DOCSLIB.ORG

A Glossary, with Some Pieces of Verse, of the Old Dialect of the English

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Glossary, with Some Pieces of Verse, of the Old Dialect of the English Digitized by Gopgle Digitized by Gopgle Digitized by Gopgle GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY. Digitized by Gopgle : A GLOSSARY, Wiiii some 9tec» ot Vnsr, or vu OLD DIALECT OF THE ENGLISH COLONY nr TBM Butoras ov FORTH AND BARGY, Bt JACOB POOLE, And ruyw ediudt with some introduetory ObservcUtom^ AddUiom Jrom varhtu sources, and NoUtt By WILLIAM BARNES, B. D. AUTHOB OV A SKAMMAB OV XSB SOSflSTSOI&S OIALfcOX. LONDON J. RUSSELL SMITH, 36, SOHO SQUARE. 1867. A Digitized by Google Digitized by Gopgle CONTENTS. PA6B. Observations by the Editor ^ i Glossary ^ ^ ^ 21 Songs. Metrical Pieces, etc. viz. A Yola Zong .. 83 The Weddeen 0 Ballymore 93 Verses in Answer to the Weddeen 0 Ballymore 98 The Bride's Portion Casteale Cudde's Lamentation for loss 0 his Cuck that was ee-took by a Vox ... 102 About an Old Sow ^in^ to be killed 106 ^OQ^ ••• 108 Jameen Qougeely ee-pealthe 1 10 Bit of Dialo^e ... III Conj^ratulatory Address in the Dialect of Forth and ^^gYf presented to Earl Mulgrave, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on his visit to Wexford in 1836 "3 Appendix, viz. L—Stanyhurst on Wexford 300 years af^o ... 119 II.—Vallancey's Memoir on Forth and Barf^ 121 III. —Dr. Russell on the Inhabitants and Dialect of the Barony of Forth 124 IV.—In J^cmorfam: The Mountain of Forth >37 d by Google I OBSEBVATIONS BT THE EDIIOfi. The BaionieB of Forth and Baigyi in the county of Wezfoid, Ireland, have been for some hondieda of years under the hands of men of the English race, who till lately, have spoken among themselves an old and in- tezesting English form of speech, a knowledge of which would be of service not only in the history of the English people and their tonguoj but also iu the science of speechlore itself. My knowledge of the social history and people of the Baronies has been mainly gathered from what has been written of them by General Vallancey ; the Very Beyerend Dr. Bussell, President of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth Mr. Herbert F. Horc oi W uxiord ; ; and recently from some letter's and pa]>ers which I owe to the kindness of Mr. Bichard Webb of DttbUn^ who now supplies the work under my hand with the following brief description of forth and Bargy. <^The Baronies of Forth and Bargy occupy the soiitli eastern portion of the county of Wexford, having Bannow Bay on the west^ the sea on the south I Digitized by Gopgle 2 OBSBRVATIONb and cast, and the Barony of SlinlTiialier and the extra-paiochiai district of the Forth Mountain on the north. The high road &om Wexford to Waterford passes along the north side of the mountain, and douhtless to this isolated position of the district^ as well as to the dangerous nature of the coast^ and the ahsence of harhonrs and navigable rivers, may he attributed the preservation of the Old English Dialect of the early settlers, and of many of their peculiar customs, to a comparatively recent period. ** The areas of Forth and Bargy are very nearly eqnaly being about 40,000 statute acres each, whilst the population of Forth was about 59,000, and that of Bargy little more than 12,000 in 1843. Owing to the extraordinary Irish exodus of late years, from a participation in which these baronies have not been exempt, it is unlikely that the population is more numerous now than it was at that period. Forth Mountain is a rugged elevation extending from within three miles of the town of Wexford about the same distance in a south westerly direction, with a mean width of two miles. It is conspicuoui by its rocky and splintered pinnacles, which rise into a variety of fantastic forms, and command a grand and very extensive prospect. The principal of these are named Garrick-a-Shinna, Carrick-a-Dee, and Carrick-ar Foyle, and are respectively 556, 776, and 687 feet above the level of the sea. There is an old saying in the surrounding country that When Carrick-a-Dee wears a hat, [a cloud] Let Forth and Bargy beware of that. Digitized by Google BY THB SDITOB. 