Geordie

This article is about the people and dialect of Tyneside. For other uses, see Geordie (disambiguation).

Geordie is a regional nickname for a person from Tyneside region of the north east of England, or the name of the English-language dialect spoken by its inhabitants. Depending on who is using it, the catchment area for the term "Geordie" can be as large as the whole of North east England, or as small as the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. "Geordieland" is a term usually referring to the entire region surrounding Tyneside including Northumberland and County Durham but excluding Wearside where locals are referred to as Mackems.

In most aspects Geordie speech is a direct continuation and development of the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon settlers of this region. Initially mercenaries employed by the ancient Brythons to fight the Pictish invaders after the end of Roman rule in Britannia in the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who thus arrived became, over time, ascendant politically and - through population transfer from tribal homelands in northern Europe - culturally over the native British. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that emerged during the Dark Ages spoke largely mutually-intelligible varieties of what we now call Old English, each varying somewhat in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. This Anglo-Saxon influence on Geordie can be seen today, to the extent that poems by the Anglo-Saxon scholar the Venerable Bede translates more successfully into Geordie than into modern day English. Thus, in northern England, dominated by the kingdom of Northumbria, was found a distinct "Northumbrian" Old English dialect.

In recent times "Geordie" has been used to refer to a supporter of Newcastle United football club, and the Newcastle Brown Ale schooner glassware used to serve beer in the United States.

Derivation of the term

A number of rival theories explain how the term came about, though all accept that it derives from a familiar diminutive form of the name George, which was once the most popular name for eldest sons in the north-east of England.

One explanation is that it was established during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. The Jacobites declared that the natives of Newcastle were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian kings, in particular of George II during the 1745 rebellion. This contrasted with rural Northumbria, which largely supported the Jacobite cause. If true, the term may have derived from the popular anti-Hanoverian song "Cam Ye O'er Frae France?", which calls the first Hanoverian king "Geordie Whelps", meaning "George the Guelph".

Another explanation for the name is that local miners in the north east of England used "Geordie" safety lamps, designed by George Stephenson in 1815, rather than the "Davy lamps" designed by Humphry Davy which were used in other mining communities.

Using the chronological order of two John Trotter Brockett books:

1. Brockett, John Trotter (1829). A Glossary Of North Country Words In Use With Their Etymology And Affinity To Other Languages And Occasional Notices Of local Customs And Popular Superstitions. E. Charnley. p. 131. GEORDIE, George—a very common name among the pitmen. "How ! Geordie man ! how is't";
2. Brockett, John T. (1846). A Glossary of North Country Words. p. 187. GEORDIE, George—a very common name among the pitmen. "How ! Geordie man ! how is't" The Pitmen have given the name of Geordie to Mr George Stephenson's lamp in contra-distinction of the Davy, or Sir Humphry Davy's Lamp.

Geordie was given to North East pit men; later Brockett acknowledges the pitmen christened their Stephenson lamp ‘Geordie’.

Wales also predates the Oxford English Dictionary; she observes that "Geordy" (or "Geordie") was a common name given to pit-men in ballads and songs of the region, noting that such usage turns up as early as 1793. It occurs in the titles of two songs by song-writer Joe Wilson (1841–1875): Geordy, Haud the Bairn and Keep your Feet Still, Geordie. Citing such examples as the song Geordy Black written by Rowland Harrison of Gateshead, she contends that, as a consequence of popular culture, the miner and the keelman had become icons of the region in the 19th century, and "Geordie" was a label that "affectionately and proudly reflected this," replacing the earlier ballad emblem, the figure of Bob Crankie.

Newcastle publisher Frank Graham's Geordie Dictionary states:

The origin of the word Geordie has been a matter of much discussion and controversy. All the explanations are fanciful and not a single piece of genuine evidence has ever been produced.

In Graham's many years of research, the earliest record he has found of the terms use was in 1823 by local comedian Billy Purvis. Purvis had set up a booth at the Newcastle Races on the Town Moor. In an angry tirade against a rival showman, who had hired a young pitman called Tom Johnson to dress as a clown, Billy cried out to the clown:

Ah man, wee but a feul wad hae sold off his furnitor and left his wife. Noo, yor a fair doon reet feul, not an artificial feul like Billy Purvis! Thous a real Geordie! gan man an hide thysel! gan an' get thy picks agyen. Thou may de for the city, but never for the west end o' wor toon. (Rough translation: Oh man, who but a fool would have sold off his furniture and left his wife? Now, you're a fair downright fool, not an artificial fool like Billy Purvis! You're a real Geordie! Go, man, and hide yourself! Go and get your picks [axes] again. You may do for the city, but never for the west end of our town!)

