Thass nowt tha's et...

...More appalling transcriptions from me of bits of dialect, this time my Yorkshire granny's quaint favourite saying, said with a maniacal glint of humour in her eye, and used to express disapproval of a person's accidental emission of intestinal gas. Translated into Standard English, it goes "that's nothing you've eaten, it's something that has crept up your bottom and died". Dialect, local idiom, or just a very strange grandmother? I'll accept any answer...

Anyway, entitled as I will be, come Independence Day, to my People's Republic of Yorkshire passport, I like to keep an eye on things North of the border, and this week's post follows through on the BBC Voices dialect project I posted about earlier this week. Check out the link below to the Guardian's Northerner section which discusses the way the Northern newspapers have responded. There is some really cool stuff in this - like how Geordie buskers don't make as much money in Newcastle as "outsiders" because their accent is regarded as insufficiently exotic and exciting for the purposes of street entertainment. Now how cool would that be as the starting point for a language investigation project for A2?!

The other really cool thing about this is that it provides links, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, to 19 Northern newspapers. On some of these you have to click around a bit to find the stuff on dialect, as some have more accessible search functions than others, but they are a fantastic resource for the study of dialects. I checked out the Yorkshire Post: clicked on news, rummaged around and found the search box, typed in 'dialect' and up came all the stuff they'd ever archived on the topic - er, loads.... Dialect is dead?!! Again, I say, who's dead?!!

You say grouts, I say that's the dregs