vital)
u-sound, which lies between - - the hard (e.g. tune) and
- the soft (e.g. luck) - as per the BBC standards.
As we know, "Cockneys", Australians etc. use a
particularly soft sound, where luck almost = lack.
Here we are trying to swing the other way,
as in the familiar Northern greeting of . . . Me Duck
We will assume that the common series of words :
look, cook, book, took etc. -
IF pronounced as "standard" -
provide exactly what is needed.
If so, we can now add spook = spoke or spoken.
Q.E.D.
A useful example phrase is :
this (h)air blook - meaning a male stranger.
Sadly, this "mid-u" sound is impossible to write,
without Shaw's alphabet. Everybody south
(of Watford?) would treat luk just the same as luck;
whilst most Northerners would say look as luke.
5 : The Norfolk "O"
It is often said that a Norfolk blook
(or mawther,
of course) can be picked-out
anywhere on the planet by his/her pronunciation
of this particular letter. True enough.
It is, however, less a matter of [mid-u] blook
or spook (or poost for post) than the DOUBLING
of the vowel-sound in such "start/end" words as -
over or open; go or toe.
We will, at once, place the ultra-useful word
go into a familiar context :-
Particular attention should be paid to how the
(now) double-o in goin(g) melds with
the following letter i : giving the 'or' sound.
(The same sound is, oddly, employed in "don't";
and, more reasonably, in poem - which becomes
porm, not to be confused with porn !).
For completeness, we should use the rich Norfolk I,
and anticipate our discussion of dropped-t's, giving :-
Oi'm now a-gorn-a goo.
The archaic use of the a-prefix (as in a-roving)
is rapidly dying-out, like most things, in the
cosmopolitan urban environment (See Cosmopolitan).
Keith Skipper points out the amusing result of
applying the "Norfolk O" to the well-known
(but essentially foreign) beverage cocoa :
Do you hev a noice cup-a cuckoo.
6 : Double Trouble
Abolishing the open-sounding single o has serious
results, of course (but then, so does the Northern
abolition of the soft-u).
There is no trouble with look, cook etc., which
continue to be pronounced in this area with the
"mid-u" sound.
The Northern "solution" (as in luke for look) is applied
instead to items like boots = butes.
Given that roots are
already rutes, who should be surprised or dismayed?
See, tha(t) goo round in a lupe.
I subscribe to the view that the O-pen sound is not
practical in the oopen countryside (or anywhere
out-of-doors?), when the notorious Easterly wind
is blowing (most of the Yare).
The need to keep the teeth firmly clenched also does
much to account for the taciturn (unfriendly?)
reputation of Dumplings.
Country people describe this wind as a lairzy one :
it can't be bothered to go around you, so passes
straight through. . .
Fules expose theirsalves to its culein' effects!
On the other hand, a roof in Norfolk does NOT
- much to the amusement of "foreigners" -
become a rufe.
The sound of roof, like hoof and woof (dog) is,
yet again, that of the "mid-u".
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7 : Other Diversions
Surely Norfolk is not alone in allowing some
soft-e sounds to degenerate, as in:-
Gi(t) you a-gorn (the equivalent of Clare orff).
As an aside, the latter instruction, where the o is
"hardened" differently, is an example of a fetish
often (orfen) associated with Royalty.
Perhaps they spend too much time at Sandringham!
Throughout the area yet becomes yi(t).
In Norfolk (certainly old Thetford)
yes rhymes with Diss.
Sadly, in modern Norwich, the all-pervading
yah or yuh rules (hardly OO.K.)
It is even less definite than the German ja.
Whilst on this topic : Norfolk has noo,
but Norwich uses know (now you know!).
Remarkably, Norfolk shares a lot of heritage with
Scotland (as well as the North-East) - because of the
herring-trade (now defunct) as well as the Vikings;
despite sharing almost nothing with the remaining Northerners.
In the latter case, the following rule should
always be kept in mind :-
"West of Downham Market is North of Norwich"
In the former (Scottish) case, it means that the
SOFT-i sound [under threat from degenerate e's?]
easily becomes an indeterminate (soft-a or soft-u)
sound, i.e. little more than a grunt : dornt-a?
