1976: NORTHUMBERLAND accents | Word of Mouth | Voice of the People | BBC Archive
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- čas přidán 21. 07. 2022
- Introduced by Melvyn Bragg, Word of Mouth traces the pattern of speech in Britain.
The speech of Northumberland has proved very resistant to change, and between the Tees and the Tweed, pockets of language can still call for translation. Linguist Stanley Ellis is on hand to explain some of the less common phraseology in this short film about Northumbrian shearers and shepherds.
Originally broadcast 19 August, 1976.
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"Sometimes mistaken for Scottish, sometimes for Geordie" Yep, that was our life growing up. This video takes me back!
Im from Northumberland as was my parents and most of my family, this is pure nostalgia for me, i have chatted to people who have exactly this accent, it's fantastic x
do northumbrians nowadays still speak like that?
@@maxwellarch sadly, fewer and fewer as the older ones pass on, another dying dialect
@@maxwellarch some do.
@PurplePassion332 It's sad. I'm from Kent and the kentish accent has died, become more London. Alot of english accents and dialects are on the wane unfortunately. Btw I love Northumberland, its beautiful.
It's incredibly fast talking
This filled my heart so much. It was like been back around my granda all over again. The broadness from our accent has been lost and I'm so devastated.
Yeah, to me it takes me right back to the sheep pens and helping out with shearing with my neighbours
The men have to maintain their culture if not everything gets lost
My family on both sides are from and still live in Northumberland, whereas I live in Cambridge. When I see my relatives they always joke that I sound posh because I lost my accent when moving away from Northumberland as a child. I miss living up north. 😌
1min 10 seconds in,is Ken armstrong (with large side burns) a true northumbrian,first met him in 1985 when i started as an apprentice mechanic at an Alnwick garage,he was a fence contractor working on some of the most remote farmland in northumberland,he was one of the funniest men i ever met, he had us all in stitches when he used to call into the garage for repair work,he worked in all weather on the cheviot hills a proper grafting canny man !
It makes me sad that the diversity of accents, language and culture seems to be homogenizing in many, if not all, parts of the world. World leaders in Thailand, China, Russia, Angola, etc. dress like American Presidents. We adjust our speech to sound like people in big cities we might never even visit. Things change and I know these accents and ways of life couldn't last forever, but it feels like we've gone from eating well-spiced curry to white bread with unsalted butter. It's all a bit blander than it used to be. It's not all bad, but it would have been nice to see the world before mass media.
Had away an shite ye wanna gan up to Blythe like
It’s because we now all have to communicate with many more people with different backgrounds because of the advances of transportation and communications. This farmer never had to zoom call with a major supplier, but that’s not uncommon now.
I agree. Smaller, local accents and languages are beeing forgotten forever. I live in Sweden and most young people here wants to pretty much speak English all the time.
I was just thinking about the time Paul McCartneys dad wanted it to be "she loves you yes yes yes" because "yeah" was an Americanism.
Canada will lose its last Canadian Gaelic speakers within a decade or two. Dozens of indigenous languages are moribund with no L1 speakers under the age of 60. It’s terribly depressing. Any traditional social institution that can’t turn a profit is being discarded in favour of making our culture and society maximally economically efficient.
I'm Scottish and what they are saying makes total sense to me.
Aye ahd say we are more Scottish than English
Scots and Northumbrian dialect share the same root
Of course we can understand scots too the border is only a few miles away lol
As a geordie same
It's because it's anglicized Manx.
Brilliant as a proud Northumbrian
This is class !
Here here 👍🏻👍🏻
This is how my grandparents spoke to each other although with more of the dialect words thrown in. My grandfather was born in 1904 on a farm outside Morpeth and my grandmother was from Belsay. The shearers were harder to follow but the others not so. It's the speed of the speech that makes it hard to follow and you need to be in practice. Sadly, my grandparents are long dead but it's how they sound in my memory. It's always surprised me that people think it sounds like the Scottish accent. My mother's cousin was born on a farm opposite Holy Island and his accent was ever so slightly different; softer but still with the distinctive rolled 'R'.