Graham is backed up historically by Hotten (1869).

Using Hotten (1869), Geordie has been documented for at least 180 to 240 years as meaning the whole of the North East of England. (As referenced in Camden Hotten, John (1869). The Slang Dictionary, Or Vulgar Words, Street Phrases And Fast Expressions of High and Low Society. John Camden Hotten. p. 142. "Geordie, general term in Northumberland and Durham for a pitman, or coal-miner. Origin not known; the term has been in use more than a century." {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help). The book was reprinted in 2004.

Bad-weather Geordy was name applied to cockle sellers:

As the season at which cockles are in greatest demand is generally the most stormy in the year - September to March - the sailors' wives at the seaport towns of Northumberland and Durham consider the cry of the cockle man as the harbinger of bad weather, and the sailor, when he hears the cry of 'cockles alive,' in a dark wintry night, concludes that a storm is at hand, and breathes a prayer, backwards, for the soul Of Bad-Weather-Geordy.

— S. Oliver, Rambles in Northumberland, 1835

According to Scott Dobson, "Geordieland" refers to Northumberland and Durham.

Geographical coverage

When referring to the people, as opposed to the dialect, dictionary definitions of a Geordie typically refer to "a native or inhabitant of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, or its environs", an area that encompasses North Tyneside, Newcastle, South Tyneside and Gateshead. However, just as a Cockney is often colloquially defined as someone "born within the sound of the Bow bells", a Geordie can be defined as someone born "within spitting distance of the Tyne". Another interpretation is the mining areas of the North East of England.

Although the dialects of North East England were often grouped together as Geordie, in modern times this is incorrect. This misconception is usually made by people from outside the north east.

People from Sunderland have been nicknamed Mackems in recent generations. However, the earliest known recorded use of the term found by the Oxford English Dictionary occurred as late as 1988.

Phonology

Vowels

English diaphone	Geordie phoneme	Example
/æ/	a~ɑ	back
/ɑː/	ɒː	father
/ɒ/	ɒ	top
/ɔː/	ɔː	thaw
/ə/	ə	attack
/ɨ/	ə	wasted
/ɪ/	ɪ, ɪ̈	hit
/iː/	iː	feet
/eɪ/	eː, ɪə	rain
/ɛ/	ɛ	dress
/ɜr/	øː, ʊː	first
/ər/	ə	master
/ʌ/	ʊ	strut
/ʊ/	ʊ	foot
/uː/	(ɪ)u	glue
/aɪ/	ɛɪ	shine
/aɪt/	(ə)iːt	night
/ɔɪ/	ɛɪ, ɛi	choice
/oʊ/	oː, ɵː, ʊə	goat
/oʊld/	aːld	cold
/aʊ/	əʊ	now
/ɑr/	ɒː	barn
/ɪər/	ɪa	fear
/ɛər/	ɛa, eː	chair
/ɔr/	ɔː	north
/ʊər/	ʊa	poor

Characteristics

Geordie consonants generally follow those of Received Pronunciation. Some phonological characteristics specific to Geordie are listed as follows:

• Geordie is non-rhotic, like most Anglo-English dialects. This means speakers do not pronounce /r/ unless it is followed by a vowel sound in that same phrase or prosodic unit. The rhotic sound (/r/) in Geordie is pronounced as [[alveolar approximant|[ɹ]]].
• Unusual for language, there is some differentiation in pronunciation in the Geordie dialect based upon the speaker's sex. For example, English sound /aʊ/, pronounced generically in Geordie as [əʊ], may also have other, more specific pronunciations depending upon whether one is male or female. Males alone often pronounce the sound /aʊ/ as [uː], for example, the word house (/haʊs/) pronounced as [huːs]. Females, on the other hand, will often pronounce this sound as [eʉ], thus: [heʉs].
• /ɪŋ/ appearing in an unstressed final syllable of a word (such as in reading) is pronounced as [ən] (thus, reading is [ˈɹiːdən]).
• /ər/ appearing at the end of a word (such as in sugar) is pronounced as [a] (thus, sugar is [ˈʃʊga]).
• Yod-coalescence in both stressed and unstressed syllables (so that dew becomes [dʒuː]).
• T-glottalization, in which /t/ is replaced by [ʔ] before a syllabic nasal (e.g. button as [ˈbʊʔən]), in absolute final position (get as [gɛʔ]), and whenever the /t/ is intervocalic so long as the latter vowel is not stressed (pity as [ˈpɪʔi]).
• /æ/ specifically in the words had, have, has and having is pronounced as [ɛ].
• /ɛ/ specifically in words with the spelling "ea" (such as bread and deaf) may be pronounced as [iː].
• /əʊ/ specifically at the ends of words, with the spelling "ow" (such as in throw and follow) is pronounced as [a] in monosyllabic words and [ə] in polysyllabic words (thus, window as [ˈwɪndə]).

