Yorkshire Dialect - Vocabulary and Grammar

Vocabulary and Grammar

A list of non-standard grammatical features of Yorkshire speech is shown below. In formal settings, these features are castigated and, as a result, their use is recessive. They are most common amongst older speakers and amongst the working-classes.

• Definite article reduction: shortening of the to a form without a vowel, often written t'. See this overview and a more detailed page on the Yorkshire Dialect website, and also Jones (2002). This is most likely to be a glottal stop, although traditionally it was or (in the areas that border Lancashire) .
• Some dialect words persist, although most have fallen out of use. The use of owt and nowt, derived from Old English a wiht and ne wiht, mean anything and nothing. They are pronounced and in North Yorkshire, but as and in most of the rest of Yorkshire. Other examples of dialect still in use include flayed (sometimes flayt) (scared), laik (play), roar (cry), aye (yes), nay (emphatic "no"), and all (also), anyroad (anyway) and afore (before).
• When making a comparison such as greater than or lesser than, the word "nor" can be used in place of "than", e.g. better nor him.
• Nouns describing units of value, weight, distance, height and sometimes volumes of liquid have no plural marker. For example, ten pounds becomes ten pound; five miles becomes five mile.
• The word us is often used in place of me or in the place of our (e.g. we should put us names on us property). Us is invariably pronounced with a final rather than an .
• Use of the singular second-person pronoun thou (often written tha) and thee. This is a T form in the T-V distinction, and is largely confined to male speakers.
• Were can be used in place of was when connected to a singular pronoun.
• While is often used in the sense of until (e.g. unless we go at a fair lick, we'll not be home while seven.) Stay here while it shuts might cause a non-local to think that they should stay there during its shutting, when the order really means that they should stay only until it shuts.
• The word self may become sen, e.g. yourself becomes thy sen, tha sen.
• As in many non-standard dialects, double negatives are common, e.g. I was never scared of nobody.
• The relative clause may be what rather than that, e.g. other people what I've heard. Alternatively there may be no relative clause, e.g. I've a sister lives there.