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What Ye Divin't Knaa Aboot the Canny Lads and Lasses Back

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The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies 22 (2015): 39-57. DOI: 10.17561/grove.v0i22.2696 “WHAT YE DIVIN’T KNAA ABOOT THE CANNY LADS AND LASSES BACK YEM”: A STUDY OF LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN THE GEORDIE VARIETY OF ENGLISH Joaquín Bueno Amaro University of Jaén (Spain) Abstract This paper concerns the close relation between language and identity and, more specifically, provides insights into the effects of the Geordie variety of the North East of England on its speakers. Dialectal studies are thus broadened to fields of society, community and identity. The pivotal points of this research are: 1) a detailed analysis of the linguistic characteristics of Geordie, not only phonetic-phonological, but also lexical and grammatical; 2) the reflection about the survey that has been conducted on Geordie identity for this paper; and 3) the combination of all these investigations in order to get a better understanding of the reasons behind the existence, maintenance and rejection of Geordie, as well as the bonds between the variety and the local community. Keywords: sociolinguistics, phonetics, phonology, Geordie, dialect, British English. Resumen El trabajo versa sobre la estrecha relación idioma-identidad y, más específicamente, indaga en el efecto que tiene la variedad Geordie del inglés del noreste de Inglaterra en sus hablantes, ampliando así el estudio dialectal a un ámbito social, comunitario y de identidad. Los puntos principales de esta investigación son: 1) un análisis detallado de las características lingüísticas del Geordie, tanto fonético-fonológicas como léxicas y gramaticales; 2) un estudio de la encuesta que se ha llevado a cabo sobre la identidad Geordie para el presente trabajo; y 3) la combinación de los resultados de estos tres puntos para entender el porqué de la existencia del Geordie, el porqué de su mantenimiento y el porqué de su rechazo en otras regiones del país, así como lo que supone la variedad para la comunidad. Palabras clave: sociolingüística, fonética, fonología, Geordie, dialecto, inglés británico The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies 22 (2015): 39-57. ISSN: 2386-5431 40 Joaquín Bueno Amaro 1. Introduction This paper is aimed at providing academic insights into the binominal language-identity in the case of the Geordie variety of English. The title has been planned to grab the attention of the reader and ignite their curiosity on the topic. “What ye divin’t knaa aboot the canny lads and lasses back yem”, spelt following Geordie conventions and worded with local vocabulary, means “What you don’t know about the nice men and women back home.” The methodology is based on academic research relevant to the topic in hand, both from sources internal and external to the region under study, and on the results of a survey on Geordie identity which has been running for approximately three months, whose methodological aspects we shall detail further on due course. The distinction between what can be considered a language and what can be considered a dialect is greatly controversial, to the point that a language was defined by Max Weinreich as “a dialect with an army and navy” (cf. Kaye 124). This is due to the unjust social evaluation of one of the terms being somewhat superior to the other. As Chambers and Trudgill (3) point out, dialects have for long been erroneously deemed as “a substandard, low-status, often rustic form of language, generally associated with the peasantry, the working class, or other groups lacking in prestige”, and sometimes even aberrations or corrupted forms of the standard forms of a language. This attitude is slowly disappearing nowadays but it is still present, as this paper shall prove. Given the possible misinterpretations of the concepts of ‘dialect’ and ‘accent’, the more neutral term ‘variety’ is used all throughout the paper. We will often refer to the standard varieties of English: Standard British English (SBE) and Received Pronunciation (RP). 2. The Geordie variety: Linguistic description The Geordie variety of English is spoken in the northernmost conurbation of England, the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and neighbouring towns. The region is also called Tyneside, which would include the city of Newcastle along with towns along the valley of the River Tyne as far as the North Sea (cf. Watt and Allen 267). Geordie is an urban mode of speech considerably distinct from other England varieties in phonetic and phonological terms, and actually more similar to Scottish accents. It is wrongly thought that Scots spread south and originated Geordie, but the situation was actually the other way round: Scots is an 18th- century version of the language spoken by settlers from Tyneside (cf. Moffat and Rosie 383). If there is something that characterises Geordies, that is their pronunciation. Sharing