Vocabulary

Geordie has a large amount of vocabulary not heard elsewhere in England. In a newspaper survey, the Geordie accent was found to be the "most attractive in England".

Words still in common use by Geordie dialect speakers today include:

• Aa/Aye/Ai, "Yes"
• aboot 'about'
• ahent 'behind'
• a'reet (/ˈɑːlriːt/) a variation on alright or Hello (Some times used as alreet mate); ‘igh’ is pronounced /iː/ (as in leet (light))
• awer 'over' as in "Hoy it awer, pet!" meaning "Throw it over, dear." (See below for hoy and pet).
• aall, all
• baccy, tobacco
• bait 'food'
• banter 'chat/gossip' (Other synonyms of 'banter' include: 'crack')
• bi 'pen'; shortened version of biro
• buk 'book', pronounced with /u/
• cannit 'cannot'
• canny 'pleasant' (the Scottish use of canny is often somewhat less flattering), or to mean 'quite'. Someone could therefore be 'canny canny' in the same way someone can be 'pretty pretty' in standard English.
• chinn'd 'hurt'
• chud/chuddy/chut/chutty 'chewing gum'
• D/dee 'do'
• dappa 'dapper', i.e. smartly dressed, used pejoratively
• deeks/deekie 'look at'
• dinnor, dinner
• divint 'don't'
• divvie 'stupid person'
• doon 'down' (e.g. "gan doon toon" - "gone down town")
• dunch 'crash' (e.g. "divint dunch us" - "don't crash into us")
• ee used like oh, often in shock "ee neva"
• forkytail 'earwig'
• frisk 'entertainment value' (i.e. 'Why did you do that?' 'For the frisk')
• gan/gannin 'gone/going' (e.g. "gan doon toon" - "going down town") OR ("ya gannin hyam?" - "are you going home?")
• geet "very", also
• gen as in gossip 'spill the gen', 'knaa the gen?' pronounced like the abbreviation of 'Jen' from Jennifer
• glaiky 'thoughtless, fool, clumsy'
• gob 'mouth' (e.g. "shut ya gob" - "shut your mouth")
• haad "hold" example: 'keep a haad' is 'keep a hold' and 'had yer gob' becomes 'keep quiet'. E.g. "ye cud hev keep a-hadden yor dog"
• hacky "dirty"
• hadaway "get away", an expression of doubt
• hinny a term of endearment - "Honey"
• hoy "to throw"
• hoose, house
• hyem/hyam "home"
• is or iz 'me'
• ket "sweets/food"
• knaa "to know/know"
• Lar/Thar instead of though
• Leg It 'run'
• lern, learn both "teach" and "learn", as in Scandinavian languages
• Lend often used for "borrow", as in Scandinavian languages: "can ah lend a bi" meaning "Can I borrow a pen?".
• lowy 'money'
• "Ma/Mar/Mam", a variation of Mother
• mesel, myself
• muggy a marble (the childs toy, not the rock)
• naa/nar/net 'no'
• nappa 'head' (often used to describe one's intoxication - e.g. "I was off me nappa, the other night")
• nowt 'nothing' (nought); ‘(a/o)ugh’ is pronounced /aw/: thowt (thought)
• neb 'nose' (nebby 'nosy')
• neet 'night'
• nettie 'toilet'
• neewhere 'Nowhere'
• nowt "nothing"
• owt 'Anything'
• penca a marble (the child's toy, not the rock)
• pit "bed"
• polit "police" (also more recently pronounced "poliss")
• radge 'Violent or crazy (not always in a negative sense of the word 'crazy') ("That was a radge fight, last neet")
• tab "cigarette"
• stottie cake stottie, a large, flat, unsweetened soft bread loaf/roll
• scran "food"
• shurrup "shut up"
• sumink/summat "something"
• toby "stroll"
• toon "town"; the phrase "the toon" specifically refers to Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
• us or usually uz "me" (often used to imply oneself - e.g. "are yous looking at us")
• wey "well"
• whey aye "yes"
• wint "won't" (also 'wivvint')
• wo, wa, woh, wat or wot "what"
• wor "our", used mainly in the context of wor kid, meaning 'friend', one's sibling or literally 'our kid'. Used primarily to denote a family member.
• wuh "us" or can also be used like 'wor', as in "Where's wuh scran at"
• ye or yuh "you"
• yem "home" e.g. "Howay Pet, let's gan yem"
• yous "you lot/all of you" (used as a plural of 'you' implying more than one person)

