Just got back in from my Yorkshire/English class and I have to say my group of French students did incredibly well and really jumped in with both feet. Stumbling blocks came when their English – as in ‘proper’ English – met Yorkshire English. They had a hard time with:
Yorkshire t’ = English to/the
Yorkshire wi’ = English with
Yorkshire me = English my
I thought Pierre’s head was going to explode when I explained that the ‘g’ in ‘maungy’ wasn’t pronounced the same as it was in ‘mingin”.
Fabienne really didn’t like having to say the Yorkshire slang for coal cellar in a sentence: ‘They’re in t’ coil oyle Margaret’.
And I fear I have damaged relations between Christine and I after I made her repeat ‘Let’s take a shortcut through t’ snicket’ five times, because she kept saying ‘the snicket’.
Yes, it did feel strange correcting people’s English, because it was correct English, but not correct Yorkshire English.
Next session we will be finishing this off (we only got up to ‘sup’ before time ran out) and delving into the Scottish dialect.
A Yorkshire/Scottish cocktail, what could go wrong?
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