LL-L: "English" LOWLANDS-L, 01.FEB.2000 (02) [E]

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From: Pat Reynolds [pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "English" LOWLANDS-L, 31.JAN.2000 (05) [E]

I currently am without television, but I think (from memory of trailers
a few months ago) that it is Black Country.

The dialect poet Harry Harrison has one poem titled 'The Ossiz Um Gooin'
(i.e. The Horses are Going')  But it isn't universal across the West
Midlands - for example the Batley weaver, Tom Daniel's version of
"Poverty Knock": "Poverty, poverty knock!/Me Loom is a-sayin' all
day/Poverty, poverty knock!/Gaffer's too skinny to pay", or one of the
songs about Eynuch  "O'd Eynuch bay fergot,/Nor niver con be" (Old Enoch
isn't forgotten, nor never can be).  This last exemplifies another
characteristic of the dialect: negatives that sound like positives!
To answer your question, you need someone who knows this area: it is
possible to locate people, by dialect, to one of the many towns or
villages which appear to outsiders to be swallowed into a homogenous
urban sprawl.  But those who live there know where they are.

>From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
>Subject: LL-L: "English"
>
>I wonder if anybody could tell me from which part of England comes the
>dialect in the current ITV sitcom "The Grimleys" where every part of the
>present tense of the verb "to be" is "am"?
>
--
Pat Reynolds
pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk
   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)

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From: bri [bri at globalnet.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "English" LOWLANDS-L, 31.JAN.2000 (05) [E]

>From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
>Subject: LL-L: "English"
>
>I wonder if anybody could tell me from which part of England comes the
>dialect in the current ITV sitcom "The Grimleys" where every part of the
>present tense of the verb "to be" is "am"?
>
>E.g. "We'm going with yow, am we?"
>
>Sandy

I've worked as a teacher on the edges of the Black Country since 1973,
in Wednesbury, which is about 8 miles north-west of Birmingham City
Centre and is adjacent to Dudley and West Bromwich. A local joke has it
that a soccer star opens a toy-shop in nearby Bilston (outskirts of
Wolverhampton): the shop is called 'Toys am We'.

This is definitely Black Country talk. Its opposite  is 'we b'ay'
('we're not', as in 'we (b)ain't')).

Also:

'We cor' = 'we can't',

'we d'ay' = 'we didn't'

So:

'Are we going to Dudley tomorrow as we did last week?'  'No, we can't
because we didn't go last week'

becomes

'Am we goo-in te Dudley loik lass wick?  Na, we cor coz we d'ay lass
wick' (or as near as d*mmit)

--
brian

www.mourne.net  New Irish poetry at IRELingus

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: English

John Lindley wrote:

OK, Folks.  Now, in kindness toward those subscribers on this international
list who are not as familiar with the nicknames of England's regions, let's
mention what the "Black Country" is.  I supposed I am correct in assuming that
it is the area "in the English Midlands ... situated to the North and West of
Birmingham. Stourbridge, Lye, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Wednesbury, Walsall, West
Bromwich, Brierley Hill, Halesowen", as given at
<http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/6697/>.  Why does it have this
nickname?  Because of coal mining?

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: English

Sandy asked:

>from which part of England comes the dialect in the current ITV sitcom "The
Grimleys" where every part of the present tense of the verb "to be" is
"am"?<

I would say the accent is West Midlands, within 20 miles/30 km of
Birmingham. I'll watch the show more carefully in future. From my limited
experience, accents vary very widely even within this limited area. A few
years ago I unwittingly found myself doing linguistic research in a pub
garden in Kenilworth, 10 km from Birmingham, listening to vowel sounds which
I'd never heard before and which deviated markedly from those of standard
"Brummagem".

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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