howay or haway is broadly comparable to the invocation "Come on!" or the French "Allez-y!" ("Go on!"). Examples of common use include Howay man! or Haway man!, meaning "come on" or "hurry up", Howay the lads! or Haway the lads! as a term of encouragement for a sports team for example (the players' tunnel at St James' Park has this phrase just above the entrance to the pitch), or Ho'way!? (with stress on the second syllable) expressing incredulity or disbelief. The 'a' and 'o' in howay/haway convey different strands of aggression, with the ‘a’ being the aggressive. The literal opposite of this word is "haddaway" (go away), which is not as popular as "howay", but has found frequent use in the phrase "Haddaway an' shite" (Tom Hadaway, Figure 5.2 Haddaway an' shite; ’Cursing like sleet blackening the buds, raging at the monk of Jarrow scribbling his morality and judgement into a book.’).

Divvie or divvy seems to come from the Co-op dividend, or from the two Davy lamps (the more dangerous explosive Scotch Davy used in 1850, commission disapproved of its use in 1886 (inventor not known, nicknamed Scotch Davy probably given by miners after the Davy lamp was made perhaps by north east miners who used the Stephenson Lamp), and the later better designed Davy designed by Humphry Davy also called the Divvy.) As in a north east miner saying ‘Marra, ye keep way from me if ye usin a divvy.' It seems the word divvie then translated to daft lad/lass. Perhaps coming from the fact one would be seen as foolish going down a mine with a Scotch Divvy when there are safer lamps available, like the Geordie, or the Davy.

The Geordie word netty, meaning a toilet and place of need and necessity for relief or bathroom, has an uncertain origin, though some have theorised that it may come from slang used by Roman soldiers on Hadrian's Wall, which may have later become gabinetti in the Romanic Italian language (such as in the Westoe Netty, the subject of a famous painting from Bob Olley). However gabbinetto is the Modern Italian diminutive of gabbia, which actually derives from the Latin cavea ("hollow", "cavity", "enclosure"), the root of the loanwords that became the Modern English cave,[1] cage,[2] and gaol.[3] Thus, another explanation would be that it comes from a Modern Romanic Italian form of the word gabinetti, though only a relatively small number of Italians have migrated to the North of England, mostly during the 19th century.

Some etymologists connect the word netty to the Modern English word needy. John Trotter Brockett, writing in 1829 in his A glossary of north country words..., claims that the etymon of netty (and its related form neddy) is the Modern English needy[4] and need.[5]

Bill Griffiths, in A Dictionary of North East Dialect, points to the earlier form, the Old English níd; he writes: "MS locates a possible early ex. "Robert Hovyngham sall make... at the other end of his house a knyttyng" York 1419, in which case the root could be OE níd 'necessary'". Another related word, nessy is thought (by Griffiths) to derive from the Modern English "necessary".

A poem called "Yam" narrated by author Douglas Kew, demonstrates the usage of a lot of Geordie words.

In addition to many different words, Geordie also has phonetics different from Standard English.

In the media

In recent times, the Geordie dialect has featured prominently in the British media due to its alien dialect to much of the population but also its friendly appeal. Note however that, although the dialect appears, the dialect is toned down for comprehension of the general (non-Northumbrian) public. Television presenters such as Ant and Dec are now happy to use their natural accents on air. Marcus Bentley, the commentator on the UK edition of Big Brother, is often perceived by southerners to have a Geordie dialect. However, he grew up in Stockton on Tees. Brendan Foster and Sid Waddell have both worked as television sports commentators. Cheryl Cole, a member of Girls Aloud and judge on The X Factor, has a Geordie accent, she says that she's "proud to be Geordie!" as does Joe McElderry the winner of X Factor 2009. In May 2011 Cheryl Cole was let go from the American version of the X Factor because its "producers feared the American audience would not understand her Geordie accent." The song 'Why Aye Man' is also a popular Geordie song by Mark Knopfler.

