History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part Two

Our very own Roving Reporter Dennis revisits the Black Country to find out what's still there and what has changed.

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History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part Two

Postby Dennis » Mon May 28, 2012 12:33 pm

....continued

Talk given in Oldbury on 15 May 2012

Much was changed still further by the Norman Conquest of 1066 which brought a new ruling class who spoke a form of Old French learnt in Normandy. The Normans were originally Vikings who had settled in Northern France and had learned French. The Norman Conquest made a huge difference in some areas of our language, with, for example, a distinction being established between the farm animals cow, sheep and swine, all Germanic Anglo-Saxon words, and the meat from them: beef, mutton, pork, all Norman French words, derived originally from Latin. So that's roughly where we are now: Modern English is a much evolved form of Anglo-Saxon with a simplified grammar and a huge input of loanwords, especially from Latin and French.

But Modern English is also very special in having not only Standard English of the kind that BBC announcers once used – say the accent and language of Kenneth Kendall or Michael Aspel – but also a vast range of other grades of speech. For example there is Literary Standard English: I have none; then colloquial, that is spoken, Standard English: I haven't any, I haven't got any, not to mention North American I don't have any; then provincial Standard English, using local vowels: I/Oi ‘aven’t (got) any; sub-Standard, that is with non-Standard grammar: Oi ain’t got none, with an illogical double negative (logically it ought to mean: I have got some!); and then local dialect, sometimes with non-Standard grammar: Oi ay gorrany, Oi ay got none. We have so many dialects for what is such a small island, dialects which often overlap and merge into each other.

Many dialects have been watered down or even lost in recent decades with rapid social change, but others have hung on, like that – or rather those – of the Black Country, an area which – depending on how you define it, the 30-foot coal seam etc. – may cover up to 100 square miles. Although many dialect words are shared across the Black Country, the accent is not uniform everywhere. Of course, many regional dialects have variations within a given geographical area. My father always thought that the oldest and purest Black Country accent and intonation were to be heard in the Cradley Heath and Old Hill area and he used to seek them out down Credley in the pubs over there while listening to Tommy Mundon and other entertainers. My Dad perceived a real difference from the Oldbury accent. Cradley Heath speech – Credley He-yath – certainly sounds at times more like a variety of Northern English in some of its open vowels : why, for example, which is almost Nottinghamshire or north Staffordshire. (My Dad had a Cradley friend, Sydney, whom he used to jokingly call Sidney Why Like, from the way he would often hesitate and say “Why, why it was, lairke… [whatever]”.) Very different from Oldbury or Birmingham [woi]: loike, foive, moi, quoite are fe:v, qua:t; or Cradley pint [pa:nt] I [i:], late [le:t], nineteen [na:nti:n], me fairther = father; nairme = name; wearsted = wasted; pairper = paper; in a sairf plairce = safe place; wild [wa:ld] or mek ‘ēst, make haste, all rather like north Staffordshire, a sairf plairce could almost be the Potteries or even Manchester. (If my mother, by the way, who was from Langley, heard anyone saying wairk, me fairther, Om agooin ter chairch, or O sin it in the pairper, she would say, very disapprovingly, that their accent was ‘very broad’ – which I suppose, if you looked at it the other way, could mean pure and uncontaminated by Standard English!) You might also hear, over towards Cradley, one vowel becoming two, as in Credley He-yath, in sleep [slɪip] and please [pli:jaz]. Oldbury diphthongs – two vowels occuring within the same syllable – foive, moi, quoite, loife, eight [æit] are closer to Brummie speech. But to my ear, and no doubt yours too, a Black Country ‘twang’ or intonation, almost like a melody rising and falling, is instantly detectable, and a lot of older people from Oldbury still have it.

Just to hint at the wider picture, let me show you a page from the definitive 1977 Linguistic Atlas of England. How do you normally describe the process of preparing a cup of tea ? I've chosen my words carefully so as not prompt you with the word I'd use. Well, this is the rather bewildering national picture – you see how rich this small island is in dialect words. To brew, draw, make, mash, mask, scald, soak, steep, or to wet tea ! Standard English would be to make tea, but round here you would probably also hear mash, in common with a large swathe of the country from the Scottish border down through the Yorkshire Pennines as far as here and Leicestershire, and east to parts of Norfolk. But in Lancashire and especially on Coronation Street it's always a brew! Tea is brewed there, as we might brew beer here. I think, perhaps through the influence of television, brew is quite widely used in a lot of places now.

Black Country speech and words have considerable comic potential, I need hardly point out. When in 1997 a road island was built in Dudley, a sign was put up to warn drivers of possible rush-hour congestion. Translated into Black Country, very tongue-in-cheek, it read :

‘If yowm saft enuff ter cum dahn ‘ere agooin wum, yowr tay’ll be spile’t!’

Without tape recordings it's difficult to go further with accent and intonation, but what we can do is look at the actual words people use and what makes them distinct from Standard English.

Black Country at its purest often preserves Old English and Middle English words and usages, and uses the Anglo-Saxon forms of the verb to be. There were two Anglo-Saxon verbs to be: bēon and wesan. Bēon went: ic bēo, þū bist, hē bið and wesan went: ic eom, þū eart, hē is. Later English merged the two, so we have now: I am, thou art, he is. We've largely stopped using the thou forms to say you to just one person, although we still understand them and they've been used in literature till quite recently – other related Indo-European languages like French, German and Russian have kept the thou forms for close friends and family, and also animals: tu, du, ты. (And of course many here will know that in Germany they say du bist). The Black Country dialect still has thee bist from þū bist, not þū eart, which gave thou art. My mother-in-law from Barnsley, Yorkshire might say to me: Th’art a poet an rait, meaning you’re about as useless, as unpractical as a poet, using the old but Standard thou art, th’art is used in Yorkshire dialect. But around here you might hear: thee bist, ‘ow bist, ma mon? from þū bist. Or Air bin ya? (The reply, of course, is : Cor grumble.) Thou is used a lot when addressing just one person: Thee cosn’t, and so on. And the negative: Bisn’t gooin out? – O bin an’ o bay. So bin we or bay we? Also the possessive adjective thy: Sup up thee beer.

