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Archive 1Archive 2

Teesside

Ive added a small paragraphg in reference to the South Tees and Middlesbrough accent which is historically the North Riding and now in the ceremonila county of North Yorkshire. Although its is predominatly a North East accent its still has a hefty portion of North Yorkshire in it. I'd reckon about 40% NY, 40% is Durham and the remaing 20% is from the Irish, Welsh and other immigrant workers during the early 1900's. dj_paul84 01:35 am, 23 August, 2006

That's good. We need more North Yorkshire stuff generally. It's not as easy to explain the N.Y. accent unless you are well-trained in how to put pronounciations into words. I'd call Middlesbrough a Yorkshire accent myself; it's not that different from Scarborough.
I wouldn't worry about Irish influences on it, for there is a hefty Irish influence on accents in the industrial West Riding. For example, look at pronounciations of "necessary", "secretary", etc. If I meet people from Ireland, they all seem to be able to understand broad West Riding speak. 212.159.30.47 10:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Rita, Sue and Bob Too?

"the 1986 film Rita, Sue and Bob Too featured a Bradford accent" It might have featured a Bra'fud accent, somewhere, but the main actors were from the wrong side of the pennines. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.142.169.126 (talk • contribs) 03:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Bob was definitely not from Lancashire, although he probably wasn't from Bradford. I'd say he was from somewhere around Wakefield or Dewsbury. He said "darn" for "down", "abart" for "about", etc. and you never get that in Lancashire. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.12.230.133 (talk • contribs) 15:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
You were correct on Rita and Sue though. Rita was from Oldham, and Sue was from Rochdale. Reference has been removed. Epa101 11:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Time confusion

I think that this article might need a makeover. One thing is that it seems a bit inconsistent about whether we're dealing with the Yorkshire dialect as it was traditionally spoken before recent times compromised it with R.P. or whether we're dealing with it as it is now. Some of the things mentioned in the article are now very rare to hear. For example, replacing a /t/ with an /r/ and the Sheffield dee-da thing. I work in Sheffield, and I've never once heard anyone use the th --> d thing. On the other hand, there are plenty of antiquated bits of Yorkshire that aren't mentioned here. Might need a good think. I personally think that it would be better to document the Yorkshire accents and dialect as they are today. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Epa101 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

It's been a good few years since I moved out of the area, but I have relatives all over South Yorkshire. Older Sheffielders do tend towards "dee dah"-ing compared to other local accents. And Rotherham and Barnsley folk did refer to Sheffielders as "deedahs" because of this. It may be a distinction that is dying out in the younger generation though.
Comparing Sheffield accents to Rotherham accents the things that most strike me as different features are that Sheffielders sound a little closer to the East Midlands in some of their vowel pronunciations, the aforementioned deedah, and that "duck" and "me duck" is used as a term of endearment (although you do get a bit of the latter on the southern edge of Rotherham too). And if anyone's confused of the origin of "me duck", a quick chat to someone (maybe again an older person) from Nottingham or Derby soon clears that one up, it's definitely an East Midlands thing!BaseTurnComplete 17:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

glots

Hi, unnamed user cut this

"Many accents in the East Riding and in the West Yorkshire cities present an increasing tendency to use a glottal stop for all non-initial /t/ sounds, excepting those in consonant clusters. e.g [bɒʔl] for bottle, [saʔ] for sat. A hard /k/ at the end of a word may also be replaced with a different glottal, produced further back in the throat.‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.› [citation needed] Glottal stops are also a possible realisation of the definite article; see the section below on definite article reduction. "

replaced it as no reasons given, and as anybody living in Yorkshire knows that glottalisation is a feature of the modern dialect, far more than "gerrof" or "gerrin berrer". As these are non-standard features in modern Yorkshire speech they have a place in the article, regardless of their origin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.77.197.63 (talk • contribs) 12:51, 5 October 2006

It's still there - they just moved it to a different place. I'd still like to know what that bit about /k/ being realised as a "different glottal" is all about, though. And please remember that everything in this article should be sourced; articles about English dialects suffer from people adding stuff based on their personal observations (frequently with dubious or badly-explained phonetics).--JHJ 16:14, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
For an example of what I mean, consider the bit that just got added: "In the North Riding, an initial dr or tr sound on a word can be pronounced very softly." This is unsourced and the description is so vague as to be meaningless. It may well be describing a real phenomenon, but without a source it's got to go.--JHJ 16:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

My mistake, sorry for confusion and causing extra work. Feel free to cut the unsourced "different glottal" bit. I suppose it comes under "original research", given that thats how people speak but I've not seen any papers documenting it. People from Leeds and Wakefield glottalise the final consonant on both "back" and "bat" but the pronunciation is different, and clearly discernable to the listener. Not knowing enough about linguistics to be sure, I would say that you aspirate the t glottal but not the k glottal. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.77.136.179 (talk • contribs) 01:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

There are both Leeds and Wakefield recordings on the CollectBritain website. Can you find one of these with the feature you're talking about?--JHJ 16:51, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Where is the Wakefield one? There is one for Ossett, a mere 4 miles away, but accents do change very quickly in that part of Yorkshire. Epa101 15:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that the glottal thing ties in with a point that I raised about time inconsistency above on this talk page. Some things on here are now very, very rare; the Sheffield th ---> d thing is even rarer than the "gerring berrer" thing. However, I expect that some people want the old tradition to be recognised. The problem is that we should then, for example, include the East Riding rhotic tradition; I'd say that is, if anything, still alive to a greater degree than the Sheffield dee-dah one. Then, there are probably a load of others that should be mentioned. It's worth a decent discussion, which is why I made a section for it: do we want to describe how Yorkshire residents speak today, or do we want to describe the traditional dialect? Epa101 15:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
As mentioned above, deedah must have died out rather quickly as I only moved away 15 years ago. In any case, I'll be meeting Sheffield relatives in the next few weeks who all do the dee dah thing to a greater or lesser degree, all are 40+ though I'll grant you.BaseTurnComplete 17:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Weak 'r' sound - and tone of article

I'm from Huddersfield. It only came to my notice when I went away to university that I sounded the r in words such as 'great' anomalously - 'gyeat' is a fair approximation. I've fought against this over the years, with incomplete success - I'll never be able to roll an r.

