With the weather still not quite warm enough to sit outside in the garden, it can be easy for me to end up spending all my time indoors, at home. So, I like to make the effort to go out and about and often treat myself to coffee or lunch in the various local cafes and restaurants. There are plenty of places to visit where you can enjoy the food and surround yourself with others.
I met up with some friends the other day and while chatting, one of them used a word the rest of us had never heard before. It was a colloquial word, and it got me thinking of other regional words as well as old phrases that we rarely use anymore.
My husband is a Londoner and although he has lived in the Midlands for almost 30 years, when he returns ‘Home’ his accent really comes back along with some words I don’t really understand. His daughter has lived in Nottingham for many years and is a real Midlander, but she always comments on her boyfriend who comes from Rotherham – she says he almost speaks a different language.
Me – well, I am a proper Midlander! You’ll know this if you ever listened to me speak as I often use words or phrases you only hear in this area. An obvious one is ‘Ey up me duck’. For those of you not quite sure what I’m saying, it means ‘Hello, my friend’, with ‘duck’ being a particularly popular term of endearment in the East Midlands.
I’ve listed a few more below but not the full meaning – half the fun is trying to work them out.
· ‘Charlie’s dead.’
· ‘It’s looking black over Bill’s mother’s.’
· ‘Yer reet nesh,’ so put ‘wood in t’ole.’
· ‘Wanna croggy?’ or ‘Gizza go,’ – then you might have a ‘cob on’ when not allowed to do so. Maybe you’ll go down the ‘jitty’ to have a ‘reccy’. If you’re hungry, you might have a ‘cob’ or a ‘butty’.
The list is never-ending, and I’m sure you can think of many words or phrases yourselves. Listing them has put a smile on my face and made me realise that if we don’t use them, they might be lost in the mists of time.
It’s the same with some of the games we used to play, although I have noticed that some of the children in the school playground play what looks like the old games. I had to laugh one day when, during the school holidays and work was being done in the playground, one of the workmen took a look around (hoping no one was watching) and then proceeded to have a go on the Hopscotch outlined on the ground – he did it very well in his hard hat and safety boots!
The way we communicate is changing and the spoken word is often replaced by an email or text, but old terminology can be fascinating (and funny!) so maybe we should use it on the younger generation every once in a while so it’s not forgotten – even if they think we’re talking gobbledygook!