3 ^ Throughout the Baroiiies, especially along the sea- side, 'the land is divided into small ferms of from five to twenty aciTs, the competition fur wliich pro- duces high rents, and on which is also exhibited that wondeifol exertion of industiy, which seldom fails to show itself in Ireland where the inhabitants are secured in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour;** ''The mountain^ or the greater part of it, is a stony barren waste, and many patches have been brought into cultivation by the indefatigable industry of the neighbouring peasantry. Large rocks and stones have been collected into heaps or piled into w^ills, and the cleared spaces filled with soil and carefully tilled. These spots, being held by the right of possession, are (or were nntU lately) free of all rent, taxes, and impositions, and aitbrd a striking instance of the passion for the ownership of land which is so preva- lent among the Irish people. "The whole of Forth and Bargy is tolerably well cultivated. It is also well wooded, except in the neighbourhood of the sea, where the sea breezes prevent the growth of large timber. The number of landed gentry, and of independent fanners and land- holders, is large in proportion to that of any other equal portion of the south of Ireland. The peasantry are a quiet, .steady, plodding, well-clad race, frugal, industrious, and contented. There is probably no part of Her Majesty's dominions more &ee from crime, and * Lewis^B Topogny^kiad Mciumarj^ IrtkmA, ¥oL %, orU Wexford. 1* Digitized by Gopgle 4 OBSERVATIONS agiarian outrages, it is beUeved, aie unknown.'' The farming class rarely extend their travels beyond the county town of "Wexford, which is situated at the northern extremity of Forth, As illustrative of their stay-at-home disposition^ a story is told in Shaw ^Masou's Parochial Survey of Ireland^ respecting a Forth woman who happened, once in her life, to wander to the top of The Mountain (their only mountain), and 'svas so overwhelmed by the vasL extent of the world which lay to the north of her own, that she resolved never to venture on the appalling prospect any more. Wexford is picturesquely situated on its harbour in the north-eastern comer of the Barony of Forth, and its neighbourhood is very beautifuL It is a quaint old-fashioned town, liaving large portions of the ancient historic walls still standing, with many ivy-mantled remains of churches and abbeys, ai^d a number of modem Roman Catholic churches of considerable architectural elegance. It is conspicuous for the unusual proportion of old English names on the shop-doors and sign-boards. The long street on the south side, by which you enter from the Barony of Forth, consists princii)ally of small, neat houses, many of them slated and whitewashed, and famished with geraniums and other flowers in the windows ; thus agreeably contrasting with the rows of miser- * " But it is also true that there are many extensive districts in Ireland, where the people are of Celtic origin, in which the Abgenoe of crime and the security of life and property aie quite as great as In any part of Great Britain." Digitized by BY THB BDITOB. 5 able cabins by which the outlets of so many other Irish towns are dis£gured« This street is called The Faayth. On market days the peasantry may be seen flocking into Wexford with their country produce. They are goneraUy comfortably and neatly dressed. The women wear bonnets and blue cloaks^ and are often conveyed on small seated vehicles and cheap jaunting-cars of various kinds, drawn by donkeys or the hardy Forth poniec^ which are valued through- out Ireland for their strength and spirit. "Throughout these baronies there is a general air of comfort and independence^ and the prevalence of Boman noses, dark eyes, and oval visages indicates that the people are not generally of ucltic extrac- tion. The old Dialect has only a remote traditional existence in Bargy, and has probably not been spoken in any part of that Barony within the last hundred years; whilst no longer than forty years ago, it was stUi the mother tongue of all the poorer classes, of 70 years of age and upwards, in the soulhem part of Forth along the sea-side. And espe- cially in the parish of Carne, at the south-eastern extremity, must the very few old people be sought for, who have some slight smattering of the now nearly extinct language of their forefathers. «The only custom of the early English colonists which remains among their descendants is that of taking a siesta (called enteeie in the Glossary) in the noontide of the long working-days in summer. Kor is there now any trace of the peculiar costume Digitized 6 OBSEBYATIOKB described by Vallancey as having prevailed when he fiist knew the district^ which was lather more than a centary from the present time." A pa])er on tlic old speech of iurtk and I>arixy, written by General Vallancey, was printod, with a vocabulary and Forth song in voL 2 of the Tfvmae- Uom of the Royal TrM Academy, and some verses of the song were shown by Jennings, in some notes to his Somerset Poems^ as having a veiy strong tinge of West English, upon which he thought that the early English settlers of the Baiunius might have been Wessex men of Somerset and Devon.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Writing the West Conference Programme
