Originating in the Northumbrian variant of the Anglo-Saxon language (spoken between 650 AD and 1100), the roots of Lancashire’s dialect can be traced to the middle of the thirteenth century. This period is significant in that the county of Lancashire was formerly established with the King granting the region to Roger de Lancaster.
Rivers, especially those difficult to cross, were often natural boundaries, not just marking territorial claims but often incidentally delineating differences in language. The convergence of the second variant, Mercian, and Northumbrian, occurred somewhere around the River Ribble; the river area acting as a disputed land, where the southern Mercian tribes and northern Northumbrian tribes fought for influence. Theodore of Tarsus, the Seventh Archbishop of Canterbury, formalised the division in the latter half of the seventh century by making the Ribble the boundary between the sees of York and Lichfield.
Written records of Lancashire dialect can be found in the latter half of the fourteenth century, with ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, a folk romance tale, ‘Patience and Purity’, a biblically themed story, and ‘Pearl’, a work based on a dream. The oldest dialect ballad, written about 1550, is ‘Warrikin (Warrington) Fair’, and the first attempt at a dictionary is the partially completed ‘Vocabularium Saxonicum’ (Dean Lawrence Nowell). Later works include the 1634 work by Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood, ‘The Late Lancashire Witches’, and Tim Bobbin’s (John Collier’s) 1746 dialogue, ‘Tummus and Meary’. The nineteenth century saw a relative explosion in creative dialect output with Edwin Waugh (‘Ned Waff’), William Billington, Joseph Ramsbottom, Samuel Laycock, Sam Fitton and Ben Brierley all adding to a growing library of material. In the first half of the twentieth century Ammon Wrigley and Tommy Thompson in particular popularised the dialect theme.
Lancashire’s dialect is a melting pot of source influence. There are words of Scandinavian origin such as ‘blather’ (silly talk) and ‘gawmless’ (stupid), and of French derivation, ‘Proper champion’ (excellent). Dutch words include ‘gawp’ (stare) and yacht, and Gaelic is responsible for ‘whiskey’. In addition to these there are words that imitate the sounds of what they represent, ‘gulp’ for example, and odd words imported from Latin and Greek sources, ‘nous’ (common sense) being an illustration of the latter. Place names are also woven into the fabric of Lancashire dialect. In the book, Thomas and Catherine lived on ‘Broad O’th’ Lane’, a traditional Lancashire description for a location. Bolton is derived from bothl-tun, old Saxon English describing a settlement with dwellings. Many place names ending in ton are often based on the Northern Germanic and Scandinavian word ‘tun’, which typically refers to a farmstead or dwelling place.
There is no complete consistency of dialect across Lancashire but there are local pronunciation rules. Peter Wright, in his book ‘Lancashire Dialect’, divides the county into five broad areas. Bolton falls into area 3, just, while Rochdale, Bury, Oldham and Manchester into area 4. However, the classification problem is even more complicated than that as there are sub-varieties across an area. Thus, a Bolton speaker will use slightly different inflexions of speech, and sometimes words, than someone from Wigan or St. Helens (both area 3).
In the earlier chapters of the book I indulge in some limited exchanges in dialect. At the time it is set, the 1920s to early 1950s, dialect was very common, although even then there were very early signs of its slow demise; the introduction of radio, talking movies and mass education had started to accelerate the process. During the inter-war period, and to a degree even today, some speakers would have adopted a ‘dual use’ method of speech. For example, a more educated and travelled dialect speaker might have spoken to a fellow local Lancastrian in dialect, but then might revert to a more standard form of English when talking to an ‘out-of-towner’. I hint at this in the book, using the influence of Emma and the needs of business interaction (intelligibility), as a vehicle for migrating from dialect to more generically spoken English. The evolution of speech is also intended to reflect a paradigm shift from a more locally focused world (Bolton) to one that had expanded, through the business, into a national, or even an international outlook (WW2).
A current dictionary of Lancashire dialect: http://www.troubleatmill.com/speak.htm#a
But don’t forget that words and their use can be different from town to town and the language itself has evolved over the past few hundred years.