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Norfolk Dialect Information

The Norfolk dialect, also known as Broad Norfolk, is a dialect that was once, and to a great extent, still is spoken by those living in the county of Norfolk in England. It employs distinctively unique pronunciations, especially of vowels; and consistent grammatical forms that differ markedly from standard English.

Contents

Portrayal

Portrayal of the Norfolk dialect and accent in films and TV is often regarded as poor (it is notoriously difficult for 'foreigners' to imitate)[1] and the treatment of it in the television drama All the King's Men in 1999, in part prompted the foundation of the Friends of Norfolk Dialect (FOND), a group formed with the aim of preserving and promoting Broad Norfolk. The group campaigns for the recognition of Norfolk as a dialect, and for the teaching of "Norfolk" in schools. FOND aims to produce a digital archive of recordings of people speaking the dialect's traditional words. In July 2001 the group was awarded £4000 from the National Lottery in aid of recording equipment for this purpose.

Arnold Wesker's 1959 play Roots made good use of authentic Norfolk dialect.

During the 1960s, Anglia Television produced a soap opera called "Weavers Green" which used local characters making extensive use of Norfolk dialect. The programme was filmed at the "cul-de-sac" village of Heydon north of Reepham in mid Norfolk.

An example of the Norfolk accent and vocabulary can be heard in the songs by Allan Smethurst, aka The Singing Postman. Smethurst's undisputed Norfolk accent is well known from his releases of the 1960s, such as "Hev Yew Gotta Loight Bor?". The Boy John Letters of Sidney Grapes, which were originally published in the Eastern Daily Press, are another valid example of the Norfolk dialect. Beyond simply portrayers of speech and idiom however, Smethurst, and more especially Grapes, record their authentic understanding of mid-twentieth-century Norfolk village life. Grapes' characters, the Boy John, Aunt Agatha, Granfar, and Ole Missus W, perform a literary operetta celebrating down-to-earth ordinariness over bourgeois affectation and pretence; their values and enduring habits instantly familiar to Norfolk people.

Charles Dickens undoubtedly had some grasp of the Norfolk accent which he utilised in the speech of the Yarmouth fishermen, Ham and Daniel Peggoty in David Copperfield. An extensive treatment of 'Dickens as Sociolinguist', in the course of which she analyses the speech of these Norfolk characters was made by Patricia Poussa in Writing in Non-Standard English[2] In the same article Poussa makes connections between the particular variant of Norfolk dialect spoken in the Flegg area around Great Yarmouth, a place of known Viking settlement, with Scandinavian languages. Significantly the use of 'that' meaning 'it', dealt with under grammar below, is used as an example of this apparent connection.

The publication in 2006 by Ethel George (with Carole and Michael Blackwell) of The Seventeenth Child provides a written record of spoken dialect, though in this case of a person brought up inside the city of Norwich. Ethel George was born in 1914, and in 2006 provided the Blackwells with extensive tape-recorded recollections of her childhood as the seventeenth offspring of a relatively poor Norwich family. Carole Blackwell has reproduced a highly literal written rendering of this, such that anyone familiar with the dialect can recognise an authentic Norfolk/ Norwich voice speaking to them from the page.[3]

An erudite and comprehensive study of the dialect, by Norfolk speaker and Professor of Sociolinguistics, Peter Trudgill can be found in the latter's book 'The Norfolk Dialect' (2003), published as part of the 'Norfolk Origins' series by Poppyland Publishing, Cromer.

Distribution

The Norfolk dialect is a subset of the Southern English dialect group. Geographically it covers most of the County of Norfolk extending to the south into the northern parts of the county of Suffolk in particular the town of Lowestoft and its surrounding area. The accent of Norwich is (not surprisingly) similar but the vowels tend to be different.

The Norfolk dialect should not be confused with Pitcairn-Norfolk, a second language of the Pitcairn Islands, or with Norfuk, the language used on Norfolk Island.

Features

Accent

General

Vowels

Consonants

Grammar

Some of these grammatical features are often present also in neighbouring dialects, in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire etc. Some of them are merely the retention of older speech forms, once more extensively used throughout the country. Expressions such as 'abed' meaning 'in bed' (see below), still used in Norfolk in 2009, was undoubtedly used by Shakespeare. At parting, Norfolk people often say 'fare yer well', a local version of the old English expression 'fare thee well'.

Phrases

The following exchange is a shibboleth for Broad Norfolk speakers.

He yer fa got a dickey, bor? (Has your father got a donkey, boy?) Yis, an' he want a fule ter roid 'im, will yew cum? (Yes, and he wants a fool to ride him, will you do it?)

Vocabulary

Dialect words and phrases

Accented pronunciation

Famous speakers

See also

Notes

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (July 2009)
  1. ^ . Even an actor of the distinction of Alan Bates did not adequately achieve an authentic Norfolk accent in his portrayal of the character Ted Burgess in the highly acclaimed film 'The Go-Between' (1970).
  2. ^ eds. Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers and Paivi Pahta (Philadelphia 1999) pp. 27–44
  3. ^ George, Ethel ( with Carole and Michael Blackwell) 'The Seventeenth Child' (The Larks Press 2006)ISBN 1904006302.Original tapes of interviews are held by the Norfolk Sound Archive.
  4. ^ A good example of this sound is in the sound clip 'The NURSE vowel' at
  5. ^ http://www.paulinedodd.com/dictionary.html
  6. ^ http://www.norfolkdialect.com/advanced.htm
  7. ^ see George, p.97.
  8. ^ George, p.155
  9. ^ George, p.190
  10. ^ George, p.189
  11. ^ from:George, Ethel (with Carole and Michael Blackwell)'The Seventeenth Child' (2006). p.94.
  12. ^ George, p.129.
  13. ^ see George, p.75.
  14. ^ see George, p.74
  15. ^ George, Ethel p.76
  16. ^ George, p.142.
  17. ^ a b George, p.102
  18. ^ George, p.113
  19. ^ OED.

References

External links and references

Norfolk dialect test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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