    Regional History Centre, UWE, Bristol Writing the West A conference jointly organised by The Regional History Centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol, M Shed, Bristol, & The Bristol Festival of Ideas 11 & 12 May 2012 Venue: M‐Shed, Prince’s Rd, Bristol Provisional Programme Friday 11th May 2012 9.00 registration and coffee 9.45: welcome 10.00: Keynote Lecture 1: Peter Fleming (UWE, Bristol), Constructing the Past, Recording the Present in the Later Medieval West of England 11.10: coffee 11.30‐1.00 Parallel Sessions 11.30: panel 1 Writing Arthur in the West: Innovation and identity Gareth Griffith (U of Bristol): Writing the city and civic identity: King Arthur and Saint Katherine in the Red Book of Bath. Juliette Wood (Cardiff U): Prince Madog’s Arthurian adventure in Mobile, Alabama: the Arthurian World in Sanders Anne Laubenthal’s Excalibur Elizabeth Archibald (U of Bristol): Camelot in the ruins of Bath: Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur 11.30: panel 2 New Work on Bristol & West Country Labouring Class Poetry Chair: Bridget Keegan (Creighton University, Omaha) Nick Groom (University of Exeter) Dacyannes and Scythyannes, Saxonnes and Normannes: Chatterton, Gothic History, and the South West. Kerri Andrews, (Strathclyde University), Ann Yearlsey, a Bristol Poet. John Goodridge (Nottingham Trent), John Gregory: sonnets, shoemaking and socialism 1.00pm Lunch 2.00‐3.30 Parallel Sessions 2.00‐3.30 panel 1: Landscape, Nature and Place Dave Postles (University of Leicester) Trickster in the Wiltshire landscape: E. M. Forster and The Longest Journey Richard Coates (UWE, Bristol) ‘Bent on emptying his note‐book in decent English’: Richard Jefferies, naturalistic observation, and English dialect.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sound of William Barnes's Dialect Poems
    Welcome to the electronic edition of The Sound of William Barnes’s Dialect Poems: 3. Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, third collection (1862). The book opens with the bookmark panel and you will see the contents page. Click on this anytime to return to the contents. You can also add your own bookmarks. Each chapter heading in the contents table is clickable and will take you direct to the chapter. Return using the contents link in the bookmarks. The whole document is fully searchable. Enjoy. The Sound of William Barnes’s Dialect Poems 3. Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, third collection About this volume This is the third volume in a series that sets out to provide a phonemic transcript and an audio recording of each individual poem in Barnes’s three collections of Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect. Its 96 poems include some of those most loved and admired: poems of heart-wrenching grief at the untimely deaths of Barnes’s wife, Julia (“Woak Hill”), and their young son, Julius “The turnstile”); celebrations of love anticipated (“In the spring”) and love fulfilled (“Don’t ceäre”); protests against injustice and snobbery (“The love child”); struggles to accept God’s will (“Grammer a-crippled”); comic poems (“John Bloom in Lon’on”, “A lot o’ maïdens a-runnèn the vields”); and poems on numerous other subjects, with an emotional range stretching from the deepest of grief to the highest of joy. The metrical forms show astonishing versatility, from straightforward octosyllabic couplets to challenging rhyme-schemes and innovative stanzaic patterns, widely varied line-lengths, and skilful adaptations of rhetorical devices from other languages.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sound of William Barnes's Dialect Poems
    Welcome to the electronic edition of The Sound of William Barnes’s Dialect Poems: 2. Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, second collection (1859). The book opens with the bookmark panel and you will see the contents page. Click on this anytime to return to the contents. You can also add your own bookmarks. Each chapter heading in the contents table is clickable and will take you direct to the chapter. Return using the contents link in the bookmarks. The whole document is fully searchable. Enjoy. The Sound of William Barnes’s Dialect Poems 2. Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, second collection About this volume This is the second volume in a series that sets out to to provide a phonemic transcript and an audio recording of each individual poem in Barnes’s three collections of Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect. Beginning with two poems that inspired Vaughan Williams to set them to music, and ending with a paean of praise for the poet’s native county, this second collection contains 105 poems of immense range and power. There are poems of longing, of love and of loss; of pain and of protest; of tears and of laughter; of grief and consolation; of feasting and celebration; of music and birdsong; of falsehood and friendship and faith; of generosity and meanness; of bad temper and good; of stasis and travel; of flowers and trees; of storm and of calm. “Here,” in short, (as Dryden famously said of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer) “is God’s plenty”.
