Saturday, October 09, 2004

War of the Roses

It seems that the (in)famous Yorkshire dialect is flummoxing some otherwise entirely competent, intelligent, and fluent GPs new here from Austria.

For some reason these docs didn't understand when being told of mardy snecks and such, though apparently most of them gathered what was meant when patients complained of feeling jiggered. In any case, a dictionary was created for them and all seems well now. Except maybe til people start complaining about their hard-earned taxes being spent on Yorkshire Dialect Dictionaries.

But I think it's a great idea. As someone who committed the cardinal sin of moving from Lancashire to Yorkshire, the differences are far more pronounced than I would have expected. Nowadays I've been here in South Yorkshire for long enough to be accustomed to people teasing me for being nesh, to men calling each other love without a blink of an eye, with hearing myself use the word reyt to mean very. I have a wash when I feel loppy, if you need to know what time a shop closes, you are told it's open while 5 rather than until. That in particular leads to commonly told tales of someone going into a shop at 8.55am and being scolded and told, "You can't come in while we're open!". And don't even get me going on breadcakes. (It is, of course, a barmcake).

But, in true Yorkshire-adoptee style, I have to also tell you that for the last few days I haven't been online or doing much because I've been badly. Hope to be back properly soon.

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