Lancashire Day

If you didn't know, 27th November is Lancashire Day.

Lancashire Day commemorates Edward I calling the first elected representatives from Lancashire to parliament in 1295.

Warrington has gone by many titles over the years, such as: a municipal borough, a county borough, and most recently a unitary authority. The local government reforms of 1974 made Warrington part of Cheshire, but historically, culturally, and more importantly, linguistically, Warrington is part of Lancashire.

For proof of this, you need look no further than the Lancashire Day proclamation, which is read out by town criers on this day throughout the county:

• Know ye also, and rejoice, that by virtue of Her Majesty's County Palatine of Lancaster, the citizens of the Hundreds of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, Amounderness, Leyland, Blackburn, Salford and West Derby are forever entitled to style themselves Lancastrians. Throughout the County Palatine, from the Furness Fells to the River Mersey, from the Irish Sea to the Pennines, this day shall ever mark the peoples' pleasure in that excellent distinction - true Lancastrians, proud of the Red Rose and loyal to our Sovereign Duke.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Day)


You can see that, "From the Furness Fells to the River Mersey..." is historically Lancashire. Also, I have left in the link to the Wikipedia article on the West Derby Hundred as Warrington had been part of it since the 11th century.

Here are a couple of links to Lancashire societies:

• The Friends of Real Lancashire: http://forl.co.uk/index.html
• The Lancashire Society: http://www.thelancashiresociety.org.uk/

As a result of local governmental bureaucracy, Warringtonians may have Cheshire in their addresses nowadays, but they will have Lancashire in their hearts forever!

Happy Lancashire Day, everyone!

Welsh Warrington

Well, the radio interview came and went. If you managed to tune in, I hope you enjoyed it. If you missed it, you can listen to the interview in its entirety on Soundcloud here: http://soundcloud.com/radio-warrington/warrington-dialect-with

Welsh Warrington

If we go back in time about 1200 years to around 800AD, one of the languages spoken in the Warrington area would have been Welsh. To be precise, the language would have been an earlier form of Welsh, called Old Welsh, or possibly even a dialect related to Old Welsh, called Cumbric. There is no doubt that dialects of Old English were also spoken in the area, and Danish dialects of Old Norse would have also been heard more and more as the Vikings took over more land to the north-east, but from the River Mersey all the way up to Southern Scotland some form of Welsh dialect would have been spoken. Indeed, the entry for Warrington in Domesday comes under the name "Walintune", which many scholars believe is the Old English name meaning roughly "the settlement of the Welsh".

I was surprised to find out a few years ago that my maternal ancestors are in fact from South Wales, and Warrington's close proximity to the Welsh border, and its position as the crossing point of the Mersey, must have made it a natural stop-off point for Welsh people moving North for whatever reason.

Surprisingly little is left of the language and/or dialects from this time. In fact, the clearest clue to the Old Welsh or Cumbric dialect spoken at that time is the name of my old stomping ground "Penketh". The name is made up of two elements, both Welsh/Cumbric words:

• Pen(n) - meaning a hill
• Keth (originally spelled "coed") - meaning a wood

"Pencoed" became "Penketh" - "The wooded hill".

Both "pen" and "coed" are still present in the modern Welsh language. There is, in fact, a village called "Pencoed" in south Wales near to Bridgend. Other places in Wales contain the "pen" element and probably the most famous place containing "coed" is "Betws-y-Coed" in Clwyd, North Wales, which means "Prayer house in the wood".

Other than a few place names, there is virtually no sign of the Welsh/Cumbric language and dialects.

Or is there?

Do you know any Warrington words, phrases or sayings that contain Welsh words?

Wirelect Interview on FM radio

The Wirelect interview that I did for Radio Warrington will be live on Radio Warrington 87.8 FM from 12 noon to 15pm today.

Tune in: http://radiowarrington.co.uk/

Warrington Wolves slang

Our beloved Challenge Cup winning rugby team, the Warrington Wolves, or "The Wire" as we know them has been a part of the town's history since 1879.

In the 133 years since their inception as a rugby team, the people of Warrington have come together to follow the team through thick or thin. Over the past few year, the Wolves have seen great success, and this has no doubt spread the appeal of the game of rugby and increased the fan base of the Wolves.

We have not concentrated a great deal on the Wire, sorry, Wolves in this blog, but now I would like to collect some of the words or phrases that have evolved alongside the team.

If you have a particular phrase or saying that you always say at the match, or that you always hear at the match, post it on here or send me an email at wirelector@gmail.com It might be just a word that you use to describe a situation or a player, whatever it is, I would like to know.

Let's put together a glossary of Warrington Wolves slang.

Thanks, Wirelector

The Co-op vowel shift results and other stuff

The results of our little survey are in. Sorry it took a while, I have been a bit under the weather.

Thank you to everyone who responded to the survey, we had a much stronger response than in previous surveys :-)

In total we had 20 responses and some very interesting results; not the results I was expecting, which is always a good thing!

16 people answered that they would pronounce Co-op as two separate syllables transcribed here phonetically: /kɒʊ ɒp/ "co - op". These people aged from 30 to 77 years old.

But just 4 people answered that they would pronounce Co-op as a single syllable with a long vowel as follows: /kwɒ:p/ "cwarp". These people aged from 69 to 95 years old.

This surprised me, as I thought that there would be a higher incidence of the single syllable variant particularly in the older age range. Admittedly, the 4 people who pronounce Co-op as /kwɒ:p/ are all in the older age group, and two of these 4 are reported as being born elsewhere than Warrington (Leigh and Bolton). This may lead us to believe that the single syllable pronunciation is not a feature of the Warrington dialect. However, both my parents belong to the single syllable group and they are both Warrington born and bred.

So what can we summise from this?

It appears from the data we have from our survey that there is a possible slight shift in the pronunciation of Co-op from a single syllable to two syllables over time. This shift may be influenced from neighbouring dialects that maintain a long vowel where Warrington has a diphtong; for example, think of a Widnesian or a Boltonian pronouncing "no". These dialects have maintained the long vowel that results in /nʊə/ "noor" as opposed to the more common Warringtonian /nɒʊ/ "no".

However, it is likely that both pronunciations of Co-op have existed side by side, particularly due to the fact that "Co-op" is always pronounced as two separate syllables in its full form in the name "Co-operative". As far as I know, no-one says "Cwarprative". Please correct me if I am wrong.

A couple other comments came in from Gaynor and Tim that I wanted to point out:

Gaynor commented on the good people of Yorkshire not understanding the word "Barm cake". I have to say that I concur. I recently chatted with a colleague who is originally from Huddersfield, and he did not know what a Barm cake is either. This does seem to be confined to the Lancashire area.

And Tim posted a word that I have never heard before in my life: lozzock. He gave the example, "Stop lozzocking around and get something done." Great word! Does anyone else use this word?