I often hear this sound in Yorkshire speech - is it just a West Yorkshire thing, or is it more widespread within the county? Some Tyneside people seem to pronounce the post-consonant r in the same way - did this arise independently? I'm not a linguist or phonetician or student of dialect - I'd greatly welcome comment from specialists, or indeed anyone else.

Other thing. The tone of this article is far too anecdotal and folksy in places. Why do so many Yorkshire people lapse into this style when writing about Yorkshire? I'll do some pruning and tightening when I haven't got a thesis to finish. Regards to all, Notreallydavid 20:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that West Yorkshire has much unity in accent/dialect. I lived most of my life in the Dewsbury area, and I don't remember ever hearing that sound. However, we did always think that people in Huddersfield talked very differently considering how near they were. Epa101 18:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
That's the Holme Valley 'R' you're describing there. It's a far more gutteral sound than is usual in England sounding more akin to the 'R' spoken in French. Yes the 'R' does vary a lot in Yorkshire. I've heard it spoken as you speak it, I've heard it spoken as in standard English and also bent like in Lancashire and rolled like in Italy, although the latter two don't commonly belong to the county of the broad acres. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bkpip (talk • contribs) 11:17, 6 March 2007 (UTC).

Didn't know where to put this but the dropping of plural "s" in "ten pound" or "ten stone" for example is another thing common to many dialects...definitely done in south east

I role my Rs when i want tu. An I'm from N Yorks.

was sounding like were

I grew up in Sheffield in the 1950s, and remember well that we used to say "i were". But later i came to the conclusion that this was merely a mispronunciation and misunderstanding of "wa'" - that originally local speakers left the s off of "was", then the "a" became neutral. So we didn't really say "i were", we said "a wa'". 202.63.55.178 04:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC) John Hensby

Accent in film.

After seeing pirates of the caribbean end of the world it would seem that Mercer had a yorkshire accent, but i may have simply mistaken this for a generic northern accent. Can someone look into this???Chalky17 20:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


'Emmerdale is set in North Yorkshire'

Now, I don't watch the programme, but I live near where it is filmed - and it is filmed in West Yorkshire.

Whether it is set in North Yorkshire, I haven't a clue. Can someone clear this one up? --Albert 18:36, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe its set in the West Yorkshire Dales.Jonwood1 18:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

The emmerdale set is either in or close to the grounds of Harewood House. About 12 miles north of Leeds. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.142.169.126 (talk • contribs) 03:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

In Emmerdale when people travel to Leeds it seems to be a long way. Yet it is always referred to as the 'local' city - Hotten being a town. I'm from Rawdon, near Leeds and filming for Hotten was traditionally in Otley. Otley is about an hour from Leeds by bus. So if Emmerdale were north of Hotten it may be in West Yorkshire, or North Yorkshire. Why can it be in North Yorkshire yet close to Leeds? Well Askwith, in North Yorkshire, is only a 3 mile drive North West of Otley. So nothing on screen seems to definately prove either way the North and West Yorkshire issue. Bat King

~~Emmerdale is filmed and set in the West Riding! There is an old-style, white painted metal sign that is used in the programme, usually when its going into a commercial break, "Emmerdale Yorks WR"(WR = West Riding.) Look out for it when you watch it again. However in the so-called modern sense (1974 county council boundaries)it is meant to be set in the North Yorkshire county council area, as probably because a) its more rural than the rest of the county and b) its perceived by many to be more "upmarket" than the more urban/industrial areas of Yorkshire. There is also a business award in the "Kings" office, which is in fact an outline of the former North Yorkshire County Council area (prior to the City of York opting out and gaining its own unitary authority). AD~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.240.73.193 (talk) 18:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Never noticed that, well spotted. I think my geographical explanation added to the above answers the West/North issue finally. Bat King 27 October 2007

Does "luck" sound like "look" in Yorkshire?

I found this article after becoming very interested in the accent of Arctic Monkeys, a band from Sheffield. Two things stand out to me about their accent. Firstly, /ʌ/ is merged into /ʊ/, making words such as 'luck' and 'look' homophones. Secondly, /t/ is usually a glottal stop except when initial, which to me is reminiscent of the Cockney accent. The problem, however, is that this article makes no mention of the first characteristic, and says something different about the second characteristic.

I suppose what I'm trying to figure out here is if Arctic Monkeys' accent is in fact the Yorkshire one, and if the info I've provided is relevant to this article. — Äþelwulf See my contributions. 04:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd be very sceptical about trying to deduce anything from the Arctic Monkeys speech.As in most regions the dialect/accent is usually far stronger in those from working class backgrounds. As a young-ish Sheffielder myself I don't think I've ever heard anyone from the kind of middle class backgrounds which the Arctic Monkeys have speak in the almost-caricature way they do. It seems to me very redolent of all those pop figures from the London region who speak in a mockney accent and about as genuine.

Re look/luck, this is one of the general Northern features mentioned. The link to English English had been broken by changes to that article; I have corrected that and added explicit mention of two of the better known features, which hopefully makes it a bit clearer. (But put/putt is a better minimal pair than look/luck, because some people pronounce look like Luke.) As for glottal stops, it does mention them, doesn't it? "In some areas, people may use a glottal stop for /t/." They're not particularly a Yorkshire thing, anyway: I think they can be found in most urban British accents, except for Scouse.--JHJ 12:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Agree on both points. Just one caveat; let's not forget the very Yorkshire habit, (although also common in Lancashire), of using a glottal stop to replace the word 'the'. Bkpip.

