Twenty Six

A note on pronunciation would be apposite... - Donald examines the relationship between spoken and written language. He identifies a disjunction between them, indicating that attempts to write dialect quickly reduce to the patronising. He observes how those who speak in dialect rarely read in it and uses this to draw conclusions about the truth of particular people’s words and draws conclusion about the location of power.

A note on pronunciation would be apposite. It is a strength of the internet that anyone in any country, of any colour, race, religion, creed, dietary regime or popular music preference can access the material I post. This very strength, however, is also something of a weakness, an Achilles heel in the physiognomy of the network’s universality. For it means that much that is specific to my curriculum vitae, my life circumstance, experience, persona, culture or musical taste will be lost, not ignored or rejected, but simply missed by my readers. You can hardly blame the archers if they miss a target they don’t know to exist. So, in the interests of accuracy and experience enhancement, I will offer some pointers on oral reproduction.

I come from Kiddington. You may have gleaned that from a text that has referred to the association a thousand times already. Now Kiddington is in West Yorkshire, in the midst of what we used to call the West Riding. “Riding is another word for a third”, said Mrs Cartwheel in another of her geography lessons. “Our great county, the largest and, we all know, the best in the land, is divided into three pieces so they are called Ridings.”

“Is that like Little Red Riding Hood?” Geoff Watson asked. He was not the brightest.

We all laughed. I don’t know why we laughed because, with the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, it was a perfectly logical question for an eight-year-old to ask. Education today would give him an enhanced grade for transferability or creativity or both on the basis of the link he made. In those days, however, we called it stupid and he blushed. I thumped him in the gut below the level of the desk and then told him to shut his goral mouth or I’d knock his depascent teeth out. It was always with pride that Mrs Cartwheel presented her geography of the pink bits of the globe, the British Empire that was. And it was with even greater pride that she extolled the virtue of her beloved Yorkshire, the great county outside whose confines she had never lived, hardly even ventured.

But that’s where we were, riding high, mid-Riding in the largest county in the proud country that ruled the pink world, the only world worth knowing. We were the middle kingdom, the centre of a universe we learned we had a perhaps divine right to rule.

Our area was truly central, just to the east of Bromaton, the town that maintained its superior status despite the imposing presence of the giant Punslet just to the north. Bromaton’s east was coal country: its west was wool, its stone mills originally driven by water that flowed fast down moorland valleys. South was more coal, but soon this gave way to steel. Punslet was the truly big town, but it was a place that most of us loathed because it was filled with people with whom we could not identify: their accent was different. They weren’t like us and that’s all we knew.

It was coal that made Kiddington and its brother villages unique. Coal was a big, heavy industry, but there was a limit to the number of people you could effectively wind up and down the gullet of a single pit in a single day. There was also a limit on how much product you could lift up the same oesophageal tract, so the pits grew to a maximum sustainable size and not beyond, at least until the fabled new pits of the nationalised, wholly mechanised era. It was as if the older pits became as defunct as the idea of bell-mining that had left its pre-industrial depressions across the common. They were technologically non-viable.

“Watch out,” the old codgers used to say to one another as they trod home in their clogs off the shift. “When that new super pit the other side of Ribthwaite opens up, it’ll be curtains for Kiddington and others like it. It stands to reason,” came the impeccable logic. “We’ll be surplus to requirements.”

But when my mate Geoff Watson and I sat side by side before Mrs Cartwheel’s edifying instruction, each village had its pit, had its shaft, had its winding gear in its tower, had its cage, its shifts, its miners, its slag heaps, its Club, its team, its brass band, its male voice choir. It had its May Queen, who was actually female, its cricket team, its church magazine and its chapel, not to mention oodles of fish and chips. Most of the villages were home to two to five thousand people, rarely larger. Below ground the workings used to inter-connect. You could descend in Kiddington, for instance, and do your shift on a face as far away as Ribthwaite. But your time in transit on the underground railway was paid at only half the face rate, and the further you travelled, the longer it took. So you worked longer, or earned less, until the day, dreaded by most, when the body could no longer handle the spade and thus you could no longer be called a ‘getter’. From that day on, if you were lucky, you were raised to a new life at the surface, but denied the dark, an exclusion that cost half your pay which, contrary to later propaganda, was never that much. You never saw any of those southern bankers trying to get down the pit!

