Enough to gloppen a lot of claart-eeads

Jan 11 2008 by Denis Kilcommons, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IT all started with gizzened, swallacking and spetch, three Yorkshire dialect words that I had never heard before. But then, Yorkshire is a county so big and so packed with character that every village and district has its own variations.

Pat Whitham of Shepley has added to the delightful confusion by sending me a copy of the dialect dictionary Chelp And Chunter by Ian McMillan (Collins, £5.99). Ian is a poet, humorist and broadcaster whose amusing book has the stated aim of helping folk ‘talk Tyke’.

The trouble is, as he concedes, that Tyke is talked differently all over the county.

However, there is a grounding of understanding no matter where you are in God’s own, and the benefit of a wonderful richness of language.

Gizzened, swallacking and spetch are not included in Ian’s book. Perhaps they will be in a later edition.

But he has discovered some beauties of his own.

Such as bartled, meaning to be smothered in something nasty. Brocken means to retch or vomit, as in “That lard buttie made me brocken”, claart-eead is an unintelligent person, gloppened is astounded and lenerky (a Grange Moor expression) means soft or floppy.

Ian also lists chip oil and coil oil, which brought memories flooding back.

When I was a child, we lived with my grandma in an over-crowded terraced house in Wakefield city centre. A gas light in the living room and candles every where else. We had a coil oil (where the coal was kept) and a chip oil (fish and chip shop) just around the corner.

A rather posh visitor called one day and a female cousin, trying to impress, put on her best voice to say, “I’m just going to the chip hole. Can I bring you anything?”

Which goes to prove that being posh with dialect doesn’t work.

The visitor might have been excused for being flummoxed by the offer and yes, flummoxed (meaning confused), is listed.

“One of the greatest words in any language, I think,” says Ian.

And I’m inclined to agree with him.

Playing the name game on the web

I HAD to laugh when I read that three Tory European MPs had a picture of Birmingham, Alabama, on their website instead of Birmingham, the city in the Midlands that they represent.

They blamed the web page designer for getting confused and opting for nice pictures of skyscrapers rather than the Bull Ring or St Andrew’s football ground.

It got me wondering whether anyone could make a similar mistake over Huddersfield, except that when I checked on the internet, we are unique.

There is not another place in the world called Huddersfield.

The town is, however, used for the name of roads in what might be termed former colonies: two in Canada, one in Australia and no less than 10 in America. I checked them out using the rather wonderful Google maps and satellite pictures on the internet.

Huddersfield Court in San Jose, California, looks like a delightful place. But why Huddersfield?

It got stranger when I checked out Huddersfield Drive in Piedmont, South Carolina. It was connected to Spalding Court and Dewsbury Lane.

Huddersfield Drive in Harrisburg, North Carolina, was surrounded by roads with other English pace names like Oldham, and Tottenham.

Huddersfield Road in Macon, Georgia, had Wakefield Way running off it. Huddersfield Drive in Sumter, South Carolina, ran off Manchester Road.

In Smyrna, Tennessee, Huddersfield Drive was surrounded by other roads named after English towns such as Frinton, Bolton and Harrow. In Simpsonville, South Carolina, Huddersfield Drive had become much more part of its new surroundings, being bordered by Hickory Twig Way and Red Fern Trail.

Bristow, Virginia, has a whole load of names from “the old country”.

Huddersfield Way nestles in a housing complex that has roads named after Grimsby, Ellesmere, Penzance, Hackney and more.

Huddersfield Drive in Richmond, Virginia, stands alone. Huddersfield Court looks like a new development in Owings Mills, Baltimore, along with Norwich Court.

It would be interesting to discover the connection between these former outposts of empire – the southern states of Carolina and Virginia are particularly prominent.

One can speculate that perhaps pioneers from Huddersfield settled there many years ago and their ancestors have remembered their roots by the naming of roads.

Can anyone suggest anything more specific?

Study puts money in its place

BRITAIN is, apparently, the third most expensive country in the world in which to live.

A study looked at how long a British salary would last abroad if people maintained the standard of living they enjoyed in this country.

It found it would run out after 11 months and one week in Norway, and after 11 months and two weeks in France.

But anywhere else in the world would be a bonus.

A year’s pay would last 14 months in Australia and Ireland, 15 months in America and Spain and for more than two years in places like Peru, Egypt, Costa Rica and Argentina, nearly three years in India and an incredible four years in Iran.

Mind you, who would want to move to Iran?