I'm quite confused. I thought look and luck were homophones everywhere! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jonwood1 (talk • contribs) 19:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Luck/look merger is always classified as "Northern", although, from my experience, it's more north-central. People from Lincs, Notts, Derbs, Staffs, even Wolverhampton all say "look" and "luck" the same, but they become different in the far north. With the glottal stop, it's something that I've mentioned in the section above on "Time confusion". Thirty years ago, glottal stops didn't happen in Yorkshire; a /t/ either became an /r/ or was said as normal. Now, people are glottalling the /t/ all over. The reason why it isn't mentioned often in Yorkshire guides is that dialect purists tend to disapprove of this Cockney trend. Some areas still say the /t/ - the North Riding plus bits of the West. Epa101 22:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

No, that's Gordie love! Gaia Octavia Agrippa (talk) 16:22, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Geodie v' Yorks

"One source of confusion is how a floo-er would be a flower and a term of affection in the north and east ridings, but a floor in the West Riding." Floo-a is the correct slang pronounceation in newcastle but i hant heard it much in N Yorks. Gaia Octavia Agrippa (talk) 16:35, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I have heard 'Floo-er' for Flower in the West Riding. However it is certainly not common. Usually the word is clearly expressed as 'Flower' for both the flower and a term of affection. It is not in common use for the latter however. Bat King 04:38 BST, 27 November —Preceding comment was added at 04:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Chuck

Is "chuck" not an affectionate Yorkshire term as in chicken or "Ta, chuck" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jonwood1 (talk • contribs) 19:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes chuck. Not that i'm aware of. Gaia Octavia Agrippa (talk) 16:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Chuck is a friendly term for a person, never used to refer to a chicken (unless the person warches too much Neighbours, etc). However the root could be the same. Bat King —Preceding comment was added at 04:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Just remember

Just remember that Yorkshire is huge. Accents vary greatly throught the county and this article does go a good way towards detailing the accent. I live in Rawdon, near Leeds, and my accent is very different to other areas of Leeds - let alone other areas of the County.

Also accents accents change - and faster these days thanks to TV...

Many youngsters in my area talk more like a Mancunian these days. Many seem to grow out of it, but not all. This must be TV's fault, unless we are slowly being invaded. Bat King

What's the difference between parts of Leeds? I'm interested. I can't say that I've ever noticed. I can tell a very clear difference between Wakefield and Leeds; you can then divide places between the two, so Dewsbury and Huddersfield are like Wakefield, Bradford is like Leeds, etc. However, I can't get any more specific than that. How do you do it?
I think that Mancunian has the upside that it's seen as down-to-earth and not posh, but it's also not very "broad" or hard to understand. It's a bit of a please-all, so it's spreading everywhere. Epa101 15:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

First way to tell if someone is from Leeds or Bradford is to hear how they say 'Bradford'. Most Bradfordians I know - including many an Ex-in-Law - say Bratford. Not a pronunciation you'd hear from someone with any of the Leeds accents. I'm struggling with explaining the differences across the city of Leeds. But they are easily heard, people tend to know which part of Leeds someone is from if they live here. Bat King —Preceding comment was added at 04:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

That is interesting. However, I do know some people from the Wakefield area who say "Bradford" as "Bratford", and you would expect Wakefield to be more like Leeds. I suppose that it is possible that these people have all moved over from around Bradford at some point. 86.137.179.210 (talk) 22:17, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It says here

It says here that Yorkshire has a flat tone of voice with little variation, but the article on Regional accents of English speakers says that Yorkshire has sing-song notation. I'm not quite sure what the latter means, but there may be a contadiction there. From my experience, people speak very flatly around Wakefield, Normanton, Barnsley. However, to say that people from Scarborough or Whitby talk flatly is very wrong, indeed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.56.35.2 (talk • contribs) 15:47, 9 February 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Many Yorkshire accents are highly intonated. Bkpip. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.10.198.234 (talk) 11:43, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Was/were

The article said that using "wuh" instead of "was" is a recent trend. After reading the 1864 almenac "Dewsbury back and t'mooin, be Mungo Shoddy", I can confirm that "wuh" has been around for 150 years now. I altered the article slightly. I think that the claim above by the ex-Sheffielder who said that West Riding people do not substitute "were" for "was" but use "wuh" instead might be more accurate. Epa101 (talk) 15:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Duck

Don't forget "duck", e.g. in "thanks, duck"! Marky1981 10:32, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

That's more of a Midland phrase. You get in Barnsley for sure, but not many other places in Yorkshire. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.159.30.47 (talk • contribs) 14:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Should definitely be mentioned as being Sheffield though. My Grandparents have always said it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 158.109.239.159 (talk • contribs) 09:42, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Also used as far south as Hertfordshire/Middlesex however (where my inlaws come from and i lived for a few years) although wherever its said now its surely confined to older people.

Duck is definitely Midlands. Love or cock is far more common in Yorkshire. I've even heard cock used in its full "cocker spadge" form i.e. cock sparrow. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Orbtastic (talk • contribs) 19:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Noone seems to have mentioned the very distinctive feature around Sheffield of one man calling another "love" although once again i think this is very rare in anyone below about 60 now.