many features with other English varieties from the Midlands northwards, Geordie also has exclusive phonetic-phonological features of its The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies 22 (2015): 39-57. ISSN: 2386-5431 “What ye divin't knaa aboot the canny lads… 41 own. The ones listed below are the most salient, although, quite understandably, not every Geordie speaker will have all of them. The following list is a compilation of the features described in academic literature by Cruttenden (89), McArthur (75-77), Collins and Mees (142-154), Watt and Allen (267-271), Millward and Hayes (375, 376) and, to a minor extent, Wales (160-199). - No h-dropping: the Geordie dialect is the only urban dialect which preserves the pronunciation of /h/. - Non-rhoticity: Geordie is a non-rhotic accent, which means that [ɹ] is not realised in post-vocalic positions, as in four or heart, unless followed by a vowel, as in very or parade. The intrusive [ɹ] to mark word boundaries is not common either, and in such cases, Tyneside English is characterised by an intrusive glottal stop [ʔ]. - Glottalisation of medial voiceless plosives: this might probably be one of the most distinguishing traits of Geordie speech. Intervocalic voiceless plosives, that is, /p/ /t/ and /k/, are replaced by a glottal stop [ʔ] (for example: couple [‘kuʔәl], city [‘sɪʔi:], better [‘beʔa], water [‘wɔ:ʔa], reckon [‘reʔәn]). In some cases, it also happens with voiceless plosives between a sonorant and a vowel (for example: Ashington [‘æʃɪŋʔәn]). - Preservation of Middle English (ME) /u:/, instead of RP /au/ (for example: about, also spelt aboot [ә’bu:t]; town, also spelt toon [tu:n]; down, also spelt doon [du:n]), and sometimes change into [ɪә] (for example: boot [bɪәt]). - Preservation of ME /u/, instead of RP /ʌ/ (for example: homophones put and putt [put], could and cud [kud], book and buck [buk], shook and shuck [ʃuk]): This is a major identifying feature of Geordie, and even most Northern Englishes. - Long vowel /i:/ when followed by a former fricative sound, instead of RP /aɪ/: ME /ɪ/ when followed by a fricative lost the fricative and lengthened, but it did not diphthongise into /aɪ/ as it happened in RP (for example: fight [fi:t]; night, also spelt neet [ni:t]; right, also spelt reet as in alreet for all right [ri:t]). - Open vowel similar to /a/ in final position or in centring diphthongs /ɪә/ and /ʊә/, instead of RP /ә/ (for example: better [‘beʔa], beer [bia], cure [‘kju:a]). - Semi-open vowel /æ/ when followed by a voiceless fricative or by a nasal and a consonant, instead of RP /ɑ:/ (for example: glass, path, France, past, laugh, homophones ant and aunt), as in General American. - Long vowel /a:/ when followed by velar /l/ or /r/, instead of RP /ɔ:/ and /әʊ/ (for example: all, also spelt al or aal [a:l]; talk [ta:k]; war [wa:]; cold [ka:ld]) The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies 22 (2015): 39-57. ISSN: 2386-5431 42 Joaquín Bueno Amaro - Long vowels /e:/ and /o:/, instead of RP diphthongs /eɪ/ and /әʊ/ (for example: face [fe:s], goat [go:t], away [ә’we:], snow [sno:], make [me:k]). - Narrow diphthong [εɪ], instead of RP /aɪ/ (for example: Tyneside [‘tεɪnsεɪd], shine [ʃεɪn]). Regarding prosody, that is, intonation, pitch, voice quality, stress, loudness and rate of delivery, Tyneside and Geordie English are renowned for an extended lilting intonation with several final rising patterns, the so-called Geordie ‘sing-song’ which sounds to non-Geordies as tentative or questioning (cf. McArthur 76; Collins and Mees 154). Dialectal vocabulary involves great part of a variety’s distinctiveness. In contrast with the situation of other dialects, Geordie vocabulary is present in current and natural usage. The two main sources of Geordie vocabulary are Old English and Scandinavian languages. Geordies and Scots share a great amount of dialect words due to the common heritage left by the Angles. For instance, the Geordie verb larn meaning ‘to teach’ is often misinterpreted as a wrong use of SBE learn; but it is in fact a modern reflex of the Anglo-Saxon verb læran, which meant ‘to teach’ – compare Modern German lehren– (cf. British Library website). Some examples of shared vocabulary between Geordie and Scots coming from the Angles are: gan (‘go’), bairn (‘child’), bonny (‘fine, good-looking’), canny (which in SBE means ‘steady and cautious’, but in Geordie means ‘good, kind, gentle’ and is even used as an intensifier meaning ‘very’), yem (‘home’) and yon (demonstrative meaning ‘that over there’) (cf. McArthur 76; Collins and Mees 153; Moffat and Rosie 383; British Library website). The influence of the Scandinavian languages on English is crucial, but even more so in the North, where there is a legion of borrowings, still surviving especially in rural areas. For example, fell (‘hillside’), laithe (‘barn’), garth (‘yard’), laik/lake (‘play’), brant (‘steep’), steg (‘gander’), by (‘farmstead’), bait (‘food’), aye (‘yes’) and nay (‘no’) (cf.
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