    [Show full text]
  • Reference Guide for Varieties of English 1 General
    Reference guide for varieties of English Outline structure 1 General 1.1 Investigating variation 1.1 Language change 1.2 Standard English 1.4 Nonstandard English 1.5 Historical background 2 England 2.1 Overviews 2.2 Received Pronunciation 2.3 Estuary English 2.4 Cockney 2.5 British Creole 2.6 East Anglia 2.7 South of England 2.8 West and South-West 2.9 Northern English 2.10 Other languages in Britain 3 The Celtic realms 3.1 Scotland 3.2 Wales 3.3 Ireland 3.4 Isle of Man 4 Minor European varieties 4.1 Channel Islands 4.2 Gibraltar 4.3 Malta 5 The New World 5.1 American English 5.2 Canadian English 5.3 Caribbean English 6 English in Africa 6.1 West Africa 6.2 East Africa 6.3 Southern Africa 6.4 The South Atlantic 7 English in Asia 7.1 South Asia 7.2 South-East Asia 7.3 East Asia 8 Australasia and Pacific 8.1 Australia 8.2 New Zealand 8.3 The anglophone Pacific 9 English-based pidgins and creoles 10 World Englishes 10.1 English and colonialism 10.2 ‘New Englishes’ 10.3 Nonnative Englishes 1 General Aarts, Bas and April McMahon (eds) 2006. The Handbook of English Linguistics. Oxford / Malden, MA: Blackwell. Allen, Harold B. and Michael D. Linn (eds) 1986. Dialect and Language Variation. Orlando: Academic Press. Anderson, Peter M. 1987. A Structural Atlas of the English Dialects. London. Raymond Hickey Reference guide for varieties of English Page 2 of 61 Auer, Peter, Frans Hinskens and Paul Kerswill (eds) 2000.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of the Welsh English Dialect in Fiction
    _________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses A History of the Welsh English Dialect in Fiction Jones, Benjamin A. How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Jones, Benjamin A. (2018) A History of the Welsh English Dialect in Fiction. Doctoral thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa44723 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ A history of the Welsh English dialect in fiction Benjamin Alexander Jones Submitted to Swansea University in fulfilment of the requirements
    [Show full text]
  • Dialect, Adaptation and Assimilation in the Poetry of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy
    Dialect, Adaptation and Assimilation in the Poetry of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy Heather Hawkins* The Dorset poets William Barnes and Thomas Hardy lived during a period of great social and economic change in nineteenth-century Britain, change triggered by enclosure and the gradual machinisation of farming. This caused the rapid disappearance of rural culture, something of which Barnes and Hardy would have been acutely aware, as both of their families occupied an ambiguous class position; though elevated from the majority of the labouring class by their employment and education, they were not wealthy enough to join the middle class. A close reading of Barnes’s poem ‘Woak Were Good Enough Woonce’ and Hardy’s poem ‘Silences’ illustrates the poets’ contrasting approaches to dialect in poetry, and reveals their different responses to the effects of the increased urbanisation of rural culture. In particular, an examination of the use of dialect in these poems offers interesting insights into the processes of cultural adaptation and assimilation which were brought about by such changes. The enclosure of land in the early 1800s and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 forced many small tenant farmers out of business, and led to an increase in rural unemployment and a subsequent migration of labourers to urban centres. This influx of workers indicated the ability of the rural labourer to adapt to social and economic change.1 However, the rural labourer, or ‘Hodge’ as he was dubbed by social commentators of the period, was typically presented in contemporary literature as slow, awkward, lacking in social ambition and only able to converse in an unintelligible language.
