Teisdal en How T'Was Spokken
Kathleen Teward’s is the more extensive text, running to 191 pages. Most of this is vocabulary, with an agreeable intermix of photographs and ending with dialect poems and a short list of phrases. It is a considerable monument to a world that has changed immeasurably, even in one lifetime. These changes she attributes (in the preface) ‘to the travelling made by many to find work, the changes in agriculture as tractors and farm implements were taking the place of horses ‘ and ‘to the invasion of incomers however welcome’. At Newbiggin School she was taught standard English alongside respect for the dialect, which locally, she notes was used by everyone except the Parson, the Bank Manager and the Doctors etc, while they, even if they didn’t speak it had to be familiar with its contents.
The extensive word list contains a fair number of common-places (fag for cigarette,
Fell to knock down and some average variants on standard words (fowt for fought, fard’n for farthing etc.) but an impressive number of dialect terms including many not in common use further east ‘fletterin’ on = (starting to snow,) fistlin’ (uneasy)
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