As for the Northumbrian 'R' the true test is if someone can say 'Rothbury' with the 'R' rolled in the back of the mouth near the ulvular. As for speed, it is fast, although it may be to do with the shortness of the words.
My family are from east coast Northumberland. It has changed so much.
Is there sometimes a bit of a whistle In pronouncing some words? or was that just my grandad?
It has been said that one of the Northumbrian rulers was short-tongued (ankyloglossia), and to gain courtly favour it became fashionable to speak with a restricted R sound. This is probably apocryphal but who knows.
So weird to find people in a comment section from Morpeth. We’re from pegswood!
@@emmanoble5498 My Gran from Oakwood north of Hexham did just that
I'm from Shilbottle. Understood every word. But this level of dialect is becoming rarer today as the older generation pass.
I knew some of those lads from the accordion club days. Played in a band with one of them.
Also. And this dialect is more rothbury upper coquetdale
ex Alamooth lad here....
Is your hometown actually called Shilbottle or is it spelled that way but pronounced "Shitbottle" or "Shitebottle"?
@@danorthsidemang3834 maybe worth asking that question in the Farriers on a Friday night.
Brings back memories of working in Wooler and Belford in the 80s thank you 👍
Wow, I’m familiar with a lot of British accents…but wow, this one blows me away.
It’s so cool that a place as small as the British isles can have so much diversity of language, and it actually be the same language. (I’m from Texas by the way, with British ancestry).
Kind of weird a Yank is fetishizing our country.
@@matthew-dq8vk far from from being a “Yank”… I’m only second generation American, and I’m southern.
The trend is for city accents to take over the surrounding area, and this has accelerated in the past few decades. TV and inward migration have also diluted many accents, which could often be narrowed down to an individual town. For example a 1970s murder case involved an audio tape (which turned out to be a hoax), and the perpetrator was tracked down to a specific area of a town by the way he spoke. The Home Counties (commuter counties surrounding London) had their individual accents, none of which resembled cockney, estuary English or received pronunciation, and these have all but vanished in the last 30 years.
@@OscillatorCollective In North America yank mean New Yorker, but in everywhere else in the english speaking world yank just means American. Also you can have British ancestry, but being a 2nd gen (presumably sole citizenship) American means you are an American.
This is a very old English dialect - probably the oldest to exist today. Quite remarkable that it has remained so untouched for so long; we’re talking over a thousand years.
Love seeing my Great Grandad on this and his son Robert.
In parts of the clip, it's not the dialect, it's the speed of their delivery that makes it slightly hard to hear every word. I find part of being able to understand an unfamiliar accent is reading people's lips as you follow the sounds they make. The man talking about the walking sticks is easy to understand, for instance as he is speaking slowly. Loved the story about eating mutton for every meal and bleating at the end of the day. Disclaimer: am originally from the North East so maybe have a slight advantage.
If you listen to Swedish/Danish/norse language, the lilt is the same, in the speech patterns.
In fact being from the South West of Scotland. Weirdly often Northern English accents from that coast seem to be more on par with us and those in the North and East of Scotland. Than the dialects from the mid regions of Scotland like Ayrshire, Glasgow etc. Who are seen as the benchmark of Scots-ness but are barely the tip of the Country's dialects. I mean the guy doing the Northumberland poetry if you compared it to Burns Scots, there are many kinships. I think it proves that especially in working class culture between Northern English and Scotland as people we aren't so different after all.
We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns, and hope to stay so.
Kingdom of Northumbria went as far north as Edinburgh
The Danes that is why! The word bairn is not Gaelic. It is old Norse.
@@Norse-Gaelwe also have many german words. There is a nice video on CZcams of a German professor talking about the Geordie accent and its origins.
Aye, Scottish accents are weird. I knew of some crofter from Outer Hebrides spoke very clearly - but then you go to Glasgow and it takes some time to understand - for both of us! I remember trying to speak in my Essex-accent (not Estuary English, more Cockney) and flattening 'o's and not saying my 'h's' and we confused each other!