Like all specialised human activity, mining generated its own vocabulary. It was in P102, Vocabulary Specificity Related To Niche Roles In The Mode Of Production, that I examined this phenomenon. Mariners, of course, have had a lasting effect on our language. There’s about face, turn around, amidships, keel haul, walk the gangplank and shiver me timbers for a start. Agriculture was always a winner as well. I’ve ploughed that furrow often enough. But coal, wool, cotton, iron, steel and plumbing have all had their influence on the language. They all had their words. In coal’s case the lexicon now sounds strange. Cage, winding gear, getter, snap-tin, roadway: in many ways they aren’t even specialised.

But it was not in the area of vocabulary that the accent has been preserved. It’s the intonation that counts plus, of course, a handful of definitive pointers, such as the definite article glottal stop, the surreally indented ‘t’ and an archaic second person singular, in all its forms.

What really impressed the course tutor about my essay on our local accent was my inversion of perspective, a modification that went considerably beyond the brief. Instead of analysing my West Yorkshire mining village twang from a conventional standpoint, I wrote the whole piece in dialect and analysed received pronunciation as if it were the special case. She was impressed, so impressed that she gave it a tick, a great big tick that went all the way through. She commended me on my invention, but pointed out that in fifteen years of tutoring P102, she had never before awarded a mark of zero, such was my achievement. It didn’t matter in the end. Later on I picked up loads of marks in the orals, all of which I did in my dialect.

An interesting example of the specificity of our twang is the word aslafta. Dr Swinton, my tutor, was particularly taken with the word. In fact, when I later explained it to her, she admitted that things started to make a little sense. Aslafta is one of the most frequently used and useful words in Kiddington. It signifies obligation, an act or practice that must be accomplished, either for personal reasons or as a result of employment considerations. It is, of course, a contraction. In RP it would equate to, “I must”, or more accurately, “I shall have to” or “I will have to.”

“Aslafta go down t’cellar steps to fill t’coal scuttle,” would be commonly uttered just after stoking the kitchen fire. Note I don’t attempt to write gu instead of go, or ter instead of to. That would be pedantic. In the case of aslafta, however, the term would be unrenderable in its complete and expanded form, a form that is simply unknown in Kiddington dialect. The words, “I will have to fill the coal scuttle,” intoned as written, would undoubtedly have prompted the comment, “’Ark at ‘im,” since the inappropriateness of their sound would have protruded like an injured tactile member. Aslafta would never be written, of course, and, when read, the complete form would always be pronounced as written. The same practice would apply to the much used terms ‘inti’ and ‘intshi’, both related to the recently widespread southern form, ‘init’, a sound that Kiddingtonians would always pronounce as ‘intit’, complete with a pair of indentations capable of piercing softwood.

Now you can’t hide a Kiddington accent. It sticks out like I sore pouce, you might say. Equally, you can’t imitate it. There’s nothing worse than a method actor trying to be pure Yorkshire mining village and having the method but little of the practice. They might get the front of mouth delivery, but they never master the glottal stopped definite article, nor the explosive t. Try it out with a line like “Tom and Terry went to t’market” and you can tell an impostor in nanoseconds, except that the average Kiddingtonian would need the better part of a minute to say it.

There is a vocabulary as well. The wooden fence that surrounded my granddad’s allotment was made of palings, pronounced without the ring at the end, of course. Palin’s would only be written, however, to indicate something belonging to Mr or Mrs Palin. Taties, them tubers that formed the staple diet, were either old ‘uns or new ‘uns, the former being called peelers and the latter scratters. And scrat was what chickens did in the muck with their feet. Taties, by the way, rhymes with Katy’s and not, as north of the border, with fatties.

