Yorkshire Speak

I returned from the UK with the unique voices and terms of Yorkshire folks talking in my head and endeavoured to flavour the story with those voice as much as I could without making the reading difficult or awkward.

In particular, I dropped a lot of the ‘h’s and ‘t’s at the beginning of words, as Yorkshire folk do. 😳 

Not surprisingly, my editors nixed my attempts at phonetically rewriting several common expressions, and they removed some of the turns of phrases I’d kept in my second draft to try to still convey the folks’ distinctive way of speaking.

As a sampler, my submitted glossary of UK terms for the front of the book included the following words that were omitted from the final version*: 

Anyroad – Northern English for anyway; I always get a kick out of hearing this expression and used it myself for weeks whilst writing the book (along with the word whilst 🙂 )

Aye up – common form of greeting in Yorkshire; 

Backend – Yorkshire term for autumn or fall

Car boot sale – also called boot fairs are markets where individuals sell their household or garden goods, often directly from their car’s boot (trunk)

Kip – to sleep or nap

Nowt – Northern England term for nothing; this is another of the iconic Yorkshire expressions that I was disappointed to see nixed

Offcumden – Yorkshire term for someone who has come from elsewhere, an incomer

Punter – British slang for a customer in a commercial establishment

Shiverthewink – a rascal

Sprog – British slang for a child or baby

Summat – Yorkshire slang for something

Ta – British slang for thank you; I can still remember my grandmother using this expression, which I adopted when my children were little

*Of course, some of the above words may actually appear in the story’s final version with their inclusion in the glossary deemed unnecessary. On the other hand, I used the term brass in the opening scene but it was replaced with the word coin in the book. Yet, brass still appears in the glossary, so other places where I used the term were likely kept as originally written. 

The Yorkshireman’s Motto says it all

“Ear all, see all, say nowt. 

Eat all, sup all, pay nowt. 

And if ivver tha does owt for nowt, allus do it for thissen.” 

Translation: Hear all, see all, say nowt. Eat all, drink all, pay nothing. And if ever you do anything for nothing, do it for yourself. 

I met an iconic looking Yorkshireman in Leeds–barrel-chested, braces (suspenders) holding up his trousers and he spoke like that motto. I could scarcely make out what he was talking about. And neither could the Brits with whom I was touring! 

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