As an American from Arizona I'm lost
Lok😂
As an Englishman from the midlands, so am I.
I'm from Sydney and grew up in NZ. I understood the shearers.
Maybe's they spent three months shearing the NZ flocks:)
We used to get the lads from your part of the world up here at shearing time till quite recently
@@NR-st2pr I'm from the UK and I got about 10% of it. Something about sheep, right?
Love the Northumberland accents most
I would love to move to the North East (my parents thought I am crazy as all they could think of the UK was London or some parts in the South)
I've lived here all of my life, it would be nice to move to a different part of England.
My Granda and Gma moved to Australia
From Morpeth and Ashington after the pit closed in the 70s.
I've only just discovered how much their accents & dialect they spoke is so localized and dying oot.
Keeping it alive here
on the other side of the 🌎
"Hoy that pinny owa here, it's on the cheble.I'm gaan byek a cyek"
" I bloody teld ye ! Div'ent clart.
Haaway man. Div'ent ye bowk mind, or I'll bloody brain yeh."
Aye that’s propa pit matic crack that
I was born in the old hospital (Ashington), lived in Morpeth as a child, then now married, and I'm trying to immigrate to america to be with my husband. A lot of Americans think I'm scottish, lol it's just an accident. I don't think they hear very much with it being the mid west of usa (Iowa). I will never get rid of my accident as proud of where I have come from. This makes me so happy to listen to this video. Hearing my dialect can't wait to visit back home like proper miss me sausage rolls and the lovely countryside! ❤
@@bethanywilson2101 brilliant !
Hoy meamss to throw right? Bowk means to vomit? These words I remember from growing up in Carlisle.
Ask ya Grandfatha aboot a Scullery, he should still say things like, Berb (Bob) Jern (John) and Derg (Dog)
My grandad moved to Tyneside after serving in the Army during the war. Met my Grandma in the Army and they moved to south Tyneside. I remember him saying that he got a job in the pit and it was like having to learn a new language. Other grandparents born in Northumberland and talked much like the people in this video. Takes me back to being a bairn.
Bairn, A word people from certain areas of Scotland use instead of Wean, which is more prominent in the mid and west.
I'm from north - east Scotland and it's so similar to some Aberdeenshire accents, very similar
Aye was thinking that. Quite a bit easier to follow for us.
I say it often. Us lot at the bottom (South West) and you guys up top and to the East have similar dialects. It's The Glaswegian and Ayrshire lot etc in the middle who are most recognised as Scots and sound nothing like the rest of us. I often wondered if it was a working class and rural thing? The Fisher folks etc
@@froggy8030I agree,I think you can see evidence of this with the rural people from the countryside who emigrated to America,taking with them their rolling rrr’s (rhotic).
I'm from mid-Northumberland, along the coast, and it's a shame that this accent is fading away.
You can hear a remarkable difference between older generations and younger ones - young people tend to sound more homogenized and Geordie-fied.
Whereas older generations were more like this - especially in the land between Rothbury and Wooler.
It's a wonderful accent to hear - and it's a shame that people get the narrow-minded impression that these farmers lack intelligence - listen to what they say and you'll realize how sharp their wit really is!
I love Geordie and love Scots - but that special unique Northumbrian accent is getting lost generation by generation - I'm glad this video preserves it, and I hope young people make a conscious effort to keep it up too!
Aye I hate it inal, am frurm Northumberland and nae wun nahs how te speak proper Northumbrian. Am also a teacher and get told to speak properly. Nah Al keep me dialect and speak how the people of where ah teach and live should tahk
@@connorsmith1797 Speak the Queens English!!!!
@@gareth265 Don't you mean, 'the King's'. ☺️
Many people around the North Tyneside area now sound like Mackems. It's only Gateshead where geordie exists in large numbers.
ppl are quick to cast judgement, but a lot of those they think theyre smarter than have skills and knowledge rarely gained today.
