I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes.
I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over.
I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong.
And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions.
I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely.
It's what we do.
I've spent enough time in London's 'Kangaroo-Valley' to have little trouble with Aussie slang. My own home town is infested with young folk from beyond the black stump...
Soub, curious to know how much of that you understood without the subtitles. Perhaps all. This seems to be not just an accent to get used to, but a true separate dialect (almost another language, actually) with non-English words mixed in. As words aresort of a hobby with me, I found this very interesting indeed and watched it several time. The postman seemed to get along well as long as it was only the local accent to deal with. When the older words were carried forward and mixed in, in addition to the Yorkshire "accent", that started sounding like a complete other language. This was cool.
I understand it, pretty much completely, but mainly because my uncle Raymond spoke a very similar dialect. I would stay on his farm for a week or two, most summers, and go with him to the livestock markets and country shows where he was a judge, awarding prizes for cattle. These places were full of countryfolk who spoke in dialect together. At first, I had no idea what they were saying. In a pub in Beverley, not so long ago, I was listening to two old men and understanding very little.
The farmer in the video, I would place, from his speech, as from East Yorkshire, from the ridge known as the 'Wolds', which separates the vale of York from the coastal plain. Or, in short, a wolds farmer. You'd hear that speech from Malton to Beverley, Market Weighton, or Driffield, Hutton Cranswick, Garrowby. But it's a mistake to imagine this dialect to represent Yorkshire dialect. There are several. People in the Yorkshire Dales speak differently, the vocabulary changes, as it does in the west riding, or further south to Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham. Both accent and dialect vary over relatively small distances. Ten or twenty miles can see significant changes. But the way this man speaks is going. Young people have many more sources of speech than he had. He would have grown up speaking as did the people of his village, people who seldom ventured beyond the horizon. Now, children in the same area are citizens of a global english, learning their language from television, movies, you-tube and facebook. They will travel. And the local words will be lost.
So often when watching British TV shows, I've not a clue what some of the actors are saying!
ReplyDeleteMuch of it is double Dutch (read English) to me!!
What's that, Skippy?
DeleteThey're trapped?
In the old mine?
You see, in my youth, we had education programmes on television, to assist us in understanding colloquial Australian.
The Magic Boomerang!
And of course, that tireless aussie ambassador, Rolf.
Oh. And Dame Edna.
"Wave yer gladdies!"
It's the Aussie slang you don't understand, Soubriquet...not the accent.
DeleteI've spent enough time in London's 'Kangaroo-Valley' to have little trouble with Aussie slang. My own home town is infested with young folk from beyond the black stump...
DeleteQuite easy to understand.
ReplyDeleteEasier, I dare say, than Rabbie Burns.
DeleteSoub, curious to know how much of that you understood without the subtitles. Perhaps all. This seems to be not just an accent to get used to, but a true separate dialect (almost another language, actually) with non-English words mixed in. As words aresort of a hobby with me, I found this very interesting indeed and watched it several time. The postman seemed to get along well as long as it was only the local accent to deal with. When the older words were carried forward and mixed in, in addition to the Yorkshire "accent", that started sounding like a complete other language. This was cool.
ReplyDeleteI understand it, pretty much completely, but mainly because my uncle Raymond spoke a very similar dialect.
DeleteI would stay on his farm for a week or two, most summers, and go with him to the livestock markets and country shows where he was a judge, awarding prizes for cattle.
These places were full of countryfolk who spoke in dialect together.
At first, I had no idea what they were saying. In a pub in Beverley, not so long ago, I was listening to two old men and understanding very little.
The farmer in the video, I would place, from his speech, as from East Yorkshire, from the ridge known as the 'Wolds', which separates the vale of York from the coastal plain. Or, in short, a wolds farmer. You'd hear that speech from Malton to Beverley, Market Weighton, or Driffield, Hutton Cranswick, Garrowby.
But it's a mistake to imagine this dialect to represent Yorkshire dialect. There are several. People in the Yorkshire Dales speak differently, the vocabulary changes, as it does in the west riding, or further south to Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham. Both accent and dialect vary over relatively small distances. Ten or twenty miles can see significant changes.
But the way this man speaks is going. Young people have many more sources of speech than he had. He would have grown up speaking as did the people of his village, people who seldom ventured beyond the horizon. Now, children in the same area are citizens of a global english, learning their language from television, movies, you-tube and facebook.
They will travel.
And the local words will be lost.
Adullamite, of course, will claim to understand all accents and all dialects. :)
ReplyDeleteI have a broad accent but that's something else!
ReplyDeleteI work with several Irish people, I can understand them when they're talking to me, but amongst themselves? Not a chance.
Delete