English dialect

I had a meeting with a Canadian chap today who is fed up of everyone thinking he is Irish.

www.quora.com/Why-do-some-Canadian-accents-sound-similar-to-Irish-accents

Neil

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 18/04/2018 20:55:40

Mike, that lade isn't that far off a mill leat.
DaveD

The Cadoxton reens mentioned earlier are related to 'rhine'

"from Middle High German Rin, ultimately from Gaulish Renos, literally "that which flows," from PIE root *reie- "to move, flow, run" (cf. Sanskrit rinati "causes to flow," ritih "stream, course;" Latin rivus "stream;" Old Church Slavonic reka "river;" Middle Irish rian "river, way;" Gothic rinnan "run, flow," rinno "brook;" Middle Low German ride "brook;" Old English riþ "stream;" Old English rinnan, Old Norse rinna "to run," Dutch ril "running stream". The spelling with -h- (cf. Latin Rhenus ; French Rhin) is from influence of the Greek form of the name, Rhenos. "

Neil Wyatt - Interesting discourse on the origin of "reens". You may be correct, but there is a glaring "contradiction" that jumps out at me. All of the origins you site refer to "that which flows", in one form or another, and that "flowing" is a natural action of Nature. The "reens" I mentioned in the Somerset and Caldicot Levels, all contain NON RUNNING water, and act as drainage ditches to the agricultural land. The only time that water flowed out of them was when sluice gates are opened to release water into the Bristol Channel, which is seldom.

To be a drainage ditch there has to be some movement, even if it's sluggish, and the water can move fast when there's a lot of rain.

An awful lot of UK drainage was made by Dutch engineers, even in the middle ages, it may be they brought the word over.

I should have known this: my favourite drain for fishing in Lincolnshire was the Vernatts, named after the Dutch engineer who built it. And the division of Lincolnshire in which I lived was Holland County. So thanks for the reminder, Neil.

More to the ditches in these schemes than just drainage.

The area was once a salt-marsh refreshed with new sea-water every high-tide. Not good for crops!

To recover the land, stage one is to build a dyke fitted with sluices to keep the sea out.

Stage 2 is to open and close the sluices against the tide. Closed as the tide rises and opened to drain brackish water off the land at low tide. The area gradually loses salt and becomes rich agricultural land. At that point the sluices are managed to control wetness rather than to remove salt. In modern times the basic process is much expedited with pumps, originally windmills, then steam, now electric and largely automatic. So water in the Somerset Levels is moving, but perhaps not very much

It all looks rather benign and safe but Mother Nature occasionally bites back. The whole area is vulnerable to flooding; heavy rain, a spring-tide, and a storm-surge might combine and overcome the defences. Not a good idea to build houses there!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 19/04/2018 10:40:11

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Channel_floods,_1607

Oddly, I've just finished a piece of work with one of the chaps who wrote a paper cited in the article which advances storm surge over tsunami.

Neil

Quite fun to find 'tsunami' in a thread about English dialect! Especially as reading Neil's Bristol Channel Flood link took me to 'Meteotsunami', a valid English word with Greek and Japanese roots.

My Scots father-in-law was much into Doric, and wasn't amused when I said Doric was so named by the English from the Greek word for 'primitive'. He replied by saying I have smelly oxters...

Dave

Edit: can't spell

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 19/04/2018 11:37:00

Confusion reigns in Oxford as your "ole boy" can be your father your son or your brother, you have to pay attention or you lose the plot completely.

Mike

Known as a 'goit' in my part of Yorshire

Eirther build on stilts, or pontoons, both methods used elsewhere in the world I believe

For a variation on streams of different sorts, how about the religious song reference to "Siloam's shady rill"?

And for something slightly different; in Herefordshire, a packed lunch was "bait", and those who felt the cold were "naish"

And when we moved from Sussex to Cambridgeshire, we had to learn to distinguish between "twittens" and "snickets"

Who thought that Britain and USA were two nations divided by a common language?

Howard

Where I come from we call them 'lanes'.

Neil

"gennels" for me.

Can't remember exactly where in England we were, it may have been in the Lake District, but my sister went into a butcher's shop and asked for a piece of Hogget, only to be told that "we don't sell pig meat here"(a hogget is a year old sheep, and better than lamb, more meat, more flavor ). A couple of confused Kiwis gave the butcher a little lesson in sheep meat.

Ian S C

Hi John Gibbs. It's a "close" in Scotland, although a friend of mine in County Durham lives in a "wynd". But back home in Lincolnshire there was a passage called Skinner's Jitty. I've also known the term "vennel" used in the North of England and south-western Scotland.

"It has been said that the dialects from Upper Gornal and Lower Gornal are different, and the places are only about a mile apart"

Quite true Gordon used to live in Sedgley at one time, knocked around surrounding areas for over 20 yrs even worked and schooled there for decades.
I was a Brummie originally before moving to Telford, Walsall then Sedgley, Gornal was another language 1 mile away, just imagine them stringing a sentence together. "We'll be hangin the pig on the wall to watch the band go by"

Though theres many crossovers nicked by Brummies and the wrongly established new Black Country towns such as Wolverhampton Bilston was only in it along with Wednesfield, West Bromwich (Sandwell) dubious.

Annoying come off J2 M54 and see a sign Welcome to the Black Country, never in it thats 8 1/2 mile away at the start of it.

http://www.lowergornal.co.uk/d_dictionary.htm

Back on topic skunt was widely used and still is, my mate from Bloxwich always uses it. Brummie would say on the P..s

One definition of the Black Country is where the 30 foot coal seam comes to the surface, apparently the Black Country society includes everywhere where it was mined.

One thing I do know, is that raising the subject in a room full of Black Country folks is a great time-waster...

I've just come back from a few days in Ironbridge - nobody said "scunt" once. Mind you, that's not in the Black Country. I'll have to continue my research at the museum in Dudley.

Rod