“Language is a solemn thing I said. It grows out of life—out of its agonies, and ecstacies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.... Foreigners who have talked a strange tongue half their lives return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun, and have not spoken since that time, but it lay there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the country boys.”....
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
EXPLANATORY.
The following pages claim to do no more than to set forth some of our best known dialect words, and to somewhat explain or illustrate their use by a sentence in which the word is introduced. So may not only the word be preserved, but something also of unity of expression be maintained at the same time.
Much of the matter has gone through the pages of the Penrith Observer, in the form of weekly notes. These notes were subject to some criticism. They were the means of eliciting a good deal of help towards making the collection more complete and accurate.
The method of spelling was frequently commented upon as involving an unnecessary innovation. A short explanation will, it is hoped, enable the reader to grasp it. Take such words as face, race, place, with the long a. We pronounce them as fi + as, ri + as, pli + as, with a short i sound, and the a short as in as. Words like master, plaster, become maister, plaister, with the a sounded as in pay. The long o sound is a pet aversion. Home becomes hi + am, boat as if it were boo + at, poke takes the form of poo + ak. Such words as post prove our consistency and cause many a one to get laughed at for the hasty o we assign it just as if it were copy.
The deep sound of oo shows our perversity. For ow we give it place every time, hoo, thoo, doon, noo, coo, and just as readily depose it from its legitimate place in boot, soot, nook, book, which in turn become bi + ut, si + ut, ni + uk, bi + uk. Go, going, gone, we make into ga (when short), gah, gahn, gi + an, and in some extreme instances almost garn. Final ing is too affected for us, so we drop it and substitute en. Quiet we quietly convert into whiat, because q is a pet aversion in all places with us. To give a hint as to the cause of this does not come within our scope. But no one can come closely into contact with the dialect without being struck with this aspect of it. A word like hope we evade or turn it into hooap or whop, yet daup, cauf, mope, crope, show that we can master the sound if we wish, and stick to it. If we will not say blue except as blew, we make up for it in hoo and noo. If the r is our aversion, we can, as few others can, say faddr, muddr, cluddr.
Having banished the ow sound from most of its legitimate places in the language, we put it in by way of amends where we can by “any manner o’ means” do so. Thus we have bowt for bolt and bought; browt for brought; bowster for bolster; cowt for colt; thowt for thought; dowter for daughter; and so on.