Owd Arkwright's Impossible Plan - A Proper Yorkshire Saga
By Nick Gisburne - Part One - T' Fact'ry
Full Text (which may not help!):
http://gisburne.deviantart.com/art/Ow...
Written in Yorkshire (West Riding) dialect, which is where I was born and brought up. I no longer speak as broadly as this, but believe me when I say that I definitely used to - we all did where I grew up (Rotherham/Barnsley area). I still have an accent, but it's nowhere near as marked, and I don't use as many dialect words as I used to.
Note: accent and dialect are two related but separate things. Dialect is the words, accent is how the words are said - you can speak in English but use a French accent, for example, so that wouldn't be a dialect.
Please look at one of the many Yorkshire dialect web sites on the internet if you need help with understanding what I'm saying. Hearing it is much easier than reading it, but take a look at the text which is written as it should be spoken.
Despite what non-Yorkshire folk might think, the 't' which replaces the word 'the' is silent, but on the other hand it's also detectable in speech! It is what is known as a glottal stop, and the best way I can describe its use is this: when you see it, put the brakes on as quickly as possible at the end of the word before it!
Hence: on t' table -- only pronounce one 't' but you always say the word 'on' abruptly, with a slight pause so that you don't immediately say 'table'. The abruptness + the pause = the glottal stop... probably!
Of course sometimes the 't' is not silent, for no particular reason - listen out for a few in the poem!
To complicate things still further, different variations of dialect are used in different areas of Yorkshire itself, even in different towns and villages. So if you're from Yorkshire and don't talk quite like me, you probably just didn't live in the same village :o)
I've lived outside Yorkshire for longer than inside, so unfortunately I may have some East Midlands dialect mixed into my accent, but I've tried to ferret out any dialect words which don't belong. Since Derbyshire and South Yorkshire border each other there is certainly fair bit of crossover, but I've done my best to stay with words and speech patterns from my youth.
I have big plans to continue with the saga, so look out for more tales of Arkwright's Impossible Plan coming your way soon. Champion!
Links to dialect sites and useful information:
http://www.yorkshiredialectsociety.or...
http://www.yorkshire-dialect.org/inde...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/v...
http://yorkshirefolk.myfineforum.org/...
http://silsden.net/yorkshiredialect/d...