That can happen around Wakefield as well. I presume that Barnsley, inbetween the two, would do it. I agree that it is old-fashioned now. Cock is also dying out rapidly amongst all age groups because it could be misinterpreted as an insult. Epa101 (talk) 19:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
"Duck" in this context is definitely an East Midlands saying that has crept North into the Sheffield area.BaseTurnComplete 23:30, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

ah, i 'eard "duck" all 'time growing up in sheffield.
jonathan riley —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.143.213.66 (talk • contribs) 16:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This may well be explained by the significant migration of coal miners and iron workers from towns in Staffordshire to Sheffield, at the end of th 18th. century / beginning of the 19th. century, as steelmaking (and coal mining) rapidly expanded in Sheffield. Wikityke 13:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

We use "love" more in north Yorkshire! Gaia Octavia Agrippa (talk) 16:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I myself have lived in Sheffield all of my life, I and all of my friends, say love, not duck, so I changed the page because I thought it was misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bad wolf chess (talk • contribs) 17:01, 1 May 2008
I have heard people in Sheffield say duck (and I've only lived there three years!) so I've restored the text, but mentioned that it is only sometimes said. ~~ [Jam][talk] 17:13, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

West Yorkshire i

If you go on http://www.collectbritain.com/collections/dialects , most of the modern West Yorkshire accents say PRICE [a:I]. This is an unusual sound, and I can't think of any better way of describing it other than it being inbetween the East Riding [a:] and the Harrogate [i]. Epa101 13:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC) I'm pretty sure we do NOT say "price" with the monopthong [a:]; though this vowel sound does appear in "fives" and "nines". In fact, it is noticeable that this sound distinguishes well between East and West Riding speech. A good illustration of this would be the phrase "white wine": in the ER the [a:] would be in "wine" whereas in the WR the monopthong would be in "white"!Malcolmbryant (talk) 12:22, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandal Warning Error

I am using the Anti Vandal filter which uses a filter and i am looking at 30 topics in 3 mins So it could be Human or Bot error. Maybe i hit your edit instead of the person who was vandalizing it. I Apologist for inconvenience. Blueking12 (talk) 20:49, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Past participle endings

"The West Riding to the south of Leeds and Bradford shares one feature with much of the east of England. Past participle endings which are pronounced /ɪz/ and /ɪd/ (with the vowel of kit) in RP may be pronounced with a schwa, /ə/. As these accents are mostly non-rhotic, this means that the plural of badge can sound like the plural of badger and the plural of box can sound like the plural of boxer."

Should 'past participle endings' here actually read 'plural endings'? The section which I have quoted above seems illogical. Longwayround (talk) 09:46, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

What it means is that the second vowel in started, prompted, sorted, etc. is a weak schwa sound rather than the strong /i/ sound heard in RP and in the rest of Yorkshire. Epa101 (talk) 17:51, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
So how do the badge and box examples fit in? Longwayround (talk) 17:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
They illustrate homophones. In the southern part of Yorkshire (roughly south of Leeds), the words badges sounds the same as badgers; the word boxes sounds the same as boxers. In RP and in the rest of Yorkshire, these words are pronounced differently. Epa101 (talk) 17:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Survey

The survey quoted which says RP is ranked higher than RP seems completely pointless if it was how reported here...it seems only Yorkshire, RP and Brummie were analysed - it hardly took university brains to realise Brummie would come out most unfavourably does it and RP - who speaks that these days anyway.

Popular cultural references survive in this article to a ridiculous extent when quite rightly they are a dying breed just about everywhere else - this reaching its depths here with the mentioning of such as "Milburn" - does some obscure band listened to by a few students and who you know will be forgotten in about 2 years warrant quoting in a supposedly learned article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.39.128 (talk) 23:47, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The text of the article only compares Yorkshire to RP, so it's not going beyond what is in the citation. The point is that Yorkshire is not a particularly stigmatised dialect. Also, the phrase RP is still commonly used, but it's defined slightly differently nowadays; for example, gone doesn't rhyme with lawn anymore. It's true that few people in Britain (and no-one in Ireland) speak it, but it's still the variant taught to most people who learn English as a foreign language. Epa101 (talk) 21:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

yes even the Queen stopped speaking old style full-on RP sometime in the 50s. And the Yorkshire dialect is far from stigmatised. For stigmatisation see Cockney, South Mancunian or Scouse (for perceived "dodginess") or Black Country, West Country (for notions related to suggestions of stupidity/ridiculouness)

The Queen's accent has changed only slightly with time. Most people who use the term RP are not referring to the old-fashioned gone-rhymes-with-lawn variant, but the sort of speech associated with David Cameron or Boris Johnson. When non-English speakers are taught "RP English", that doesn't mean they have to sound like Noel Coward on every word but they revolve their pronunciations vaguely around what BBC presenters use (some variation still, but not enough to cause problems when you're learning this from abroad). There are probably more people outside Britain who talk this way than inside it. Epa101 (talk) 18:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Mak / Tak

Mak and Tak instead of Make and Take is still used in Sunderland, East Durham and i think some parts of Scotland. Does anyone know roughly when this stopped being used?

It appears some of the young'uns are already not using this in Sunderland. 167.1.176.4 (talk) 10:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It was still being used in Yorkshire at the time of the Survey of English Dialects in the 1950s and 1960s, so it didn't die out too long ago. Epa101 (talk) 21:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, well, most of the informants were born in the 1880s and 1890s... They were representative of the most conservative rural speech patterns that could be found at that time.Unoffensive text or character (talk) 07:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

That is true: the point was to record such forms before they died out, which seems to have been justified in this case. The question asked when this was stopped being used, and it can be seen from the SED that the more conservative speakers across the whole of Yorkshire were still using it in the 1950s, which is not that long ago. Epa101 (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. The SED's focus in Yorkshire was not particularly rural: don't ask me why they did things differently here. Leeds, Sheffield and York were all included, and most of the places in the West Riding were clearly "urban". They found "mak" in Leeds and York as well as in the countryside. Epa101 (talk) 17:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Wakefield (or perhaps solely the Normanton CP) has a different accent from the rest of West Yorks, it seems (Comparing with Leeds). Many people on Altofts - I have heard personally - use "mek" as "make". Usuage includes "then mek it y' sen". "Th" carries a strong V sound. The "T" in "it" sounds more like an "ɘ", while the "I" sound has a short break before the "T". "y" is pronounced like in "Ja".-- OsirisV (talk) 19:35, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
"Mek" for "make" is now the main Yorkshire pronunciation, as indicated in the article. The th-pronunciation is known as th-fronting: it is usually associated with Cockney, although it might be found in other places. Personally, I think that it's an exaggeration to say that each town has a different accent, but each town has a different social profile which affects the sort of accents you hear. For example, Normanton is mostly a White, working-class town, so you hear more broad Yorkshire accents there than most other parts of W.Yorks. Epa101 (talk) 19:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Changed rating to C

