New Website for the Yorkshire Dialect Society

The Yorkshire Dialect Society now has a new website at http://www.yorkshiredialectsociety.org.uk/.

As I mentioned in my post of January 2008, I've been a Life member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society for about forty years now. Established in 1897, it is the world's oldest surviving dialect society. It holds four meetings a year around the county and publishes both an annual Transactions and a Summer Bulletin.

For examples of Yorkshire dialect haiku see that post and my post in January 2009.

Graeme Garvey is the new editor of Transactions, the latest issue of which includes a tribute by Peter French for Stanley Ellis (1926 - 2009) who held the society together for many years. His voice is etched into my brain and he is very sadly missed. Another long-serving member Arnold Kellett (1926 - 2009) is also remembered.

Stan an' Arnold
tha'll be missed tha knaws
bu' nivver fret
get aff an' see Fred Brown
chiding Euclid's childer.

Gerald England.

ABC Wednesday - Y is for Yorkshire (again)

words © Susan Shand; photograph © Betty Longbottom.

A year ago I posted Y is for Yorkshire in the first round of ABC and introduced you to haiku in Yorkshire dialect.

I now bring you the work of Susan Shand.

kids laikin'
next doors do a moonlight flit
t' 'uddersfield

up Bingley 5-rise
roses spred all ovver t' walls
even on t' barges

dawn on t' Otley Chevin
747s off t't' sunshine

I have combined the first of these haiku with a photograph of Houses at bottom of Outcote Bank by Betty Longbottom, used here with permission, to create a haiga.

You can find a dialect haiga of my own on Winter Haiku 2008/09.

More Y posts can be seen on the ABC Wednesday Anthology blog.

Others can be found via the ABC Wednesday with Mister Linky which carries a registry of participants.

ABC Wednesday - Y is for Yorkshire

This map is reproduced by permission from the website of the Yorkshire Ridings Society (link now defunct).

Known as God's own Country the boundaries of Yorkshire as shown above were established in the ninth century.

When Local Government was reorganised in 1974 some people believed that the old counties no longer existed despite a Government Statement that

The new county boundaries are administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries of counties, nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change, despite the different names adopted by the new administrative counties.

Maps of the historical counties of Britain and more information can be found on the website of the Association of British Counties.


The ramparts of Skipton Castle.

I've been a Life member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society for about forty years now. Established in 1897, it is the world's oldest surviving dialect society. It holds four meetings a year around the county and publishes both an annual Transactions and a Summer Bulletin.

The former generally contains a number of scholarly articles such as (in the 2007 edition) LEXICAL EROSION AND INNOVATION IN NORTH-WEST DERBYSHIRE by Jon Fyne, which sounds a bit dry and tangential, but is actually a fascinating read. It also includes some excellent original poetry. The latter publication is generally the place for more popular contemporary writing and verse in dialect.

One of the strengths of the YDS is its ability to attract on the one hand, academics whose interests are primarly in language, linguistics or history, and on the other, creative writers and speakers of dialect. My deepest regret as a Council member is my inability to attend meetings these days.


The view from the top of Holme Moss.

My favourite Yorkshire Dialect poet was the late Fred Brown - read his poem Euclid's Childer.

There are several writers of haiku in Scots; one of the best is John McDonald, but so far as I know, I'm the only person to have written haiku in Yorkshire dialect. These SIX YORKSHIRE HAIKU were published in Summer Bulletin in 2002.

wooid stack'd
ahint t'shed
oe'er-ran wi' bahndweed

wheeir t'muck-stacks were
lush trees nah grow
on t'illside

hot efternooin
sheep on t'fells kip
bi a stoan

river agate —
ducks on t'igh bank
waddle i' a lahne

med blahnd
bi t'low Jan'ry sun
Paris ti Hades

ower t'M1
a breet-een'd kestrel
'ovvers

© Gerald England, 2002

ABC Wednesday - M is for Manchester Art Gallery

Last Thursday I met up with Juliet Wilson who was down from Edinburgh. As she relates on her blog Crafty Green Poet, we visited the Manchester Literary Festival event Victorian Lines at Manchester Art Gallery.

Art Treasures in Manchester marks the 150th anniversary of the largest art show ever seen in Britain. The original exhibition, held in 1857, was an incredible achievement for the city and an extraordinary artistic event. It was visited by eminent Victorian writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens.

On Thursday afternoon David Gaffney took us round the exhibition, stopping at selected paintings and photos to read microfiction pieces and stories he had written inspired by the exhibition. Some fifty people turned up to listen to him. His stories were humorous in the main and full of off-beat characters such as the Victorian boy bought on Ebay, the man with a prescription windshield, the complete forger and a ghost.

The Gallery provided portable chairs for use by visitors. These were a real boon for those of us who couldn't have stood listening to the speaker for almost an hour. Without them, I'd never have stayed the course. In the photo above you can see the chairs stacked outside the entrance to the exhibition.

Fee Plumley has also briefly reviewed this event on the MLF blog.

What's this @

During a telephone conversation with a friend who doesn't use the internet, this question came up. What is the name of the @ symbol?

It is just called the at symbol was my reply.

Afterwards I decided to do some googling and came across this article http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/whereat.htm.

Michael Quinion writes on International English from a British viewpoint. It would seem that the original symbol was an amphora which was a unit of weight in medieval Italy and @ was a handwritten A embellished in typical Florentine style.

Use of it within internet email addresses has led to the symbol being imported into many different languages. Names mentioned in Quinion's article include

• Klammeraffe (spider monkey in German)
• grisehole (pig's tail in Danish)
• snabel (elephant's tail in Swedish)
• apestaart (monkey's tail in Dutch)
• kukac (worm in Russian)

However, in English it would seem that its official name is indeed the at (or "commercial at") symbol.

Michael Quinion's site World Wide Words is an Aladin's cave of articles on all aspects of word usage. This lexicographer and word-lovers' site has been going since 1996 which is an eon in internet time. Now I've discovered it I shall be making regular visits.

Windermere or what's in a name?

This photograph of Windermere dates from March 2002. A version is posted on my Out & About website.

I had labelled it: Lake Windermere: View towards Helvellyn. A few days ago I had an email pointing out that the word Lake in the title is redundant. This body of water is simply Winder-mere. Mere is just another term for a lake.

I agree and have re-labelled the photograph.

In a follow-up email, however, my correspondent added

I think that 'the media' is largely responsible for the misuse, and also for its acceptance among the general public, few of whom care much about the language anyway.
Regardless of the reason for it happening, or for its acceptance, the fact remains that it betrays a lack of understanding of the english language ... sad then that so many perpetrators actually make their living from use of that language.

I thought I'd do a bit of investigation and the name Lake Windermere does seem to crop up on the websites of various local businesses and others whom you might have thought would have known better.

Even Windermere Lake Cruises on whose boat we sailed, uses the term at one stage.

One site that avoids the pitfall and has some stunning pictures is the Visit Cumbria site.

Windermere, the town, was originally known as Birthwaite, but when the railway arrived in 1847, the station was named Windermere and the town developed quickly around the station, with hotels, boarding houses and shops eventually spreading down the hill to merge with Bowness.

One might well question why the National Park was called the Lake District when there is only one lake (Bassenthwaite Lake) while the rest are meres, tarns or waters.

The Wikipedia List of tautological place-names not only includes Lake Windermere but also Wastwater, being a combination of the Old Norse "vatn" and the Old English "wæter", meaning waterwater.