I'm a broad speaking Geordie and this sounds like going to my nans house in the 80s.
I had no problem whatsoever understanding their gib.
There's something homely and welcoming about those great accents.
With the two elderly gentlemen making the walking sticks I had to pay close attention, but could understand them. Same with the last older man - no issues. The sheep shearers were almost impossible for this American to understand though. Could just catch a word here and there. I've been to Northern England, but never had any difficulty if I was standing in front of someone looking at them as they spoke. Those sheep guys though - wow!😮
Aye, well see I have the opposite - I understood it all, but the shearers were the easiest, after a childhood spent in the sheep pens in Northumberland XD
I’m from Northumberland. The accents vary quite a lot (to my ear at least) throughout the county. There are very different accents in this video alone, all are mid to north/north west Northumbrian and the older men have a lot more Scottish to their Northumbrian accents than the younger ones. I always think that Northumberland accents from those outside the Borders have gone more Geordie since this time, and Borders folk have taken on more of a Scottish accent, but there’s still a definite difference between relatively close places - there’s a word of difference between Ashington, Cramlington & Blyth accents for instance
North-Westerner here. Not far from Liverpool. This isn't too tricky to understand but I've got an interest in some of the more unique accents of the UK. Northumberland has something special about it in general. Unlike anywhere else in the country.
It really is a beautiful place, so much land has remained untouched and is bustling with history . God’s land
I love English accents.
Very good. And a moment of appreciation for Mr Bragg's green period, with maximum respect for the velvet jacket. Nice.
I am born & breed Northumberland & understand everything they say. We would call it pitmatic. But the way these men speak is dying out, which is a shame.
as an aussie, i picked up maybe 4 words in total from those shearers. that was something else. i love videos like this
I’m a Yorkshire lad and I go up to amble on holiday when I can I love the Northumberland delict and folk up there like my accent also you should head to upper swaledale if like accents
"Muttin' fer yor BREKkus, muttin' fer your lun', muttin' fer your tee an' muttin' fer yor SUPPah."
That was the only sentence I understood, until the linguist explained more at the end.👏🏻😀
What he said afterwards was “by the end of the third day you were nearly bleating!”
I know the Anglian variant of Old English used in East Anglia and there are a lot of similarities. Brilliant.
Northumbria was an Anglian kingdom.
The influence is more because of Dane Law.
@@Norse-GaelAnglo Saxon more than Norse but Norse has had more influence in Yorkshire
I divern't na wa' they're tarking aboot.
There's a translate to English underneath your comment! Google doesn't realise that it is very good old English!
Haddaway man!
He just telt ye.
I nivvor really knae, either mind.
The pit taak cannit be aal ower. Can it?
The Google subtitling made a dog's dinner out of this.
Real men,great men hail hail
4:50 “we had a clipping gang we used to gan away with, gan away on the Monday and come back on the Saturday night. We’d kill a sheep and ya would have mutton for ya breakfast, mutton for ya bloody dinner, mutton for ya tea and mutton for ya supper. After aboot 3 days ya were nearly bleating!”
I just love that uvular R, the Northumbrian burr.
If you click the auto-generated subtitles on, you'll see it's not just humans who can have a tough time making out certain words. :-)
One line was "Soft ass baptized flavor, it was' WTF? 😅
It got at least some of it right. It wasn't until I turned it on that I realized they really were speaking English and I could half follow their words 🤔
I'm from Seghill, pitmans doughter and proud of it man.
Just saw this! My ancestors (also pitmen) were from Seghill. I was watching this trying to see how much I could understand. My grandmother could apparently put on the accent, but I never knew her (and we are down South now). We have photographs of her grandfather with his fancy waistcoat, pocket watch and so on. It blew my mind when I finally realised that Mr Fancy Coat must have talked with a thick Geordie accent.
Beautiful
I don't know how but I understood every word...
Nice to see the border collie there. The dog of the region. My family originated from down south. Crazy thing is in my area in Australia, MOST FAMILIES come from the same area. There's a family down the hill from me that we were friends with IN ENGLAND for generations.