I've changed the rating of this article to C as it clearly doesn't meet the criteria for B as long as it has that "Popular Culture" section that is unreferenced and full of original research. Richerman (talk) 10:20, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

H Contraction

I surprised to see no mention of H contraction and strong following vowel common in Hull and East Riding (e.g. Ull = Hull, Arrogate=Harrogate, Alifax=Halifax, etc.) MartinSpamer (talk) 12:24, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

But isn't that common in many (most/all) English working-class accents? EG have you ever heard a working class person from London/South East pronounce the "h"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.150.230 (talk) 20:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

't' isn't generally used instead of 'the' it's used instead of 'to the' eg. I'm going to the bank, I'm going t'bank or It's on the river bank, it's on river bank, where the't' is implied but not said. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.250.5.247 (talk) 01:10, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Old-fashioned point

Does anyone make the distinction listed in this point any more? I am aware that these words were said with different vowels in the past, but I doubt there are many Yorkshire folk who maintain the distinctions.

  • Another group of words where [ɛɪ] may turn up in some accents is in words with ea in the spelling derived from a Middle English /ɛ/ lengthened by Middle English open syllable lengthening, such as eat, meat and speak. In some accents, the three words meet, meat and team, which all have the same vowel /ɪi/ in RP, may have three different vowels, [iː], [ɛɪ] and [ɪə] respectively.[14]

Epa101 (talk) 20:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Us and ar (our)

Is using 'ar (our) to refer to a member of family 'ar jack' = 'my relative jack' a South Yorkshire only or a West Riding thing? Is it worth adding to the grammar section - it seems a unique but of grammar for English, but has parallels in German. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.7.127.253 (talk) 06:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I've heard it in Lancashire and in the Stoke-on-Trent area as well. Generally a north-central thing. I think that using "us" for "our" is West Riding specifically. Never heard that outside Yorkshire. Epa101 (talk) 20:50, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Articles fails to distinguish north from south

Sean Bean, from southern Yorkshire sounds very, very different from people I know from the North Riding of Yorkshire, who sound to my mostly-American (I spent 4 years of my childhood in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire) ears almost the same as Scottish lowlanders. The north and south accents to me seem to have very little in common. I don't know about east vs. west Yorkshire. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:24, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

There are not many people who live in North Yorkshire, so there are likely to be fewer contributors. Also, the internet is not available in some areas of North Yorkshire. I did live in York for some time, but the dialect is virtually dead there. I do have some information on North Riding speech from the Yorkshire Dictionary (Kellett), but I don't know what is still in use and what has died out so I don't want to add from it. As for distinguishing between Scottish Lowlanders and Yorkshiremen, I'd note that Scots always say their Hs (even in "what" and "where") and have a rhotic accent. Epa101 (talk) 12:58, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Of course the internet is available all over North Yorkshire, as long as there is a phone line! Lack of broadband perhaps, but most people can still use a trusty 56k modem (I believe that mid-band is dead now). Only the oldest, most secluded or out-of-touch people in the depths of North Yorkshire would be without internet. I suppose that it's possible that there are more people like that there than in the South though (perhaps with the exception of Cornwall).
As for Sean Bean, he's well-educated so I'd think that definately his dialect and perhaps his accent differs from your typical lay Yorkshire person. 82.32.11.95 (talk) 11:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

There is a book mentioned at the end: Hans Tidholm, The Dialect of Egton in North Yorkshire. (I doubt that they have broadband in Egton) This book may be useful in adding some more features of rural north Yorkshire to the article. I would like to find a copy myself, but it's not in any library within a 20-mile radius of me so it might take a while for me to track a copy down. Epa101 (talk) 12:43, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Changes to Vowels

I'm afraid I find the changes made to the table of vowel transcriptions tday (May 23rd) extremely strange. I lived in Yorkshire for many years, but these vowels and diphthongs don't ring any bells. RoachPeter (talk) 17:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

This table has been adapted from one in an earlier version of the article, which I made from the chapters on Hull and Sheffield in Urban Voices. Most of this information is in the article in other places now, so I deleted the table. Another user has restored it, but some mistakes have been made: for example, on the Sheffield PRICE vowel and both cities' CURE vowels. Rather than correct these, I propose that the table is unnecessary and might as well be deleted. Any objections? Epa101 (talk) 12:36, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
As no objections have been raised, I've deleted the table. Epa101 (talk) 18:23, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hobbit correction

Hi all, in case anyone is still working on/watching this page I thought I'd point out it's actually Dori who uses a specifically Yorkshire accent in the Hobbit movies. Wasn't sure if I'd be stepping on toes by changing the article myself so I thought I'd just put a note here. Also, I don't know all the rules for citing/evaluating sources.

I do have a source for this: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles II - Creatures and Characters, which is part of the official Hobbit artbook series. In the dialect coach's commentary he says: "Richard Armitage's native accent is northern English...so for Thorin we preserved Richard's own accent but worked with him to make it less broad and, in turn, helped teach features of it to Fili and Kili, though their accents would be described better as RP with a northern flavour." (p. 92) This sounds pretty consistent with what I hear in the films. The book also says Mark Hadlow (Dori) based his character on Arkwright from Open All Hours. 2001:558:6025:47:15EE:9890:E2D1:192A (talk) 06:42, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Pronunciation guide

You know how, on Wikipedia, a lot of the words have definitions you can hover over, and "a as in farm" pops up? Over the IPA symbols? Well can this article have them, please, cos I don't know the IPA well enough and I've no good reason to learn it, and constantly cross-referencing is a right arse pain.

Actually that'd be a good idea for any article that uses IPA. So if you'd get on with that, I'll leave you to it, thank you. 

