dialect

I love dialect, folklore and all things local. According to this article a number of people I work closely with could be described as “gibble fists” wonderful stuff….

Are you terrified by “harvest men” or “long-legged tailors”? Do you have “ferntickles” or “brunny-spots” on your face? If someone called you “gibble-fisted” would you be affronted or amused?

The words for daddy long-legs, freckles and left-handed are all examples of English regional dialect discovered in the 1950s by a team of fieldworkers in what was the most comprehensive survey of its kind ever undertaken.

On Saturday, the University of Leeds announced plans to update the survey by recruiting volunteers to be modern-day dialect researchers, thanks to more than £500,000 of national lottery funding.

The original surveyors set out from Leeds 70 years ago, targeting “old men with good teeth” for two reasons: they were a more likely to be a bridge to the past, and they could be understood.

Fiona Douglas from Leeds School of English, who is leading the project, said the net would be cast wider this time round. “I’m not just going out looking for old men with good teeth who haven’t moved anywhere,” she said. “We will speak to people whose families haven’t stayed in one area for generations, as well as those who can trace their roots back to the same place over hundreds of years. We want to include everyone’s language.”

The lottery money will also allow the digitisation of notebooks, photographs, word maps and audio recordings from the original fieldwork. The extensive Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture (LAVC) will be opened to the public.

Researchers are keen also to speak to descendants of people who took part in the original surveys.