Words with -ight are also definitive. You can always tell a Kiddingtonian from his -ight. Sight, as you might expect, rhymes with kite - or might, except the latter is usually pronounced mun, more properly moan, which is a common activity in the village. Light and night, however, both rhyme with sheet, while right sounds like rate and fight, fate, which it usually indicated. A sentence such as, “There were a right fight last night - it were a rare sight”, takes you anywhere you want. “There were a rate fate last neet - it were a rare site” is what it sounds like in Kiddington, with all the t’s exploding like cream crackers.

I’ve already explained that a macker is a brick, but did you know that pikelet is crumpet? That’s crumpet that goes in the mouth, not the type that wiggles along the street pursued by pointing pikes. A scuffler, meanwhile, is a piece of bread, despite the fact that a playful scuffle was usually called fratching. Those who remember pounds, shillings and pence and thus had to learn twelve times tables, will also remember a tanner, worth sixpence and not to be confused with a tenner, which was a piece of brownish paper and was worth a fortune, being a ten bob note, currently fifty pence, and represented about a week’s wages.

Terms such as ‘daft as a brush’ are still used in common and polite conversation, though ‘thick as a brick’ might be more common. In current parlance, an extra word is usually infixed in both cases, the terms thus becoming ‘daft as a baccaceous brush’ or ‘thick as a bumicky brick’. And, by the way, Kiddingtonians also never use the word ‘those’, ‘them’ being the correct form, but never in writing.

The second person singular in verb conjugation is not something that most English communities have retained. It remains in common use throughout the mining areas, however. Thee, thou, thy, thine and tha’s are all preferred forms, with you only ever being used to address the middle classes, and then usually pronounced “yer”, but never written that way. Normally they all sound roughly the same, the simple ‘tha’. “How’s tha doin’?” or “Where’s tha bin?” are common forms, but the reader should bear in mind that the pronunciation is always important, with doin’ having a u sound in the middle, while ‘where’s’ rhymes with weirs, which, like rarefy, is a word that hardly anyone can spell. It also rhymes with beer, which is spelt quite differently, and also usually included in an answer to the question, “Where’s tha bin?”

But the definitive verbal placer is the familial sigh, the ‘ah’ of identity. Ted might be anybody, but ‘ah-Ted’ is Uncle Edward. We have a Ted in the van on the next plot in the La Manca Caravan Park, but no matter how friendly I might get with the bloke, he could never be ah-Ted. John, Joe, Sue or Sarah might be known, recognised, even acknowledged on the street. But ah-John and ah-Joe are family, as are ah-Sue and ah-Sarah, the latter sounding like a flashing moonlighter. Lass is another generic term to refer to a family member. But ah-lass is Kiddingtonian for wife, and it should not be confused with the word ‘alas’ that usually follows it.

Now what is so interesting about this cultural heritage of language is that it’s purely oral. Any attempt to write it down is doomed to failure. Please excuse my woeful and embarrassing efforts in this entry. Even Kiddingtonians themselves never do it and never have done. I can remember writing a composition about where I had been in my school holidays and presenting it to Mrs Cartwheel. It came back with ‘an harbour’ crossed out in my description of the port of Jest and the comment “You might say an ‘arbor, but in English we write a harbour!”, which of course was wrong. But this does illustrate how correct the average Kiddingtonian tries to become when venturing into print. “As tha bin darn t’pit toneet after ah-lass sore thee?” would be read as nothing but gobbledegook. Say it and it’s understood, but on paper it simply has to be, “Have you been down the pit tonight after my wife saw you?” and, given the content of the remark, it would probably precede a punch in the gob.

And what is also crucial is that even a Kiddingtonian reading the attempt to render the vernacular on paper would read it with standard pronunciation. Write “Ah’s tha doin’?” and a Kiddingtonian would read it as “How do you do?”