The plural of thine, strictly speaking, is yowern, it's yowern, it's misen etc. Yow am or yome or we am never were grammatically correct Standard English forms: yo am, ay yah? combining singular and plural forms, but this has become the hallmark of the Black Country to such an extent that Brummies disparagingly call us Yam Yams.

Here's an anecdote: when my mother was in Hallam Maternity Hospital, now Sandwell General, after she'd had my younger brother, she was visited not only by her brother-in-law John, who was a missionary priest, and by the chaplain to the hospital, but also by the local parish priest. The woman in the next bed, who spoke very broad, turned to my Mum and observed, so that the whole ward could hear (my mother could have died with embarrassment):

Yome ‘avin’ sum vicars to see yow, ay ya?

My mother must have appeared to be a lost soul in need of saving…

There are some less expected ways in which Black Country speech harks back to its Anglo-Saxon roots. My Oldbury grandmother, a greengrocer in New Street, Oldbury, when asked how many there were, would say, for example: ‘oh, four or five and twenty’, which is very much as it would have been in Anglo-Saxon, or indeed in modern German: ‘Es gab drei und zwanzig oder vier und zwanzig Personen’. She would also say, of the time: ‘it's five and twenty past six’, as many of us once did, and perhaps still do. Very Anglo-Saxon!

Right, let's now move on to what linguists call the lexis – the actual vocabulary which Black Country people use – which consists of dialect words and not Standard English. I'll group them under various headings and I'll try to give their linguistic origins wherever I can. I've filtered out the many Standard English things which we may say thinking they're local to us, when in fact they're not. These are, for example, to chunter, grumble, mutter, complain; or she's a besom, a pert woman, a harridan (from a broom made of twigs); or he's a tartar (very fierce, as in the people of Central Asia); or the delightful to go doolally (tap) (= mad, from the name of a fever hospital in Bombay, now; tap = fever); or he's bone (round here boon) idle (thoroughly idle, idle right through to the bone) ; or fizzog: wash yer fizzog, my Dad used to say, jokingly, face, of course (from physiognomy). I'm afraid all of those are in the Oxford English Dictionary as part of Standard English and are widely used and understood everywhere, so sadly we can't lay claim to them as our own!

Let's start with Black Country words used to describe people, the body and physical activities. Please feel free to comment or disagree! These are just my own impressions of meanings and usages, I'm always open to correction!


Backfriend: a flap of loose skin around the nails. This is common throughout South Staffordshire.

Chincough, chincuff: whooping cough, caught from sitting e.g. on a cold step. Yole get chincuff asittin’ thear. OED chink = a fit of coughing.

To kench: to sprain, I've kenched meself, twisted myself awkwardly.

Head Sirag: he’s th’ed sirrag, the top man, boss, sometimes ironic. From Sir Rag, the chief menial, therefore ironic.

Lungeous: rough-mannered, from lunge. Doh be so lungeous!

Powk: a stye in the eye, linked to pock, ulcer, as in smallpox. (Windpocken, Modern German for chickenpox.) Also a squilt, spot, blackhead.

Garl: secretion in the corner of the eye, ‘sleep’. Middle English gul, from Old Norse (Viking) gulr = yellow, gul is yellow in the modern Scandinavian languages. Also wopple, occasionally from an infection.

To chobble: chew + swallow, while graunching your teeth = grind + crunch.


© Dennis Wood 2012
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Re: History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part T

Postby sparkstopper » Mon May 28, 2012 4:24 pm

Had many a 'powk' as a youngster: a cure(supposedly) was to rub the
affected area with a gold wedding ring...and was often accused of
'squeeging my squilts'........
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Re: History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part T

Postby Dennis » Mon May 28, 2012 5:23 pm

Yes, I had a 'powk' removed at the Eye Hospital in Birmingham. I was always told that getting raw egg on your fingers would give you warts - I'm still careful now... And of course, if sitting on a cold doorstep didn't give you piles, it would give you 'chincuff' :-)
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Re: History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part T

Postby MarkCDodd » Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:14 pm

As I am reading this I can hear my recently deceased Uncle Colin using most of your examples at some time or other. It was always amusing to watch conversations between him and the "true blue" Aussies in the family. Hard to believe both sides were speaking English. Even after 50 years in Australia, both mum an dad will break into "black country speak" as I call it. Sometimes a good bit of Brummie sneaks in as well. Seems to be that Smethwickians tend to use both. Enougth to be recognised as a Yam Yam by a Brummie and vice versa.
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Re: History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part T

Postby Dennis » Fri Jun 01, 2012 6:41 pm

If you're interested in Brummie, Mark, and there's inevitably some overlap, there's Proper Brummie. A Dictionary of Birmingham Words and Phrases by Carl Chinn and Steve Thorne (Brewin Books, 2002).
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Re: History and Language in Oldbury, Worcestershire - Part T

Postby mallosa » Mon May 15, 2017 11:54 pm

Please note!

Since the recent changeover, we seem to have aquired a lot of 'gobbledegook' within Dennis's initial post.
Please bear with us, we'll get it sorted asap

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