<\/p>\n
Yo\u2019am awlright aer kid?<\/p>\n
Allo me duck.<\/p>\n
Aw, cariad bach.<\/p>\n
I love words. Well, you\u2019d hope I would seeing as I write for a living. I love the sound and the feel of them in your mouth when you say them. Tinsel sounds exactly what it\u2019s like \u2013 hard and metallic and shimmery. Flange gives your tongue and bottom lip a real workout (try it!) and daffodil is simply happy and yellow.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve lived in lots of different parts of the UK. Wherever I am, I love to earwig. I love hearing the different phrases, the cadences of speech, the accent and dialect words.<\/p>\n
I was born and grew up on the edge of the Black Country, a deeply industrial part of the midlands. My grandparents had strong local accents and used dialect words. Sadly, I\u2019ve forgotten most of them but distinctly remember my maternal grandmother using \u2018wheej\u2019 as a contraction for \u2018which one?\u2019<\/p>\n
(By the way, I\u2019m using phonetic spellings, as I\u2019m not sure there is a written standard spelling. I\u2019m happy to be corrected though.)<\/p>\n
Dad commented rudely, when Mum sang along to Sing Something Simple<\/em> on Radio Two that it was like \u2018a gleed under the door.\u2019 A gleed being a draught! Black Country folk are cautious with their praise. If anything is good, it\u2019s deemed \u2018awlright.\u2019 If \u2018bostin\u2019 is used, then something is really fantastic! Dad always maintained the dialect had its origins in Anglo Saxon. \u2018Babby\u2019 or baby, has its roots in the Anglo Saxon word \u2018babben\u2019 and the word \u2018wench\u2019 meaning a girl, comes from \u2018wencel\u2019 meaning child, so maybe there\u2019s something in his theory.<\/p>\n I went to university in south Wales and was introduced to the wonderful Welsh language \u2013 sheer poetry. Even now, hearing someone speak it melts me. Harri Morgan, the Welsh TV presenter in the first Sequins book, is a Welsh speaker. He proved very popular with readers. If the endearment \u2018cariad bach\u2019 or \u2018dear love\u2019 is whispered in your ear, it\u2019s very seductive! I must write another Welsh hero …<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Less seductive was the rain. In my first term, several students left, as they couldn\u2019t cope with the endless downpours. On my way from halls to town, I frequently passed an old lady leaning on her gate. She used to smile and nod at the heavens, uttering, \u2018there\u2019s weather for you.\u2019 As indeed there was. I grew up with weather related sayings such as, \u2018there\u2019s enough blue to make a sailor a pair of trousers\u2019 and \u2018it\u2019s a bit black over Bill\u2019s mothers.\u2019 Quite who Bill was, the location of his mother\u2019s house and why the weather was always so bad over it remains a mystery.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I lived in London for ten years and became accustomed to being hailed with a cheery, \u2018alright darlin\u2019?\u2019 I married a man from the Potteries and got used to his relatives greeting me with \u2018allo me duck,\u2019 (the H doesn\u2019t seem to exist in the Stoke on Trent alphabet). And here, in Herefordshire, you\u2019re always \u2018my lovely.\u2019 Very handy if you\u2019ve forgotten a name! If you\u2019re not from the county, you\u2019re \u2018from off.\u2019 When writing Stan’s speech in While I Was Waiting<\/em>, I put in a smattering of ‘yersen.’\u00a0As well as being my favourite character in the book, he’s strongly Herefordian and I wanted to demonstrate that.<\/p>\n Back to the Black Country and you might be met with an \u2018awlright me luvva.\u2019 Bonk doesn\u2019t mean what you think but is a steep hill and \u2018tiswas\u2019 isn\u2019t a Saturday morning TV show from the 70s\u00a0but getting confused, as in \u2018getting in a right old tiswas.\u2019 I frequently get in a tiswas when Mum refers to gooseberries as \u2018goozgogs.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Researching Devon dialect words for the work in progress, I\u2019ve become entranced by \u2018popples\u2019 for pebbles, the insult \u2018gurt mumpaid\u2019 and \u2018shamfered up\u2019 meaning drunk!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m sure you have your own favourite words and phrases from childhood, or from your adopted home. If so, I\u2019d love to hear them.<\/p>\n But, for now, it\u2019s \u2018nos da\u2019 or a \u2018tarra a bit\u2019 from me.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n Georgia x<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yo\u2019am awlright aer kid? Allo me duck. Aw, cariad bach. I love words. Well, you\u2019d hope I would seeing as I write for a living. I love the sound and the feel of them in your mouth when you say them. Tinsel sounds exactly what it\u2019s like \u2013 hard and metallic and shimmery. Flange […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[419,417,358,146,191,420,421,418,241],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anglo-saxon","tag-black-country-dialect","tag-herefordshire","tag-say-it-with-sequins","tag-say-it-with-sequins-the-rumba","tag-stoke-on-trent","tag-tiswas","tag-welsh-language","tag-while-i-was-waiting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}