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Norfolk Dialect: A Selection of Words and Anecdotes from Norfolk
A selection of words and anecdotes from Norfolk.
Ever wondered what your grandmother meant when she said she'd heard a jilly-hooter? Or are you off to watch the camping on the pightle? Don't be late, or you'll get a right old mobben.
This book will help you understand the unique and ancient Norfolk dialect. It starts with a dictionary to help you develop an altogether new vocabulary, and you can test your understanding with the quirky one-liners that Louise has selected from a a variety of sources.
As your confidence grows you can progress to longer tales and anecdotes, all chosen to illustrate different aspects of the delightful Norfolk dialect as spoken by the locals in days gone by. Learn about money-grabbing lawyers, sporting rivalres, snapdragons and Jack Valentine, and develop your skills as you go!
Ever wondered what your grandmother meant when she said she'd heard a jilly-hooter? Or are you off to watch the camping on the pightle? Don't be late, or you'll get a right old mobben.
This book will help you understand the unique and ancient Norfolk dialect. It starts with a dictionary to help you develop an altogether new vocabulary, and you can test your understanding with the quirky one-liners that Louise has selected from a a variety of sources.
As your confidence grows you can progress to longer tales and anecdotes, all chosen to illustrate different aspects of the delightful Norfolk dialect as spoken by the locals in days gone by. Learn about money-grabbing lawyers, sporting rivalres, snapdragons and Jack Valentine, and develop your skills as you go!
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
1 person is currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Louise Maskill
25 books4 followersLouise Maskill lives and works in Derbyshire, UK, surrounded by books, cats and apple trees. She is, among other things, a writer, a reader, an editor, a runner, an historian, a psychologist, a musician, a stitcher and a knitter.
She self-publishes fiction under her own imprint, Hagthorn Press - the latest is her new fantasy novel Cailleach, along with a growing collection of short stories.
She edits other people’s words for a (partial) living, and has written or contributed to fifteen short non-fiction books on local dialect, history and walking for Bradwell Books and Curlew Press.
She self-publishes fiction under her own imprint, Hagthorn Press - the latest is her new fantasy novel Cailleach, along with a growing collection of short stories.
She edits other people’s words for a (partial) living, and has written or contributed to fifteen short non-fiction books on local dialect, history and walking for Bradwell Books and Curlew Press.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2025
Makes other books look like a load of old squit.
March 17, 2025
Possessive pronouns receive a curious usage, especially when standing in for dwellings; 'let's go round mine' was a common suggestion when I was a child, meaning let's go and play at my house.
Norfolk Dialect: A Selection of Words and Anecdotes from Norfolk includes in its dictionary of terms: Foreigner: a disparaging term applied to those not born in Norfolk
And while I don't mean this disparingly, the term - which would normally be rendered, at least phonetically, furriner could apply to the author of this book, born to Yorkshire parents, who moved to Norfolk when she was 4. Which in turns does influence the book's contents which seem drawn more from research than from direct experience of older relatives.
That does though also perhaps give Maskill more distance from the dialect she is discussing, and I found the book's strongest parts the section on pronunciation and usage, including sections on accents:
The accent is distinct in its pronunciation patterns, differing markedly from other southern English accents. The letter H is rarely dropped, so your hat remains a hat in Norfolk, whereas in Essex it might be your 'at. The Y sound in words like few and music is not sounded, so they become foo and moosic. Some stressed vowel sounds are markedly lengthened - one of the best examples of this is the name of the county city, Norwich, which in the mouth of a local becomes something like Naahritch. The suffix ing is often pronounced en, so that playing becomes playen, and vowel sounds are often run together into a single syllable so that going becomes gorn.
She does remark that some of the words in her A to Z are now in common English usage, but they have their provenance in Norfolk dialect, and in a way its those terms or grammar that I would have thought of as natural, rather than local, that most struck me. For example - as per the quote that opens my review - 'let's go round mine' - what else would one say?