188.29.164.14 (talk) 00:39, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
That sounds an excellent idea, but most phonetic representations in Wikipedia are very general, broad phonemic representations that have to work world-wide (see the pronunciation of Yorkshire that might sound foreign in Yorkshire itself). You mention "a as in farm", but the Yorkshire way to pronounce "farm" is very different from the London or American way. The true phonetic representations (between square brackets) represent the actual sounds, and as far as I know, we don't have a facility for hovering over these to hear the sounds. You can hear the vowels (the main features of a Yorkshire accent) at IPA vowel chart with audio. Dbfirs 08:55, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Tyke

Where does the name 'Tyke' come from? I've never heard Broad Yorkshire be called 'tyke' in 47 years of being a Yorkshireman and being around native Broad Yorkshire speakers. I think the name 'tyke' needs reviewing for sources etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.50.25.105 (talk) 19:24, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I've only heard Tyke being used to refer to Yorkshire Dialect very recently, whereas I'm long familiar with it being used in a proud self reference manner to refer to yorkshiremen. MartinSpamer (talk) 12:24, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I never heard the word Tyke Keighley way in the 1945-1960. When I read Tyke I think of North East, almost Geordies, so happen Tyke means N.E dailect? But our West dialect we proudly called "Broad Yorkshire" Kildwyke (talk) 05:24, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "bird"

It says in this article that the pronunciation of "bird" as [ɛː] instead of [ɜː] is generally heard on the east coast. Well, whilst I've not heard it so frequently here in South Yorkshire that I'd say it's to be usually expected, I've heard it often enough and from people who don't at all sound like natives of Middlesborough, Hull, or anywhere on the east coast that I'm tempted to conclude it must be in some way part of the the traditional South Yorkshire (possibly also West Riding as a whole) accent. What are people's thoughts on this? 176.250.10.208 (talk) 23:24, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I don't recall hearing it from anyone in South Yorkshire (and never heard it growing up around Wakefield). However, I don't know everywhere, and it's possible that there are some parts of South Yorkshire where it's common. I wouldn't be surprised if it occurred in an area that is getting towards Hull (e.g. Thorne). Do you have any academic reference? Maybe we can change "east coast" to something like "southern and eastern parts".
In parts of the West Riding, it was common to shorten /ɜː/ in certain words (e.g. first, birth) but "bird" doesn't seem like one of those words to me. 86.134.194.193 (talk) 06:36, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
The only two examples I can find of it online are these: Listen to the way the boss says "work". It's set in a town in between Barnsley and Sheffield. There's also this one, although it's a less good example because it's more scripted and intentional, but Weebl himself is from Doncaster, and I can confirm the way they speak is mostly accurate even if slightly stereotypical. And as I've been writing this response, I've just realised that both of these examples and also some of my own anecdotal examples are of "work" specifically. I'm not sure if that's just a coincidence or what. 90.196.155.190 (talk) 19:05, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't sure exactly which part of the film The Price of Coal you meant. If you mean Jackie Shinn's character, then I believe that he was from somewhere around Doncaster, so it seems plausible that the pronunciation exists in this area. I believe that this pronunciation also exists in parts of North Lincolnshire. I might have a look at the Survey of English Dialects records for Tickhill, which is a village in the Doncaster borough that is not far from the Lincolnshire border. Epa101 (talk) 14:53, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I was referring specifically to the part where he says "[...]stop bloody prattin' about, get your work done[...]". I gave a time stamp for it in my linking of it. However, I've more to say on this now. I was in an IT shop (here in Rotherham) the other day and the person I was talking to about my laptop battery pronounced "work" like that, but he didn't pronounce other words that ordinarily have [ɜː] in them in that way (they definitely said "thirty" in the standard way). This tells me that I was right before, ie that it's specific to certain words. And I'm also almost certain that "bird" isn't one of those words, so it was silly of me to ever bring that up as an example. What words are effected, however, I'm not sure about. There's also this here (the way he says "shirt"), although I'm not 100% if these actors are native speakers of the South Yorkshire dialect, so this could be a bad example. As for reducing words like "birth" and "first" down to /ə/, I don't think I've ever heard that in Rotherham before. That might just be due to lack of observation on my part, but I don't think it's common in South Yorkshire (except possibly for Barnsley). 2.220.83.238 (talk) 16:36, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

That's all good stuff. As far as I'm aware, all these words take [ɛː] around Hull and Middlesbrough. It'd be interesting to know if there are some areas that have /ɛː/ for some NURSE words and /ɜː/ for others.
Yes, using a short /ə/ in words such as "first" does occur in Barnsley as well as in parts of West Yorkshire and Lancashire. Some words (e.g. stir) always have the long vowel though. Epa101 (talk) 13:14, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
That definitely appears to be the case, and this pronunciation of "work" separate from most words with /ɜː/ in others appears to mostly occur in Doncaster and Rotherham. I wish I had more to contribute than I do on this. 2.220.199.250 (talk) 22:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

