A handy beginner's guide to 'how to speak Yorkshire'.
The dialects of English still spoken in Yorkshire, known collectively as Broad Yorkshire,
Tyke or Yorkie, are both colourful and instantly recognisable. In this pocket-sized
guide, you'll find everything you need to give Sean Bean or Jodie Whittaker a run for
their money.
First, you have to drop your Hs, from ‘has’ and ‘her’ for example – ‘as and ‘er. Then,
the Ts need to go, from ‘that’ and ‘cat’ for example, to be replaced with a slight H
sound, the so-called glottal stop – tha’ and ca’ – while ‘the’ becomes simply t’. A
famous example (which no one ever actually says) is ‘t’in’t in’t tin, meaning ‘it isn’t in
the tin’. In a similar way ‘with’ becomes ‘wi’. Accents may differ throughout the Dales,
but Ts and Hs are dropped throughout Yorkshire.
And don’t bother with the G in any -ing ending. Gs at the end of words count for
nothin’. The ‘ay’ sound in a word, like ‘day’, becomes ‘ee’, as do some i sounds – ‘right’,
for example, becomes ‘reet |