The use of the past tense is more refined in Norfolk than in many parts of the country. As Maskill observes, the correct past tense of the verb 'drive' is clearly 'driv' not the odd 'drove', and that of 'come' simply 'come' (where did 'came' come from?). And surely only a non-native English speaker would think, naively, that the past tense of the verb 'show' is 'showed'? It's obviously 'shew'. One might say "as with 'throw' becoming 'threw'", except the Norfolk bor will 'hull' something not 'throw' it; and as for 'chuck', well that's what one does to a no-longer wanted boy/girlfriends.
A Norfolk dialect tea towel - not related to the book but to give an idea:
The second half of the book on anecdotes felt a little scattergun, although some of it relates to the origin of certain terms, such as the logically named bishy barnabee, which bizarrely some others call a 'ladybird' (??), after the protestant-slaughtering Bishop 'Bloody' Bonner, once of East Dereham.
And it includes some ancient children's game that I would still play today - although it was 'ducks and drakes' in south-west Norfolk:
The game of Cock or Hen (or alternatively Hens and Chickens) was played with false oat grass, a tall fluffy grass with seed heads that look very similar to cultivated oats. Children would run their pinched fingers up the stem of the grass, stripping the seed heads so that they ended up in a bunch in the child's hand. If one seed protruded above the rest the result was a cock, if not it was a hen.
A fun and informative read, if not entirely original.
Postscript - an example of Sidney Grapes's The Boy John Letters sent to the EDP from 1946 onwards:
Aunt Agatha's Dickey Ride
December 24th, 1946.
Dear Sar - Well, the time a' cum round agin for me and Arnt Agatha and Granfar, to rite an wish yow, and yar starf an orl, a werry Happy Christmas. Arnt Agatha, she say, specially to that there gentleman wot go about a taken them photos o' pretty plearces in Norfolk, he must a' got a bike, to git about like he dew.
Oh! I must tell you about Arnt Agatha, last summer. We had a garden fate at the Wickerage, an weeks afore-hand you could buy shillin tickets, then save em all up, then spend em on anything at the fate. Well Arnt Agatha, she was wery busy and dint git there till ever so late, an then ewerything wus sold. She had six shillin tickets wot she'd saved, an orl she could spend em on wus on six shilling rides round the field on the Wicar's owld dicker, wot he's lent for the purpus. Well bor she cum home orl o' a muckwash - she looked a job.
Granfar, he mobbed har, and he called har a silly old fule. He fear to ha been a pearkin tru a hole in the fence and see har. He say, "There she wus a bobbin up and down on that old dicker's back, a' holden har hat on wi one hand, an har teeth in wi the tother, she look disgustin."
Poor Granfar, he about about everything nowadays. He go down to the pub every nite, he come back a mobbin about the beer, he say he's right glad when he a' had enuf on it. Arnt Agatha say, "Well yow put em in," he say, "I never put them in, I votted learbor. Well fare you well together, a Happy Xmas to all you wot read this - Yours obediently,
THE BOY JOHN
P.S. - Arnt Agatha she say, If you dorn't git orl you want, think of the things yow dorn't want - an dorn't git.
Norfolk Dialect: A Selection of Words and Anecdotes from Norfolk includes in its dictionary of terms: Foreigner: a disparaging term applied to those not born in Norfolk
And while I don't mean this disparingly, the term - which would normally be rendered, at least phonetically, furriner could apply to the author of this book, born to Yorkshire parents, who moved to Norfolk when she was 4. Which in turns does influence the book's contents which seem drawn more from research than from direct experience of older relatives.