The dialect was also popularized by the comic magazine Viz, where the dialect is often conveyed phonetically by unusual spellings within the comic strips. Viz magazine was founded on Tyneside by two locals, Chris Donald and his brother Simon.

The Steve Coogan-helmed BBC comedy I'm Alan Partridge featured a Geordie named Michael (Simon Greenall) as the primary supporting character and de facto best friend of the eponymous hero, despite Partridge's referring to Michael at one point as 'just the Work Geordie'.

The movie Goal!, which stars Kuno Becker and Alessandro Nivola, prominently exposes the Newcastle football club, as well as exposing the Geordies and their dialect.

Mike Neville and George House (aka Jarge Hoose), presenters of the BBC local news programme Look North, in the 1960s and 1970s, not only incorporated Geordie into the show, albeit usually in comedy pieces pointing up the gulf between ordinary Geordies and officials speaking Standard English, but were responsible for a series of recordings, beginning with Larn Yersel' Geordie which attempted, not always seriously, to bring the Geordie dialect to the rest of England.

The creator of Larn Yersel' Geordie was local humorist Scott Dobson, who wrote several booklets on the theme in the early 1970s, including History O' the Geordies, Advanced Geordie Palaver, The Geordie Joke Book (with Dick Irwin) and The Little Broon Book (Bringing out The New Little Broon Book in 1990).

The Jocks and the Geordies was a Dandy comic strip running from 1975 to the early 1990s.

In the lyrics of the song "Sailing to Philadelphia" by Mark Knopfler, Jeremiah Dixon describes himself as a "Geordie boy. Jeremiah Dixon, surveyor of the Mason-Dixon line". Knopfler also includes a "Geordie" reference in the song "5:15 AM," from the album Shangri-La: "the bandit man / came up the great north road / up to geordieland / to mine the motherload." In an earlier live album and video, Alchemy: Dire Straits Live, the band are seen in a pub - on the wall hangs a scoreboard for darts featuring "Geordies" vs. "All Others."

Dorfy, real name Dorothy Samuelson-Sandvid, was a noted Geordie dialect writer who once wrote for the South Shields Gazette.

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was a popular fictional British comedy-drama series about a group of seven British migrant construction workers: Wayne, Dennis, Oz, Bomber, Barry, Neville and Moxey, who, in Series 1, are living and working on a German building site. Three of the seven were Geordies. Dennis Patterson (played by Tim Healy) comes from Birtley Co. Durham; Leonard "Oz" Osborne (played by Jimmy Nail) comes from Gateshead; and Neville Hope (played by Kevin Whately) comes from North Shields.

The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook with Geordie Simon King and Dave Myers. The duo's lifestyle TV show is a mixture of cookery and travelogue.

In 1974, Alan Price’s Jarrow song reached number one in the old RNI International Service, and number 4 in the UK charts, which brought to the attention once again of the Jarrow March.

The character Detective Inspector Robert "Robbie" Lewis (formerly Detective Sergeant) in the long-running ITV series Inspector Morse is a self-described Geordie-- although not a "professional" one. His speech variety serves as a foil to Morse's pedantry and RP.

On the arts program "Aria and Pasta," the Northumbrian opera singer Sir Thomas Allen (who retains some Geordie vowels in his speech) described the dish he prepared as "Geordie Pasta."

The character "Geordie Georgie", as portrayed by Catherine Tate in her eponymous TV show, is a Geordie, complete with a thick affected accent, and is portrayed regularly taking part in (mostly ridiculously ambitious) sponsored events for a North East based charity - the charity in question usually has a website with an outrageous domain name, for instance, the site for the charity she supports for battered husbands is "www.chinnedbythemissus.co.uk". The sketches usually conclude with her remonstrating her co-worker Martin, sometimes by violent means (playing on the Geordie stereotype for violent behaviour), for his apparent non-support of her charitable crusades.

External links

• Newcastle English (Geordie)
• Sounds Familiar?– Listen to examples of Geordie and other regional accents and dialects of the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
• 'Hover & Hear' Geordie pronunciations, and compare side by side with other accents from the UK and around the World.