A Rose Is a Schoop

What sort of English do the English speak? It is certainly not always the Queen's, says Harold Orton, professor of English language and medieval literature at the University of Leeds. Last week, after ten years of gathering material for a definitive Linguistic Atlas of England in the Mid-Twentieth Century, Orton and his colleagues revealed that had Gertrude Stein only known the farmers of England, her celebrated "rose is a rose is a rose" might have read a "rose is a hep is a shoop is a schoop is a dog shoop is a cat jug."

The largest British project of its kind tried in the last 50 years, the Atlas has taken Orton, his research assistant. Stanley Ellis, and six field workers through 200 different villages to question local citizens and record their speech. Their subjects are usually oldtimers who still speak their ancient dialects, and they are also apt to be men because the women tend to regard the dialects as strictly non-U. Each farmer might be asked as many as 1,267 questions, but the questions must be carefully worded. Should a researcher ask, "Where do you keep your cow?", the farmer might reply with the modern cowshed. But if he is asked, "What do you call the place where you keep Moo?" he might say byre (Northumberland), cowhowel or cowhoyle (Yorkshire'). shippom (Lancashire), mistal (west Yorkshire) or shobbin (Devon).

A privy is a privy in East Riding. But elsewhere it is a netty, nessy or petty. To be left-handed is to be anything from key-handed to gallock-handed, kay-handed, korky-handed, wappay-handed or skiffy-handed. In Lancashire a flea is a flenn or a fleck, but the people of north Lincolnshire and north Yorkshire still say lops--a leftover from the Danish invasions of the 9th century. Such a word as udder can assume a bewildering number of forms--ewer, elder, dug or bag.

Though Orton's work will not be completed until 1964, that will be none too soon. "This," says one of his colleagues, "is certainly the last chance to record these dialects. The sons and daughters don't know them." Were it not for such research, posterity might never know that once upon a time--back in 1957--an Englishman could throw away ket, kelter, ketment, rommit, rammill and muck--and still only be discarding rubbish.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.