Now these musings do have a point. They are not merely my rambling nostalgia gone mad. It’s this inside knowledge of the specificity of Kiddington language that has raised doubts about Mick Watson’s dealings with Suzie in relation to The Castle. In reality, he seemed to be running the place down, since his main interest was Paradise. Fair enough, we said, but it’s a shame to see a Benidorm institution like The Castle going to rack and ruin. There’s so many Kiddingtonians that have fond memories of the place that it’s like seeing part of our culture destroyed. So, as you know, Suzie made her suggestion to resurrect it and Mick finally agreed to let her manage the business.

She’s been hard at work ever since then and, frankly, she’s turned the place right around. Takings are up. Audiences are up. There’s a buzz around the place again, just like the old days. They’ve recruited new staff and increased the hours of the ones who were already there. To say they are happy would be an understatement. In just a few months, she’s got the place on its feet again. We’ve done some decorating, done the place out, no less. All the broken fittings have been fixed. We’ve had no budget, but we’ve put in the graft ourselves alongside the help of the bar staff who have all done unpaid overtime, though it has to be said that Suzie has offered them a share of the increased profits as a motivation, a move that was recommended in the book ‘Ten Ways to Prosper in Business’ that we picked up second-hand in one of the English flea markets in Benidorm. Rule one helped: “Make more money,” is what it said and that’s what she’s been trying to do.

The crucial point here is the reference I just made to the difference between speaking and reading. We speak fluently in our accents. We read - especially aloud - stiltingly in RP, sometimes tinged with the sounds of dialect, but never with the vocabulary or the full-blown music of its sound. It’s like the difference between a canapé and jam spread thick on a slice of Warbuton’s. Some of the sounds are still there - no Kiddingtonian can ever suppress that t - but when read, the words take on a foreign feel, like imports bulging through the homogeneous layer of home-grown twang.

I only needed to listen once to be sure. Suzie had her suspicions and had explained them to me beforehand. I didn’t let on what I would use as my yardstick. I didn’t even hint at the idea of accent laced with vocabulary, or even the other way round. All I did was sit and listen. I listened as Suzie asked that noctivagant roup of a jabot, Mick Watson, whether she could pay off Joe Storey, the Michael Jackson Tribute before nine and the Bernard Manning look-alike after ten-thirty, on the grounds that they’d been found together inebriated under a palm tree on the beach with a young boy mutually attached, in favour of Strictly Come Prancing, the carbon copy duo of people doing what they can’t do. I heard everything. She had already raised the idea with him, and he had told her that he would have to go away and think about it. That’s what he always does, Suzie says. “I’ll have to go away and run projections. I can’t offer an opinion just like that. These are major decisions and take time.” Or words to that effect... “Look, Suzie”, he said, “if tha wants me to give thee an opinion rate now, toneet, then it’ll be nay, cos I ant ad time to do t’sums!” And with that he disbursed his pay for the staff and made himself scarce. That was the live act on Thursday.

Then, just as Suzie had predicted, a day and a half later she rang him to ask the same question again. Over the phone he replied, “Suzie, dear, I have had time to think things over and I can now answer your query. You may change the acts as per what we discussed. The change may be made forthwith, according to the agreement in your manager’s contract.” There was no t’, no thee, thy, thou or tha, no ah-Suzie, no pub, paling, pikelet, scratting or pismire. He was reading it. He has no spreadsheet, no profit and loss account, no SWOT analysis, no risk analysis software or project planning. Let’s say that his analysis had known no critical path! What he’s got, which he never mentions, is middleman status. He makes no decisions. He has no say. Someone else is running him. The reason why he can’t offer a decision is that he has to go and ask someone else’s permission. He does that by email and then he reads the answers back to Suzie verbatim. Mick Watson is just a pawn, or even a porn, given his line of business. He’s as straight as a safety pin is our Mick Watson. Someone else controls The Castle, Paradise and, no doubt, all the other aspects of whatever business that windage[15] Watson and his gorgeous goal of a sidekick have their digits inserted into. And that includes whatever it is that Phil Matthews is printing on behalf of whoever it is who comes to stay in Olga’s nuclear shelter. Of that I am now sure.

15 Possibly literal, easily deflected. I propose to footnote no more of these terms, believing that they are merely expletive substitutes and that any associated meaning is merely coincidental - ed