The Northumberland shearers at the start sound like a Mix of Geordie, Scottish and Irish. The man being interviewed sounds Irish when he does the pronunciations. Northumbrian, Scottish (including Scots) and Hibernic (Hiberno and Ulster Scots) varieties of English all share similar vocabulary, but it seems that pronunciation is also a factor too. I've noticed that many Hebrideans sound very Irish, but this might be a migration thing, such as Manx and North Wales people tend to have mishmash accents of Northern England, Scotland and Ulster.
Just so beautiful...
Nice showcase of North-Northumbrian and Pityakka/South East Northumbrian :D
My Clark family from South Ronaldsay Orkney and The Scottish Highlands were Shepards.
Reminds me of Michael Palin's Gumby character LOL
My grandads family were farmers in Teesdale, the accent isn't far off.
I understood every word that was spoken
Same here. Crystal clear.
Very interesting
Gan used in Carlisle and bait too. My dad used those words.
Superb photography. Me Nan Was from East Bolden. I'm London. I get it.
I'm from county Durham and had to listen very closely to understand.
thats because you speak mackem....the devils tongue
@@darkwave9345 true.
I'm from County Durham, the accent is different to ours but the dialect words they use are practically the same. Though it depends on where ye're from, the dialect south o Blackhall is mair wattered-down.
Skewl (School) Bwoook (book) Rwlerr (ruler) (You tak em, we'll mak em)
Absolutely awesome!!! One of my relatives was from Northumbria, although she moved to work in West London after going to Corden Bleu School of Catering in Paris. That must have been a real culture shock for her!!!
I didn’t understand much. They speak fast like the rural French. Quite pleasant to hear though. Not keen on Bragg’s accent though, he has the condescending tone that was so common among the elite of that era.
We used to go out there with our parents in the 60s and 70s into the utter wilds, some of the best parts of the UK, no one around, only sheep and our father would us of the even older language, never mind dialect if we left Northumberland and went to the North York moors- the old Celtic language to count the sheep preserved even then from our Celtic forefathers - Yan tan tether mether pip. All these decades later despite speaking standard English at home even the 1960s I can understand everything the shepherds said.
Been a Northumberland born (Newbiggin by the Sea) lad living in Canada for 23 years I struggled to understand this
I've drank many pints in the Central Clurd and Ship. Gets canny windy at Church Point in the winta mind.
Went straight for the comments
Whey man that was champion Born a Geordie but holidaying on a farm in north Northumberland regularly aa understodd ivvory word. The nearest dialect to Old English in the English speaking world . We haven't moved away from proper English pronunciation, it's
A lad from Bedlington was in the swimming baths, he saw a nice looking lass and asked "do ye come here often" ?
She said "eee are yee flirting" ?
"naa burth me feets touchin the bottom"
My great grandad and uncle are in this video
Theirs still a few people near me with the auld Northumbrian burr.
How old are they and what are of Northumberland are they from? I'd good to hear it's not extinct yet!
That is my relative in the video the gentleman smoking is my great grandfather
Its that bloke off Alan Partridge
Little known fact: Melvyn Bragg used to do the Vicks Sinus Inhaler voice overs.
This is how the police caught and located the Yorkshire ripper hoaxer by their accent.
@@Tom-uv7ry The point is the police isolated his exact location on Wearside from his accent.
Melvyn Braggs voice would put me aslee
I lived in Northumberland 12 years of my life and I go to school in Northumberland but I have never heard this accent
It’s more upper valleys rothbury onwards
Depends where in Northumberland you lived ?
Yeah this accent is more like the area from Rothbury to Wooler, particularly the older generations. You won't hear it in Blyth and Cramlington.
@@MofosOfMetal correct it’s upper couqetdale crack that old hill valley speech
As an upper coquetdale kid can confirm it's generally spoken around where I'm from but as soon as you get out of Rothbury it's just the Morpeth accent
@@MofosOfMetal and Ashington, did ya not hear the gadgie at the end? I think you need some new Geps.