    [Show full text]
  • A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova
    A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ADVANCED A Historical Phonology of English Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language – Advanced General Editor Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Edinburgh Editorial Board Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington) Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam) Rochelle Lieber (University of New Hampshire) Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh) Donka Minkova (UCLA) Edgar W. Schneider (University of Regensburg) Katie Wales (University of Leeds) Anthony Warner (University of York) TITLES IN THE SERIES INCLUDE: Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English Hans Lindquist A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova A Historical Morphology of English Dieter Kastovsky Grammaticalization and the History of English Manfred Krug and Hubert Cuyckens A Historical Syntax of English Bettelou Los English Historical Sociolinguistics Robert McColl Millar A Historical Semantics of English Christian Kay and Kathryn Allan Visit the Edinburgh Textbooks in the English Language website at www. euppublishing.com/series/ETOTELAdvanced A Historical Phonology of English Donka Minkova © Donka Minkova, 2014 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/12 Janson by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3467 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3468 2 (paperback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3469 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 7755 9 (epub) The right of Donka Minkova to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • 327 Language Peculiarities of Regional British English
    LANGUAGE PECULIARITIES OF REGIONAL BRITISH ENGLISH VARIANTS S. A. Shurko Belarusian State University, Niezaliežnasci Avenue, 4, 220030, Minsk, Republic of Belarus, shurko.bsu.by Language accents and dialects are factors which sometimes may lead to misunderstand- ing between people speaking one and the same language but living in different areas and dis- tricts. The purpose of this article is to outline the differences of the regional dialects from the standard and to underline characteristic features peculiar only for them. In this paper we have analyzed the speech of people who live in the UK on the examples of the speakers of British dialects and accents which were taken from the video film called ―Language accent file‖. We have traced the differences and made a conclusion that every single accent or dia- lect possesses a number of features which could only be heard in a definite area or among par- ticular class representatives. This article reflects the factors influencing the way people speak, such as geographical area people were born in and raised, their education, age and class deline- ation which is still strong in Great Britain. Keywords: dialects; accents; rhotic language; glottal stop; h-dropping; double negation; re- duction; syllables merger. ЯЗЫКОВЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫХ ВАРИАНТОВ БРИТАНСКОГО АНГЛИЙСКОГО С. А. Шурко Белорусский государственный университет, Незележнасти пр, 4, 220030, Минск, Республика Беларусь, shurko.bsu.by Языковые акценты и диалекты являются факторами, которые иногда могут приве- сти к недопониманию между людьми, говорящими на одном и том же языке, но живу- щими в разных районах. Цель данной статьи - выделить отличия региональных диалек- тов от общепринятых и подчеркнуть характерные черты, свойственные только им.
    [Show full text]
  • The Representation of Dialect in Victorian Fiction
    W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 5-2020 Speaker into Specimen: The Representation of Dialect in Victorian Fiction Hunter Hall Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Hall, Hunter, "Speaker into Specimen: The Representation of Dialect in Victorian Fiction" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 1535. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1535 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Speaker into Specimen: The Representation of Dialect in Victorian Fiction A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Department of English from The College of William and Mary by Hunter Hall Accepted for Honors Deborah D. Morse Deborah D. Morse, Exam Director Kim Wheatley Kim Wheatley, Reader Talbot Taylor Talbot Taylor, Outside Reader Williamsburg, VA May 7, 2020 Hall 1 “Mrs. Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect,” writes Thomas Hardy in Tess of the D’Urbervilles: “her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality” (30). Young Tess Durbeyfield’s decision to speak “ordinary English” with “persons of quality” is a product of ideological forces that are all too familiar.