South Yorkshire

So, I've been wondering this for a while. Is it a reasonable assessment that there's something of a linguistic north-south within South Yorkshire? The South being Sheffield and Rotherham and the north being Barnsley and Doncaster. There is from what I've with certain regional slang terms - eg duck, mardy, and probably others. However, the main thing I've wondered about is the pronunciation of words such as half, part, car, can't, etc. I live in Rotherham and when I've been to Doncaster and Barnsley, it seems like the non-standard [aː] pronunciation is more common than in Rotherham or Sheffield. My anecdotal experience doesn't mean much, but does anyone know if I'm onto something with this observation? If anyone knows anything regarding this supposed divide, including stuff I've not mentioned here, I'd like to hear about it. 90.196.149.62 (talk) 16:31, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I think you are correct that there is a lot of regional variation, sometimes with differences over just a few miles. Yorkshire is a big county, so the article can give only generalisations. Whole books have been written about the differences (see the article for some of them). I live in the extreme north-west corner where /kä/ or /ka/ is more usual for car, and I know little about the Sheffield variants. How do you pronounce the vowel in car? Standard English would be /kɑː/. I agree with you that north-south variation is probably greater than the east-west changes over the county (though the Hull area is distinctive), but I don't think we can easily draw a dividing line, because the change tends to be gradual. Another complication is that very few populations retain a "pure" traditional accent after so many population shifts in the last fifty years, and most young people seem modify their pronunciations towards BBC English (unlike in my childhood when anyone speaking BBC English was either a teacher or an "offcomer"). Dbfirs 18:45, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Personally, I generally say [ɑː] in "car", but that's because I've semi-consciously trained myself to do that over the years because my mum was (and, well, still is) a bit of a linguistic elitist. If I fully relax, I pronounce it in a way which if not fully [aː] is certainly closer to that than [ɑː]. But I also used to live on and off in Doncaster for several years because my dad lived there, so I could've picked it up from there. But whilst most Rotherham people I know seem to say [ɑː], I've known some say [aː] (including my grandad, I think). Also, where do you live in the extreme northwest of? Yorkshire or South Yorkshire? And yes, it's not easy to draw lines between dialects as it used to be considering the increase in both social and geographic mobility, especially for younger people.
Also, another thing: why is it that the words reyt, feyt, and neyt (South Yorkshire pronunciations of right, fight, and night) almost never seem to become [eː] or [ɛː]? And BTW, those pronunciations aren't at all just restricted to older people in my experience contrary to what this article says; not in Rotherham, at least. I can't speak for anywhere else, course. 90.196.149.62 (talk) 19:30, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I live in the bit of the old West Riding that got moved into Cumbria for administrative purposes, but is still part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Most younger people where I live have lost the older pronunciation of "right" such as /rœyt/ (and the less extreme: /riːt/), but I have noticed that pronunciation is retained in some areas -- possibly where most of the teachers in schools are local. Dbfirs 21:12, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

To the original post, I would say that [a:] is the most common pronunciation of "car" across Yorkshire as a whole, and it's only around Sheffield and Rotherham where [ɑː] has some numbers, probably because it's closer to the area of the country where [ɑː] is standard. To my ears, some people from around Rotherham, Mexborough, etc. seem to have a rounded pronunciation [ɒ:] that makes it sound like "cor" . Epa101 (talk) 06:46, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Although this is incredibly anecdotal, the number of times I've heard either [aː] or [äː] in Rotherham yesterday was actually surprising. I've heard all three pronunciations with surprising frequency in Rotherham as a whole looking back on my life, and I get the feeling that Rotherham's less clear cut and more divided numbers wise in this regard. I reckon that it's mostly Sheffield and the adjacent areas in Rotherham (and maybe Barnsley too) where [ɑː] is standard, which includes Rotherham town center, course. As you explained, Sheffield's close proximity to Derbyshire is probably to explain for this. I know that [aː] is common in northern Lincolnshire, and if this interview with three people from Mansfield is anything to go by, it's also used in Nottinghamshire, which Rotherham is partially adjacent to. I don't fully know what this means, but it seems as though while less common in Rotherham than Doncaster or Barnsley, it's more common than Sheffield.
Another thing to consider is the affect that Standard English also increasingly influences people's way of speaking, especially for middle class, younger people. This will increase the chances that people all across England and Wales (much less so in Scotland, course) will pronounce it [ɑː] instead, even in areas where it's not standard.
I'm really just speculating here; what do you reckon? 176.248.185.169 (talk) 23:22, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
In Wakefield, a lot of the older people have a centralised pronunciation [äː], whereas the younger ones tend to say [a:] or sometimes even [æ:]. I reckon that this is a case of the precise variant for Leeds/Bradford displacing the traditional Wakefield one, as so many people in Wakefield commute to Leeds now.
What you say about Standard English is certainly true for a lot of features of Yorkshire dialect. However, I'd say that this particular vowel is one that is holding up quite well, even amongst the speech of young, middle-class people. Epa101 (talk) 21:34, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Yorkshire Dialect Society

"This article is not about the Yorkshire Dialect Society"; however Yorkshire Dialect Society does redirect to Yorkshire dialect.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 17:11, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Where are you quoting from? My guess would be that the Society is not sufficiently notable to merit its own article, and it is mentioned several times in this article. If you think the Society is sufficiently notable, then you may create a separate article. Dbfirs 12:47, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
The quotation is from User:Wolfdog's edit summary for removing bolding from YDS in the lead. Probably the amount of information now present in this article about the YDS is enough for most readers. I do not think it is necessary to make it a stand-alone article. A editor more familiar with the society could probably add mentions of notable officers--Johnsoniensis (talk) 10:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh yes, I see. Thanks for explaining. (I tend not to look at edit summaries.) I would recommend making a separate section since the society is the main one concerned with the history, promotion and preservation of the subject of this article. Dbfirs 17:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Yorkshire dialect/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

.
  1. Needs clean-up to WP:MOS
  2. References need to be sorted out
Keith D 16:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 01:27, 4 June 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 11:09, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

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Yorkshire dialect in films and TV

I've put the part about Yorshire accents and dialect in popular culture into a separate section. It does not have to do anything with "geographical distribution" and it is also confusing. Lumendelumine 21:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't this section include the 2010 bbc production 'Red Riding' trilogy? seems like an obvious one to me but i'll leave it for someone who knows better. Tristan da cunha (talk) 20:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

No mention of "Summer Wine? 2001:56A:F414:D300:5D4C:64C3:7AAF:E89E (talk) 08:43, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Split of the article into an article about the dialect and another about the mixture of the standard language and the dialect

Hello,

this article covers both the dialect and the mixture of the standard language and the dialect. Kind regards,

Sarcelles (talk) 09:10, 22 August 2016 (UTC)


My first thought here is "what is the dialect?" in a pure sense. Have a look at Joseph Wright's 1892 work on Windhill, near Bradford, here. I think that I'm safe in saying that no one, even amongst the oldest generation, speaks exactly like this any more. Furthermore, the dialect changed before Wright's day, and he occasionally marks that some words or pronunciations were falling out of use during his day, or other words and pronunciations were coming in as a result of contact with other dialects. Hasn't the same process carried on to the present day? Epa101 (talk) 15:35, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
Although I understand Sarcelles's worries, I'm not sure any meaningful reason can be given for having an article about a dialect with many features of a "standard language" AS WELL AS having a second article about the same exact dialect but with less of those "standard" features. It should be already understood that dialects are spectrums. One article on the dialect suffices, unless sources can confirm otherwise. Wolfdog (talk) 03:10, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

'e 'asn't bin tekkin 'is aspirates

An "h" at the start of the world is usually dropped; Huddersfield, herd and hook would be pronounced 'Uddersfield, 'erd and 'ook. The only exception is when the word starts with a hyu sound; human would be pronounced as it is usually.

