Yorkshire Dialect: The Most Amusing Turns Of Phrases

The righteous fury Anne Hathaway unleashed when she attempted a Yorkshire accent in "One Day" has us asking the obvious journalistic question -- what would a Yorkshireman have to say about all this?

Based on the Yorkshire phrases we've found, we'd guess that a Tyke (that's Yorkshire for Yorkshire person) would have no problem appreciating Hathaway's attempt, at least for the dark comic value of someone trying so hard and failing anyway. There's a crude poetry to the dialect, and a rough humor. Indeed comedy is so embedded in the language, some meetings of the Yorkshire Dialect Society are conducted exclusively in "programmes of dialect which lean towards the more humorous aspects of life as reflected in local speech."

Take a look at a selection of colorful Yorkshire phrases and their meanings, or croggy on over to the BBC's site for a full glossary.

Yorkshire Phrase	Definition
daft as a brush	stupid
arse over tit	head over tall
more brass na brains	more money than sense
chuckin(g) your guts up	being sick
black as't face o' spades	very dirty
were ya born in a barn?	close the door!
not enough room to swing a cat	very small room
not back'ard at comin' for'ard	pushy person
pack it in	stop it
wick	alive, lively
'appy as a pig in muck	very happy
chuddy	chewing gum
croggy	riding on the crossbar of a bicycle
shit with sugar on	posh food
eeh by gum	OMG
spanish	licorice (go here to learn why)
spice	sweets (go here for why)

Comments

[IanBrettCooper]

11:06 PM on 09/11/2011

It's 'black as the ace of spades', and as a Yorkshireman born and bred, I have to tell you that half those phrases have nothing to do with Yorkshire, and the other half are either wrong or misspelled.

'Pack it in', for example is just generic English. In Yorkshire we'd say 'Gie ooer' (give over). Ditto 'were ya born in a barn'. The Yorkshire phrase is 'Put t' wood in t' oil' (put the wood in the hole).

And 'Eeh by gum' is never said by Yorkshire folk. It's only used by clueless Southerners trying to make fun of the Yorkshire dialect.