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LONGER READ: Organisation Friends of Norfolk Dialect (FOND) aim to preserve the Norfolk dialect




Norman Hart, a member of Friends of Norfolk Dialect. Pictures by Mecha Morton.
Norman Hart, a member of Friends of Norfolk Dialect. Pictures by Mecha Morton.

Hello, bor, how’re yer gorn on, tergether?

Unless you have been born and raised in Norfolk, not many people will ever master the dialect spoken in this county and, much to the disappointment of locals, it is often poorly portrayed in films and television.

Some of them included Stephen Fry’s Kingdom and the BBC film All the King’s Men, with the latter airing only a few weeks before an organisation was founded which would strive to preserve the unique sound of the Norfolk dialect.

Celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, Friends of Norfolk Dialect (Fond) continues to point out that “Norfolk is not a strange little place in darkest Mummerzet, wedged somewhere between Devon and Dorset.”

To avoid further misrepresentation of the regional dialect, the group offers to assist film and TV producers, while continuing to campaign for the recognition and teaching of Norfolk.

Committee member and former chairman Norman Hart, who lives in Harleston, says: “We get a lot of inquiries from amateur dramatics, but not from professionals, who work under the motto ‘Pardon, we know what we are doing’.”

Not knowing what they were doing were the producers of BBC Radio 4, who broadcast Children’s Crusade - Memoirs of a Teenage Radical in 2011, a play set in Norwich, featuring actors who attempted a Norfolk accent.

Heavily criticised by Fond president Peter Trudgill, the BBC later issued an apology, saying: “We know we didn’t get it right this time, but hope this did not spoil listeners’ enjoyment of the play.”

Norwich-born Peter Trudgill has been president of Fond since its inception.

The honorary professor of sociolinguistics at the UEA has an interest in various languages and dialects and has a particular fondness for his own.

Around the same time the radio programme was aired, Fond secured £25,000 funding from the Heritage Lottery for its long-held ambition to introduce an understanding and appreciation of Norfolk dialect in nine primary and secondary schools in the county.

Among them were Diss High School, Forncett St Peter Primary School and Harleston Primary School.

Each school received a day’s training and the project received national publicity and the activities culminated in a celebratory exhibition at the Forum in Norwich and performances at the Royal Norfolk Show.

“The dialect is cultural heritage, it’s just as important as Norwich Castle and it gives a sense of identity to an area which I want to be part of. Destroying it would be the same as knocking down Norwich Cathedral,” says Mr Hart.

In 2016, the University of Cambridge launched an app that was able to map changes in English dialects and claimed that regional accents were dying out.

Is that also true for Norfolk?

Some of Mr Hart’s collection of books on the Norfolk dialect.
Some of Mr Hart’s collection of books on the Norfolk dialect.

Mr Hart says: “A lot of vocabulary has disappeared as it goes with an older way of life, but the dialect itself is never going to die out, it is just going to evolve.

“If you look at modern inventions, they are given a Norfolk name like for example ‘pooter tooter’ (computer tutor).”

The typical yod-dropping and glottal stops are some of the characteristics which define the Norfolk dialect.

He goes on to say: “In 1832, the Rev Robert Forby wrote the dictionary The Vocabulary of East Anglia and said: ‘The dialect will be dead in 20 years.’

“When I look through it, I know maybe 10 per cent of the words. In 1866, somebody else did exactly the same and now we’re are sitting here, almost 190 years later.

“Regional dialects evolve and decline at different rates and there is no doubt about it that London-style speech has spread much more widely. As people leave our areas and move away, it obviously does undermine the local dialect.”

Mr Hart believes that the Norfolk dialect can be perceived quite negatively.

He says: “I got told off by a tutor when I was training to be a teacher because I spoke with a ‘dull East Anglian monotone’ and, when I said I was going back to Norfolk, she said ‘I suppose we better put it down as an advantage’. You wouldn’t dare say that now, would you?”

Unfortunately, linguistic prejudice is still an issue in Britain as a study on accents from the University of Manchester showed.

In the study, Dr Alex Baratta asked people why they changed their accents and how it made them feel. A third of those questioned said they were ashamed about flattening out their accents, but they did so to avoid negative perceptions.

“When I was at school, I was corrected for the way I spoke,” recalls Mr Hart. “It was ‘you’re lazy and wrong’ and that was what I always fought against.

“I always believed that different is different and that, during break-time and on the playground, everyone should be allowed to speak with whichever dialect they want.”

As Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson used to say: “I am a Norfolk man, and glory in being so.”

This feature appeared in the Diss Express on May 17.



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