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Talking Tyke: 10 Yorkshire dialect words
Every so often I’ll say something and everyone around me will either laugh or look baffled. Having grown up deep in Yorkshire, my language is smattered with dialect words. Many of them I had never realised weren’t ‘real’ English. I thought everyone said them. Even now I’ll read somewhere that something is a Yorkshire, or ‘Tyke’, word, and I had no idea – to me it was just the name for something.
To celebrate Yorkshire Day, here are ten of my favourite Yorkshire dialect words:
1. Mash
‘To brew’, usually tea. It can either be used as ‘the tea’s mashing’, i.e. it’s brewing, or ‘mash some tea’, i.e. make some tea.
2. Clap cold
Gone completely cold, usually of food or drink. May happen if you leave your tea to mash for too long.
3. ‘It's a bit parky’
‘It's a little chilly’.
4. ‘I'm lathered’
‘I’m hot’ – this doesn’t happen very often in Yorkshire!
5. Ginnel
An alleyway or passage, sometimes with a roof, often between houses.
6. Buffet
A stool. (The ‘t’ is pronounced)
7. ‘Frame yourself’
‘Hurry up’ or ‘get on with it’. If you're extremely Yorkshire, you might say ‘frame thisen’ – ‘thisen’ being derived from ‘thyself’.
8. Morngy
Sulky or whingeing, usually of a child.
9. Mardy
Moody.
10. Stalled
To be fed up or running out of patience, e.g.: ‘I’m getting stalled’.
By Lauren Newby, Managing Editor, General History and Gift at The History Press.
