The Spirit of Yorkshire (From Gazette & Herald)

The Spirit of Yorkshire

YORKSHIRE dialect featured in a book by J and R Fairfax-Blakeborough, called the Spirit of Yorkshire, published in 1954. The following is taken from a review of the book by Charles H Rule.

MUCH that other writers on the county have omitted will be found supplied here. In particular do we get a picture of our race-courses and an appreciation of the place dialect continues to hold in Broadacres.

Nowadays ,Yorkshire folk are bilingual. At the beginning of this century it was a common boast among ruralists that they "Scraped their tongues and talked fine for neeabody". By the ring-side of the cattle market, in the hay and harvest field, among farmers at village inns, and in village school playgrounds, you will still hear the dialect spoken in all its pristine richness and purity, as (what it indubitably is) a language. But if someone "highly educated" joins in the conversation or listens to the same farmers at a council farmers' union or a parish meeting, he will find the dialect dropped, although the unmistakable accent is there.

Our folk-speech, so old, so pure, so expressive, so much better English than much spoken and written today, and at any rate in the North and East Ridings, so musical, remains the natural everyday speech of the older folk throughout rural agricultural areas. That is when they are in the company of those with whom they are sufficiently intimate that they may unreservedly think aloud. The younger generation understands every word, and speak dialect on occasion, but they are self-conscious, half-amused, half-ashamed, of their mother tongue, and as general rule favour what is termed "eddicated talk".

There is no better example of bilingualism than the village school and its playground. A remarkable change of language, intonation, different vowel sounds are being altered, surroundings and influences brought about within a few minutes. At a reading lesson immediately preceding the morning playtime break, you might hear the elder lads read aloud, or recite in standard English, if possibly with a broad "u", and a dialectic value given to other vowels. Five minutes later, among themselves, in the freedom of they playground, one would hear the same lads talking in the purest broadest Yorkshire language.

The strange thing is that many, who can speak the dialect fluently, cannot read it out loud.

Updated: 08:32 Thursday, June 24, 2004