8 : Wha Final "T"?
Given that Norfolk (like The Smoke) knows
nothing of final-t's, we can see something of
another historical (now geographically remote)
parallel - with the USA, of all places.
They can't even pronounce the t in the middle
of Clinton; nor yi(t) can we hear it in the middle
of a Norfolk/London "motor" (car).
Where does all this Scottish/American
influence leave the . . .
| . . . precious, tiny, word : IT? |
Well, as a short grunt (uh?) followed by
absolutely nothing. Oo dare!
Good News! :
Many moons ago the Norfolk breed
came up with the solution :-
Let's make IT become THAT;
but, of course, without the second t.
Most conversations on Norwich Market begin
with the phrase Thass cowld inta? *
[Please note that we still eschew the Cockney
question "inni(t)?", so the t is articulated]
THASS is almost certainly the most heavily-used
(though hybrid) word, in these parts.
Yet, in Norwich, I often hear almost a double-Scotch :
Ass cowld inta?*. If so, thass a rummun inta?*
Now, as we have swiftly observed (in items
marked * above), and paradoxically, the
brilliant "solution" is very often ignored :
viz. in more subordinate parts of a sentence.
An unwilling recipient will be told -
Goo on : tairk-a !;
and an errant schoolboy -
You'll cop-a when you gi(t) 'oom!
But see the yarn entitled : The Book.
9 : Yes - Ter - Year
One of the perils of this task is
getting involved in a time-warp.We had the same problems learning Latin at school.
"Why do we have to learn a language nobody speaks?",
we would all cry; with some pretty good answers
from the Classics Master.
Nowadays the up-to-dateness brigade
seem to have got their way on Latin . . .
Dear Reader,
if you are only interested in current
speech patterns and sounds :-
- You still ought to read most of this opus,
because - like all study - the history of the
subject has a great bearing on its current state.
- You can ignore the next little bit, plus nearly all
of the Chapters on old farming methods.
Early in the 20th C. the practice of using "ter"
began to wither away.
This should not be confused with the ter frequently
shown in these pages to represent to - which could
very well be tah or tuh instead; indeed
anything but an O, you understand!
The old ter was used in place of this, that, it etc.
Example please :-
I had very old relatives in Norfolk who would say :
Tha(t)'ll (h)appen t'yare - when they expected
something in the current year. This struck me as
little more* than a copy of well-known
Northern speech habits :-
Ee bah goom - shuut t'doour laad! or such.
That is to say (as with THE door) a
permanent abbreviation for the word the.
Such a drastic shortening can, of course, only be
interpreted by context; in respect of any other
words beginning th- !.
In effect, therefore, I am saying that ter is now only
a written device to make t-apostrophe easier to read.
(* But very remarkable at that!!, with such
a dearth of influences from that quarter)
10 : New Sense
(If you didn't skip the last bit...)
You may detect how the modern Norfolk usage of
that
seems to have developed, via intermediate
stages, from it >> (grunt) plus t >> plain t.
Examples :-
J. G. Nall (1886) : to describe suffering from a boil :
Ta itch, an' ta pritch, an' ta galver.
[pritch being prick, and galver being throb].
Winter Proverb:
Faast ter friz, then ter snew, then ter thew,
an' then tha(t) taanned roigh(t) round
an' friz all oover agin.
A dialect feature as alive and kicking, as ever it was,
is NOW. This is used whenever other English
speakers would say just.
Oi'm now a-gorn (I'm just going)
has a heightened sense of urgency and immediacy -
even if it is more in the promise than in the fulfilment :
Yis, moi dare, Oi'm now a-gorn-a dur(t) . . .(to do it)
It can be used incrementally :
Pe(t)er, yar dinner uz now riddy!!.
Peter's reply, as given by Mardle is a gem :
How'd you hard, me ow'd boo(t)y,
Oi'm now a-tairkin'-a moi bu(t)es orff!
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