Researchers claim J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits should speak in a Yorkshire dialect.

In movie versions of the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien, the hobbits speak in a wide range of English accents, with an emphasis on rural West Country.

But a researcher at the University of Huddersfield reckons they should all talk like Tykes.

In 1928, Walter Haigh, head of English and history at Huddersfield Technical College, published a guide to the dialect of the Huddersfield district and his friend Tolkien, who lectured in Leeds at the start of his career, wrote the foreword to the book.

David Smith, participation and engagement officer at the Heritage Quay archives centre at the University of Huddersfield, recently delved into the archive’s own copy of the now rare ‘A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District’.

David Smith, participation and engagement officer at the Heritage Quay archives centre at the University of Huddersfield.

David said: “In his introduction to Haigh’s book he says that one of the things he likes about the dialect of Huddersfield and district is that quite rare Norse words have survived. So I think he saw something in the accent here which chimed in with his interests.”

The fantasy author used many of the guide’s words, such as ‘baggin’, in the speech and the names of his hobbits.

“I think they should have used Sean Bean to provide all the Hobbit voices,” David added.

The links between the Tolkien and Haigh have been probed by Tolkien scholars previously.

An article by the American Tolkien expert Janet Brennan Croft has examined the influence of Haigh and the dialect of Huddersfield.

She identified a number of words in the glossary that figure in the speech of the hobbits of Middle Earth, writing that: “Some appear as elements in place-names like Bree (breę, bru, the brow of a hill), Staddle (stæddl, staddle, a timber stand or base for a stack), or the element Brock (brok, a badger) in Brockenborings. Others are used in family names like Baggins (bæggin, a meal, particularly a brown-bag lunch).

“However, several are used in exactly the same way as in the Huddersfield dialect: gaffer, a corruption of grandfather, for an old man; vittles for food, nowt for nothing, nosey, of one who pries into things, or nuncle for uncle.”