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The Guardian last week carried an article about a new book, Pitmatic: The Talk of the North East Coalfields. Pitmatic combined regional dialect features with the technical vocabulary of the mine, and no doubt it was impenetrable enough, but I thought the Guardian was overstating matters when it opened its report: "A dialect so dense that it held up social reforms has been rescued from obscurity by the publication of its first dictionary."
This was based on the comments of the parliamentary commissioners who visited the area in 1842, who were felt to be sympathetic to the miners and the campaign for better working conditions. Their report stressed the arduousness of their task: "The barriers to our intercourse were formidable. Numerous mining technicalities, northern provincialisms, peculiar intonation and accents and rapid and indistinct utterance rendered it essential for us to devote time to the study of these peculiarities ere we could translate and write the evidence." Fair enough; but "Educated gentlemen do not immediately understand local accent" is not quite the same as "dialect so dense ... it held up social reforms".
I have a booklet called Pit Talk in County Durham written by Dave Douglass in 1973, and published as a History Workshop Pamphlet. It's a fine mixture of the author's reminiscences (and those of his father), earlier published glossaries, songs and stories (including the Radio Ballad The Big Hewer and the High Level Ranters' repertoire). A taste of the glossary section:
( Elephant feet )
( Gaudy Day )
( Keeker )
This was based on the comments of the parliamentary commissioners who visited the area in 1842, who were felt to be sympathetic to the miners and the campaign for better working conditions. Their report stressed the arduousness of their task: "The barriers to our intercourse were formidable. Numerous mining technicalities, northern provincialisms, peculiar intonation and accents and rapid and indistinct utterance rendered it essential for us to devote time to the study of these peculiarities ere we could translate and write the evidence." Fair enough; but "Educated gentlemen do not immediately understand local accent" is not quite the same as "dialect so dense ... it held up social reforms".
I have a booklet called Pit Talk in County Durham written by Dave Douglass in 1973, and published as a History Workshop Pamphlet. It's a fine mixture of the author's reminiscences (and those of his father), earlier published glossaries, songs and stories (including the Radio Ballad The Big Hewer and the High Level Ranters' repertoire). A taste of the glossary section:
( Elephant feet )
( Gaudy Day )
( Keeker )