Who says "human."? We say "Uooman." Or something like that in Bratford. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.198.118.110 (talk) 17:18, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Someone has changed this recently and I'd propose changing it back. You do occasionally hear 'Uddersfield, but not normally 'erd or 'ook. I'd find it very hard to say 'ook; it'd hurt my throat. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.56.22.47 (talk • contribs) 20:09, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

NER style (well, Hambleton, or 'ambleton) is still to drop our h's, so we would say 'uddersfield, 'erd and 'ook. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.15.128.97 (talk • contribs) 23:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
I just wanted to chime in - as an 'Uddersfield native, pronouncing the H in either Huddersfield, herd or hook would mark you as being from elsewhere. 109.153.83.142 (talk) 15:19, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

In W.R., "hook" always used to be said as "oook" as in a long Stoke/Scottish ooo. This remains in the phrase "to take your oook" but can't remember hearing it elsewhere. I don't think that you can really draw a line as to when h is said, but it seems accurate to me to say that an hu sound is more likely to say the h than elsewhere. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.159.30.47 (talk • contribs) 19:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Broad accented Loiners tend to drop the "h" in all cases even with hyu sounds like human. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jonwood1 (talk • contribs) 19:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move 3 September 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. There isn't a consensus to move here, but the arguments against it are relatively weak under naming policy. I don't feel comfortable executing a move, but under WP:RMCI, I also think a close of not moved would be inappropriate. Further discussion is not likely to add to this conversation, so it is closed as no consensus with it defaulting to stay at the current title. (non-admin closure) TonyBallioni (talk) 19:46, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Yorkshire dialect → Yorkshire English – This falls in line with other articles on English varieties and avoids contentions over terms like "dialect", "accent", etc. Wolfdog (talk) 13:59, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

--Relisting. —usernamekiran(talk) 17:44, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Written after the vote

  • Oppose. I agree with the reasons set out by Dr Greg above. I can understand the desirability of consistency but this way of speaking is usually referred to as "Yorkshire dialect" rather than "Yorkshire English". I would add that there are several other articles with "dialect" in the title: Norfolk (a good article), Suffolk, Essex, Sussex, Kent, Black Country, Dorset, the Potteries, Gower. The precise meaning of the word "dialect" has changed over time. AJ Ellis said that Liverpool and Birkenhead had no dialect, as he thought of dialect as something passed down verbally from the Anglo-Saxons. I get the impression that North Americans use the word less frequently than Brits do. It would also get very complicated with dialects that incorporate non-English elements, such as the Glasgow patter. Is that English or Scots? If we insist on uniformity, I would argue for consistently using the word "dialect" rather than consistently using the word "English". Epa101 (talk) 11:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Tenfoot

I removed this:

it has passed into folklore that Hull residents even use the North Lincolnshire "tenfoot" to describe a Yorkshire "ginnel", which leads to jokes about how ginnels in Hull are all ten feet long.

Tenfoots* and ginnels are separate things. A ginnel is a narrow alley or passage between buildings, big enough for one person at a time whereas a tenfoot is about, er, ten feet wide to allow the passage of vehicles. A tenfoot runs parallel to residential streets thus each provides access to the rear of two streets.

* yes this is the correct plural! Paul Tracy|\talk

For the record, I've come across several people from Hull who definitely use "tenfoot" to refer to a "ginnel". CiaranG 12:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm from Hull, maybe I can help clear this one up... A "Tenfoot" is a gap between the houses, usually to get to back yards and is wide enough to fit a car down, whereas a "Snicket" cuts between houses but is only wide enough to walk down. (I've never heard the term "Ginnel" before, I don't think its used around these parts!)

Confirming this, the key aspect of a Tenfoot is that it is about 10 feet wide and allows vehicle access, while a snicket is narrow and only allows pedestrian access, either can be between houses, or behind a terrace. MartinSpamer (talk) 12:13, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

In Barnsley a 10foot is a "backings" because it runs along the back of the houses! A ginnel is a one person wide gap between houses

Never heard of a 'tenfoot. We use snicket and ginnel. But a gap 10 foot wide... never heard of a name for that. Some people here (Leeds} refer to a ginnel if it is strictly between buildings and snicket if there are and gardens involved. However most people use both terms interchangably. Bat King —Preceding comment was added at 04:47, 27 November 2007 (UTC)


"Tenfoot" is generally a Lincolnshire word. It has crept over to Hull but probably no further. Epa101 (talk) 21:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Well I was born t' other side of Bradford, nurtured in Brighton and grew up on the Bradford side of Pudsey and we had a 'tenfoot' on the estate. So that particular usage made it a lot further into Yorkshire than its south eastern borders. It connected the Road with the Terrace where it cuts out the other side before narrowing down to a footpath across fields and never was in regular use by vehicles (any such access long since prevented by concrete bollards).

Dialect is dialect. Whether it is still in common parlance across the wider county or not, Tenfoots never were the sole province of North Lincolnshire, they existed in Sussex too. According to 'How to Talk Like a Local: From Cockney to Geordie' that is seemingly the only place they exist. Foxcliffe (talk) 02:06, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

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