{"id":1251,"date":"2019-10-01T09:04:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T09:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/?page_id=1251"},"modified":"2019-10-01T09:04:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T09:04:05","slug":"the-dialect-of-spottees-cave","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/the-dialect-of-spottees-cave\/","title":{"rendered":"The dialect of Spottee’s Cave"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many modern readers, nineteenth-century \u201cdialect\u201d verse such as this \u2013 at least when it appears on the page or screen \u2013 makes the heart sink. It\u2019s not surprising really. We live in an age of universal literacy: all children who go to school are taught to read and write in Standard English, irrespective of the dialect of English (or other languages) they might speak at home. This means that most of us \u2013 to a certain extent \u2013 are \u201cbi-dialectal\u201d: we tend to operate in Standard English when we write or when we speak in public settings; but we use more non-standard, dialectal forms in our everyday lives. While some non-standard forms are encountered in our reading (usually in the form of reported speech in fiction), these are embedded in a standard matrix. With a text like \u201cSpottee\u201d we don\u2019t have that helpful framing; we have to pick our way through dense forests of unfamiliarly spelled words which we would normally recognize immediately in their usual guise (e.g. auld<\/em>, knaw<\/em>, dee<\/em>, tee<\/em>, mony<\/em>, weshed<\/em>, teuk<\/em>, and so on); we encounter words we might not recognize at all (e.g. midred<\/em>, coble<\/em>, tanter-wallups<\/em>, boggle<\/em>); the syntax seems \u201coff\u201d (e.g. And a back o\u2019 the carcasses com poor shee<\/em>).<\/p>\n

But there are at least two reasons why it might be worth putting a little bit of effort into getting to grips with these texts.<\/p>\n

First, as a popular cultural form in the North East of England, \u201cdialect literature\u201d \u2013 often written to be performed as songs and ballads \u2013 can give us a rare glimpse into the lives, beliefs, hopes and fears of the ordinary folk of the time. While the publishers of the collections in which this material was circulated were largely middle and upper class (\u201cSpottee\u201d appears in a Durham collection called The Bishoprick Garland<\/em>, edited by the antiquarian Sir Cuthbert Sharp in 1834) these verses were enjoyed by people of all social backgrounds. And even today, readers can relish the spirited characters, arresting incidents, strong sense of place and striking vernacular turns of phrase with which such work is imbued.<\/p>\n

Second, the texts are full of interest for anyone interested in the dialects of our region. Perhaps surprisingly, given the enormous social changes which have occurred in the two centuries since \u201cSpottee\u201d was composed, there are features here which are also evident in the contemporary speech of North East England. I will focus on some of the spelling choices to illustrate this point.<\/p>\n

Many of these \u201cstrange\u201d spellings can tell us something about how nineteenth-century North East English sounded. For example, consider how the words belonging<\/em>, along<\/em>, and long<\/em> have been spelled. During the early Old English period around 1500 years ago, all speakers of English would have said \u201clang\u201d rather than \u201clong\u201d \u2013 indeed, all adjectives which in modern English end orthographically in <-ong>, such as long<\/em>, strong<\/em>, and wrong<\/em> would have been pronounced with \u2018a\u2019 rather than \u2018o\u2019. The \u2018o\u2019 pronunciation was a later development in southern and midland varieties of English, but in the north of England and Scotland the change was partial. From the spelling in the song we can assume that it was a common pronunciation (probably the preferred one for the majority of speakers) two hundred years ago in North East England, and to this day many people here use it from time to time. You will also have noticed that night<\/em> and light<\/em> are spelled <neet> and <leet>. This also represents a survival from an earlier period. The <-gh> in the standard spelling indicates that in words such as right<\/em>, night<\/em> and light<\/em> there was once a \u201cthroaty\u201d sound resembling the final consonant in a Scottish pronunciation of loch<\/em>, or a German pronunciation of Bach<\/em>. During the Middle Ages, this sound was lost, and the preceding vowel was lengthened in compensation. This means that spellings such as <neet> and <leet> reflect a pattern that was once general in English but which is now only preserved in certain dialects of northern England and in Scotland. If you are from the North East, it is likely that you will have heard these pronunciations, even if you don\u2019t use them yourself, particularly in fixed phrases such as \u201cthe neet\u201d (\u201ctonight\u201d) and \u201call reet\u201d (\u201call right\u201d as a greeting).<\/p>\n

Other spellings give us further glimpses into how the North East English of this period would have sounded. Take the verb forms do<\/em> and does<\/em>, spelled <dee> and <dis>. Once again, the vowels are of interest here. Historically, the verb do<\/em> has had a wide variety of forms in the dialects of English, but forms with \u2018e\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019 were particularly associated with the north of England and Scotland, as they are today. North easterners are likely to be familiar with people who might be \u201cdeeing\u201d rather than \u201cdoing\u201d something, for example.<\/p>\n

And of course, there\u2019s the spelling <mak>. Where would Mackems<\/a> be without this distinctive pronunciation of make<\/em>?<\/p>\n

While the continuities (and there are many more of them) are fairly obvious once the initial resistance to the unfamiliar spellings has been overcome, there are nevertheless features here which remain unfathomable without recourse to specialist glossaries. For example, according to Joseph Wright\u2019s magisterial English Dialect Dictionary<\/em>, midred<\/em> is a term for the diaphragm or midriff, and if you have no idea what tanter-wallups<\/em> are don\u2019t worry \u2013 the Dictionary<\/em> says \u201cMeaning unknown\u201d!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many modern readers, nineteenth-century \u201cdialect\u201d verse such as this \u2013 at least when it appears on the page or screen \u2013 makes the heart sink. It\u2019s not surprising really. We live in an age of universal literacy: all children who go to school are taught to read and write in Standard English, irrespective of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1251","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1253,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1251\/revisions\/1253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}