That does though also perhaps give Maskill more distance from the dialect she is discussing, and I found the book's strongest parts the section on pronunciation and usage, including sections on accents:
The accent is distinct in its pronunciation patterns, differing markedly from other southern English accents. The letter H is rarely dropped, so your hat remains a hat in Norfolk, whereas in Essex it might be your 'at. The Y sound in words like few and music is not sounded, so they become foo and moosic. Some stressed vowel sounds are markedly lengthened - one of the best examples of this is the name of the county city, Norwich, which in the mouth of a local becomes something like Naahritch. The suffix ing is often pronounced en, so that playing becomes playen, and vowel sounds are often run together into a single syllable so that going becomes gorn.
She does remark that some of the words in her A to Z are now in common English usage, but they have their provenance in Norfolk dialect, and in a way its those terms or grammar that I would have thought of as natural, rather than local, that most struck me. For example - as per the quote that opens my review - 'let's go round mine' - what else would one say?
The use of the past tense is more refined in Norfolk than in many parts of the country. As Maskill observes, the correct past tense of the verb 'drive' is clearly 'driv' not the odd 'drove', and that of 'come' simply 'come' (where did 'came' come from?). And surely only a non-native English speaker would think, naively, that the past tense of the verb 'show' is 'showed'? It's obviously 'shew'. One might say "as with 'throw' becoming 'threw'", except the Norfolk bor will 'hull' something not 'throw' it; and as for 'chuck', well that's what one does to a no-longer wanted boy/girlfriends.
A Norfolk dialect tea towel - not related to the book but to give an idea:
The second half of the book on anecdotes felt a little scattergun, although some of it relates to the origin of certain terms, such as the logically named bishy barnabee, which bizarrely some others call a 'ladybird' (??), after the protestant-slaughtering Bishop 'Bloody' Bonner, once of East Dereham.
And it includes some ancient children's game that I would still play today - although it was 'ducks and drakes' in south-west Norfolk:
The game of Cock or Hen (or alternatively Hens and Chickens) was played with false oat grass, a tall fluffy grass with seed heads that look very similar to cultivated oats. Children would run their pinched fingers up the stem of the grass, stripping the seed heads so that they ended up in a bunch in the child's hand. If one seed protruded above the rest the result was a cock, if not it was a hen.
A fun and informative read, if not entirely original.
Postscript - an example of Sidney Grapes's The Boy John Letters sent to the EDP from 1946 onwards:
Aunt Agatha's Dickey Ride
December 24th, 1946.
Dear Sar - Well, the time a' cum round agin for me and Arnt Agatha and Granfar, to rite an wish yow, and yar starf an orl, a werry Happy Christmas. Arnt Agatha, she say, specially to that there gentleman wot go about a taken them photos o' pretty plearces in Norfolk, he must a' got a bike, to git about like he dew.
Oh! I must tell you about Arnt Agatha, last summer. We had a garden fate at the Wickerage, an weeks afore-hand you could buy shillin tickets, then save em all up, then spend em on anything at the fate. Well Arnt Agatha, she was wery busy and dint git there till ever so late, an then ewerything wus sold. She had six shillin tickets wot she'd saved, an orl she could spend em on wus on six shilling rides round the field on the Wicar's owld dicker, wot he's lent for the purpus. Well bor she cum home orl o' a muckwash - she looked a job.
Granfar, he mobbed har, and he called har a silly old fule. He fear to ha been a pearkin tru a hole in the fence and see har. He say, "There she wus a bobbin up and down on that old dicker's back, a' holden har hat on wi one hand, an har teeth in wi the tother, she look disgustin."
Poor Granfar, he about about everything nowadays. He go down to the pub every nite, he come back a mobbin about the beer, he say he's right glad when he a' had enuf on it. Arnt Agatha say, "Well yow put em in," he say, "I never put them in, I votted learbor. Well fare you well together, a Happy Xmas to all you wot read this - Yours obediently,
THE BOY JOHN
P.S. - Arnt Agatha she say, If you dorn't git orl you want, think of the things yow dorn't want - an dorn't git.
September 17, 2025
I read this on a Toosdee.. and I thought it was bootiful!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews