John Germon was born and raised in the Devon stannary town of Ashburton. He attended both the Primary and "The Big School" and has a keen interest in local dialect...Via Plep. Posted by languagehat at March 4, 2005 03:44 PMJohn is chairman of the Ashburton Devon Dialect Club and has compiled this A-Z. If you want to know how to pronounce the words in a true Devon accent, just click on the link and John will read them out to you.
As I read this, I'm listening to Weekend Edition's report on the British Library archive of accents.
Posted by: jean-pierre at March 6, 2005 08:31 AMAnd here's another English dialect site for you: Pitmatic. The word 'pitmatic' may be new to you, as it was to me. In any case, it's a fun site.
Posted by: arnold at March 7, 2005 11:32 AMIt certainly is new to me. From the site:
Fred Wade's typescript The Story of South Moor: a mining village situated in the north western part of County Durham... includes a glossary on pp.187-190. This is introduced as follows: "Many dialect words appertaining to the early days of coal mining are still in use and are now referred to as 'Pitmatic'."
Thanks for the link!
Posted by: language hat at March 7, 2005 11:52 AMWhy ay, languagehat! Pitmatic anna new - ah've blethered on aboot it in Wordorigins like. Ah canna read yon Devon crack, mine.
Gan canny, yez aa!
Posted by: Eliza at March 7, 2005 02:56 PMStannary = "tin-mining". The tin mines of England are thousands of years old.
Posted by: John Emerson at March 12, 2005 03:14 PM