    [Show full text]
  • Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England
    Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England A Corpus Study of Grammatical Variation in Spontaneous Speech Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philologischen Fakultät der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau vorgelegt von Nuria Hernández y Siebold aus Kehl am Rhein Sommersemester 2010 Ursprünglicher Titel: Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England – A Corpus-Driven Study of Grammatical Variation in Spontaneous Speech Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Bernd Kortmann Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair Drittgutachter: Prof. Dr. Guido Seiler Vorsitzender des Promotionsausschusses der Gemeinsamen Kommission der Philologischen, Philosophischen und Wirtschafts- und Verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Fakultät: Prof. Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander Datum der Disputation: 14. März 2011 Contents List of tables vi List of figures vii List of maps viii Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements xi I Background 1 Contents and definitions . 1 1.1 Approach and objectives. 1 1.2 Grammatical categorisation and terminology . 7 1.3 Structure of the study . 11 2 Spoken-language research . 13 2.1 Preserving data of speech . 13 2.2 Transcribing data of speech . 14 3 Pronoun variation in the history of English . 17 3.1 Some historical facts . 18 3.1.1 Old English (450–1150 AD) . 18 3.1.2 Middle English (1150–1470 AD) . 23 3.1.3 Early Modern English to Modern English (after 1470) . 26 3.2 Standard English and the ideology of Standard English . 30 3.2.1 Desire for (linguistic) order . 30 3.2.2 Appreciation of linguistic diversity . 33 3.3 The standard Modern English paradigm. 34 II Empirical study 4 Data and methodology . 39 4.1 The Freiburg Corpus of English Dialects (FRED) .
    [Show full text]
  • Dialect in the Poetry of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy
    A Rejection of the Urban Centre? Dialect in the Poetry of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy. Heather Hawkins Poetry, when written rural in dialect, seemingly rejects the standard language of the urban centre in favour of rural peripheral culture.1 Such rejection however, is not automatically subversive towards the colonizing centre, and sometimes maintains the position of the centre as the absolute, dominant culture and the periphery as its inferior other.2 This essay discusses the uses of dialect in the poetry of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy. It examines one poem by each poet, namely Barnes’ Vellen the Tree (1844) and Hardy’s Throwing A Tree (1928), to establish whether dialect in their poetry rejects or supports the position of the urban centre as the absolute during the nineteenth century.3 Both poets were Dorset born and lived much of their lives in the Dorchester area. They shared a concern for the plight of the rural poor and also sought to record a rapidly diminishing rural culture in the face of increased industrialisation, migration and compulsory education. William Barnes was born in 1801 to parents who rented a small patch of land at Bagber near Sturminster Newton, Dorset. His mother, Grace, came from an impoverished background. His father’s family was more prosperous. Barnes’s grandfather previously owned a farm near Sturminster, which was lost due to mismanagement following his death. 1 For the purposes of this essay ‘dialect’ refers to the non-standard speech of the rural periphery, rather than other non-standard urban dialects, the examination of which reside beyond the scope of this essay.
    [Show full text]
  • Arguments for Creolisation in Irish English*
    In: Raymond Hickey and StanisÓaw Puppel (eds) Language History and Linguistic Modelling. A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, 1997, 969-1038. Arguments for creolisation in Irish English* Raymond Hickey University of Essen 1 Introduction The area of creole studies has enjoyed up to the present undiminished interest among linguists descriptive and theoretical alike and the results of this research has been of considerable significance in the illumination of language variety over time and space and has proved fruitful to considerations of language genesis. In the last decade or so historical stages of English, most notably Middle English, have also been examined with a view to possible classification as a creole (Domingue 1977; Bailey and Maroldt 1979; Poussa 1982; Görlach 1986; Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Dalton-Puffer 1995; Danchev in press; on Romance, Schlieben-Lange 1979). The claims of the pro-creolists, notably Bailey and Maroldt, have provoked strong reactions from other linguists who have gone to considerable lengths to dismantle the creolisation hypothesis for Middle English and northern varieties of Old English (cf. Thomason and Kaufman 1988, for instance). Despite the adverse criticism which such attempts at attributing creole status to historical varieties of English has met with I nonetheless deem it appropriate to consider the question with regard to Irish English which has had quite a different history from mainland English and where the synchronically ascertainable effects of sustained contact with Irish justify at least an objective evaluation of possible creole status in the decisive period of genesis for Irish English. In view of the intensity of reaction by opponents of creolisation and the negative light in which the scholarship of the proponents is viewed I should stress at the outset that I see no inherent advantage in classifying a stage of a language or variety as a creole.
    [Show full text]