Further reading

The links below point to organisations, resources and projects connected with dialect, linguistics and Yorkshire's cultural heritage. They offer further reading, research opportunities and ways to explore the wider study of language and regional identity.

Yorkshire Dialect Words of Old Norse Origin

The influence of Viking language on the regional speech varieties of northern and eastern England is well documented. It is not surprising, therefore, that numerous 'Viking' lexical items are to be found in the traditional dialects of places such as Yorkshire and this page presents many of these.

Yorkshire Dialect Website

Website devoted to the description of traditional Yorkshire dialect

Yorkshire Dialect.org

The vagaries of the Yorkshire dialect are many and various, but there exists a band of enthusiasts (Colloquially known as Tykes) who are determined to see it continue by the creation of original Yorkshire Dialect Verse

Joseph Wright -The English Dialect Dictionary (in 6 parts)

Produced in 28 parts intended for binding into the six volumes with publication dates of 1898, 1900, 1902, 1903, 1904 and 1905.   Vol. 6 includes an invaluable list of writings in dialect arranged by counties. Due to the scale of the work, 70,000 entries, and the period in which the information was gathered, it is regardedas a standard work in the historical study of dialect.

It is available on line via these links:

Volume 1 - A-C - English Dialect Dictionary
Volume 2 - D-G - English Dialect Dictionary
Volume 3 - H-L- English Dialect Dictionary
Volume 4 - M-Q - English Dialect Dictionary
Volume 5 - R-S- English Dialect Dictionary
Volume 6 - T-Z - English Dialect Dictionary

 

Sound Recordings and Research

 

Whose Voices? - Department of Linguistics and Phonetics & School of English

Language ideological debates on the interactive website of the BBC Voices project. A forty-month research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Leeds University Faculty of Arts.

Voices - BBC

Journey with BBC radio journalists around the country and listen to hundreds of conversations.

The Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture

Encompassing the Survey of English Dialects, and the Archives of the Institute of Dialect and Folk Life Studies, School of English; held by Leeds University Library

British Library - Voices of the UK

A single page site describing a three-year project that will culminate in an online resource allowing users to search the BBC Voices Recordings (&opy BBC, 2005) by individual linguistic feature (e.g. Where do speakers say 'I were'? Where do speakers use definite article reduction? etc.). There is a fortnightly project blog and at the end of the project it is hoped it will be the start of an online UK dialect database.

British Library - Sounds Familiar?

The British Library's interactive educational resource with access to a smaller set of recordings from the SED and MMB and interpreted for a non-specialist audience. In addition there are hundreds of audio-clips that illustrate individual words, grammatical constructions or pronunciations that characterise contemporary dialects of the UK.

British Library - Archival Sound Recordings

The British Library's online dialect archive currently features 31 Survey of English Dialects recordings from Yorkshire and 57 recordings from Yorkshire sourced from the Millennium Memory Bank © BBC, 1999.

Links to other dialect societies

 

Northumbrian Language Society

The Northumbrian Language Society has existed since 1983 to promote, preserve, research, publish and enjoy those rich dialects from Northumberland to NW Durham (including Tyneside), descendants of the speech of the Angles, which have survived particularly in the Northumbrian 'burr' area.

Lower Tees Dialect Group

Glossary of the dialect of the Lower Tees area, and how the dialect relates to the North Yorkshire dialects to the south, Durham dialects to the north and Teesdale dialect to the west.

The Lancashire Society

Website promoting Lancashire dialect, culture and heritage

Lakeland Dialect Society

Website promoting the Lakeland dialect

Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group

The Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group arose out of local history and language publications in East Durham in the 1990s. A newsletter circle was established in 2000, and local enthusiasts joined Bill Griffiths in arranging the first major project, a dialect questionnaire, in mid 2001, leading on to the publication of 'A Dictionary of North-East Dialect' in 2004.

English Fellowship and Cultural Society

The English Fellowship and Cultural Society is based in the West of England and strongly support English History and Culture as far back as Anglo-Saxon times and also the Old English language and the dialects which link to the shires of England.