All gone. Even in Ashington the young ones just sounds like Newcastle Geordies
Any of the shearer s called Alan?
shepherd with mutton chops, ram horns, mutton fo' ya tae and mutton fo'' ya' supper or mutton in a battie wi' some chips.
This is the accent of the border reviers both side of the borders.
I understand the sheep more than them
🤣🤣👏👏
I'm better able to understand this Northumberland accent than I can understand the Okracoke-Tangier-Smith Islands accent. Their ancestors came from the UK's English South-West, I have learned. And I live across the pond!
People think Rothbury has a think Northumberland accent? Try going to Red Row and listen to some of the old fellas from there. Unless you’re local you’d be hard pushed to understand them.
Aye mick Reed raaa 👍🏻👍🏻
They wrongly refer to it as an accent; it's a dialect.
Indeed, my Northumbrian grandparents always refered to it as a 'dialect'.
Is it not both?
@@ryfr6711 if this is anything like Scots then it’d be written using a different set of words than standard English (Scots is spelled differently to English). The standard English dictionaries wont apply here hence it cant be an accent of English but a dialect if not a distinct language.
it's a bit of both, I grew up in Stockton and we use a lot of the same words, but our accents are a bit different
so the dialect does have a few accents to it.
@@ryfr6711dialect means regional variant. The accent is the intonation.
A divvn't naa aboot that like.
I turned on the subtitles... I have to assume they're accurate somewhat but who really knows lol
The last man sounded almost a bit New York.
Bet the lads are long gone !
Long gone! it was only a week ago it was filmed lol
How? Few young lads in that video. If this was in 1976 some of those lads could still be in their 60s.
I am from there in Berwick and i can't understand them!
The Northumberland accent is not to be confused with the Geordie accent.....Here man here man, ye ye, how man, how, howay then ye, ah nargh ah nargh - i'll batta ye ya little radgy.....
and the point of you saything this what was exactly?
@@darkwave9345 sorry, can you write this in English please?
Not really.
Both use the word gan
Both use the words oot
There is alot of crossover, i guess your not a geordie lol
@@brettharter143 I was being sarcastic, more like the 90s in Newcastle and it’s you’re not your.
It's half not known the language and half the speed that are talking at. Apart from that it's Geordie.
I got about 7% of that
Im Irish and could understand almost everything..To my ears it sounds like a milder form Geordie accent...
Same. The older lads had a lilt that sounded a bit Irish.
Holy banana pudding!
and sometimes was taken for Welch. the -sheep, Blackfaced Cheviot?
Isn't Northumberland just outside Newcastle so it will be similar to a Geordie accent, but not quite Scottish.
This is about 40 miles north of Newcastle
Yes Northumberland borders Newcastle. Many Newcastle suburbs used to be part of Northumberland before they were incorporated into Newcastle. Although it’s rare to find strong accents like this anymore.
They’re some similarities to Geordie for sure.
There's 65 miles between Newcastle and the Scottish border so there is a gradual shift as you go up, it's not like all of a sudden you go from Geordie to Scottish.
My cousin married a Geordie (we're from the US). He sounds a bit like this but not as broad an accent. I hear what sounds a tad Scottish too. A little mix but not exactly like either one.
Sounds very Dutch and French.
Dutch yes French absolutely not
To be honest i had an easier time understanding the sheep. Seriously though even though as an American I only understand one word of five I love how it sounds.
As a South Asian, I understood only the presenter.
Hablas Ingles?
Yes.
Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran. Music.
I'm Scottish. That's quite easy
A divint na wot yees are tarking aboot not understandin them gadgies, it would have been good if they'd had a chebble to sit at when they had their bait.
This sounds very Celtic to me
HAS MELVIN BRAGG NOT DONE THE CUMBRIAN ACCENT WITH HIM BEING CUMBRIAN AND FROM WIGTON
... Just Look at That Sofa !!!
milk or ccccream
It just seems like newcastle but stronger.
Like Geordie but a lot more rural.