Collins Taak of the Toon: How to Speak Geordie

Contents

Title Page Introduction The Entire Geordie Nation Welcome Stranger Wor History And Wor Heroes Waalking And Working Geordie At Hyem Ah’m Scranny, Mammy Geordie On The Beor Geet Geordie Juicers Geordie On The Pull Geordie Sports (Including Fighting) Of Clubs And Culcha About the Author Copyright About the Publisher

Introduction

Everybody thinks their own bit of Britain is the best. I have Cockney pals who swear their hospitality and wit are the tops. A mate of mine from Nottingham swore the best ale and the prettiest lasses could be found within a couple of miles of the Lace Market. ‘Rubbish!’ would be the verdict of West Country pals who would attest that their scrumpy, songs, and cheeses are unbeatable.

So what would a proud Geordie like myself crack up about the place, the people and the lifestyle? Well, we do welcome strangers like long-lost friends. We do have ales like the Broon that put a buzz on your visit and nosh, like stotties, to beef you up. Our lasses are as bonny and lippy as any and the lads are boisterous, aggressive-sounding, but often as soft as thistle-down. But our main talent as a tribe is verbal: Geordies, I reckon, word-for-word could out-patter anybody.

And this brings me to my main reason for writing TAAK OF THE TOON. At moments of high emotion and/or excitement I lapse into Geordie, despite living in Yorkshire for the past 38 years. That, I would suggest, is testimony to the sheer richness of our language. Some of our words date back to invaders who hit Bamburgh and North Shields 1300 years ago. Down the centuries we have melded in Dutch, Scottish and Romany words to articulate the vivid Geordie life-experience.

So tek a deep breath, rax yer tonsils, clear yer clack… and dive in, marras.

THE ENTIRE GEORDIE NATION

There was a very loud Newcastle rock band in the 1960s called ‘The Entire Sioux Nation’; nobody slept in the entire Toon when the lads were on the go. Dogs howled, workers wakened from bonny dreams cursed and burglars ran home with empty pokes.

The best way to regard the Geordie Nation is to parallel it with the American Indians: massive hunting and marauding tribes like the Sioux, the Apache and the Comanche. Within each of those proud fierce groups there were regional subdivisions who fought to the death over buffalo killing rights, theft of horses and the odd bit of squaw-pinching. However, though we Geordies talk with pals as though a fight is about to erupt, divvent youse worry. Our patter is merely torrential enthusiasm and we don’t fight foreigners often.

The Geordie Nation’s heartland is Newcastle, alias The Toon, with its long trading, seafaring and ship building traditions. From Scotswood to Wallsend we have the ancestral home of the Toony Geordies. They are descendants of blue-bonneted keel men; flash guys quick to take the piss out of pit village lads. See a rag and bone man clopping and calling doon Westgate Road and you see a patter merchant, a verbal chancer. Modern Newcastle is the Mecca for Hens and Stags from all over Britain and the chat on the Quayside is all the richer for it. It is also possible to theorise that the number nine shirt worn by the centre forward of Newcastle United is a mythical totem-like symbol. Players like Hughie Gallacher, Jackie Milburn, Malcolm McDonald and Alan Shearer are to the Geordie tribe what Yellow Hand, Crazy Horse, Cochise, and Geronimo were to the American Indians – the peak of our manhood, role models and heroes.

Travel a few miles north of the Tyne and you find the Pitmatic Geordies: the branch of the tribe who once worked the coal mines round Ashington, Bedlington and Blyth. This lot talk as though they had a mouthful of iron filings and broken glass. I am a proud paid-up member of this branch, being bred in Ashington where my father worked down the pit for 48 years. Though the flash guys live in the Toon, the racy chat of the hard-grafting miners is probably the most vivid seam of Geordie language.

To the north and west of this branch, in Morpeth and Alnwick, we find the Romany influence in the Gadgie Geordies. Their main business was horse trading and they had many connections across the Pennines with Appleby and Carlisle. Some of their wild blood flows in my veins since I was born in Alnwick and my pipe-smoking granny spoke a lot of hawker/gipsy patter. ‘Deek the gadgie with the radge jugal and the cushty mort.’ TRANSLATION: ‘Look at the man with the mad dog and the comely maiden.’

Even further west we have the Coonty Geordies, the wealthy self-employed farmers, folk who have tended to look down on the poorer, more collective-minded branches of the tribe who dug the coal, built the ships, caught the fi sh, and manned the boats. These people think ‘sex’ is what the coal is delivered in.

South of the Tyne and at its mouth we have the Sand Dancer Geordies. Some people regard them as Mackems, but most South Shields folk I know are proud to be called Geordies.

To the south of Geordieland, in what was once the old county of Durham, lies the land of the Mackems. They are so-called because they say ‘mack’ instead of ‘make’ and ‘tack’ instead of ‘take’. They are enemies of the Geordies, particularly on the football field. But a lot of them in Gateshead and the East Durham pit villages talk like us. So the inter-tribal violence is mostly satirical or symbolic.

The folk of Teesside are known as Smoggies, because of the rotten smelly fug that hangs like a manky shroud over their polluted river.

To the north of the Geordies live the Jocks, whose words you will read here because we swiped a lot of them. They are not really wor enemies, because to many Scots ‘a Geordie is just a Jock with his heid kicked in’.

I mention these other tribes because we Geordies have often defined ourselves as enemies of the lesser breeds south and north of the Rio Grande – the Mighty Tyne. But really, as this book will show once you get to know us, we are deed canny… as lang as we get wor own way!

aad adjective old

aakward adjective awkward

aal adjective all

aalreet adverb, adjective all right Compare reet

I can hear yee aalreet but my lugs are not reet aalreet. Aalreet? TRANSLATION: I am at odds with you, myself and the entire world. OK?

afore adverb, preposition, conjugation before

Afore oppenin yer gob, use yer noddle. TRANSLATION: Engage brain before speaking.

agyen adverb again

ahad noun 1 a hold | adjective, adverb 2 on fire [From Geordie pronunciation of hold]

Tyek ahad of me hand and ah’ll lead yer to the land of your dreams. TRANSLATION: Come with me to the deeper parts of Jesmond Dene.

Ah’ve hoyed matches and paraffin on this bliddy fire but it winnit tyek ahad. TRANSLATION: We have to put on woollies because I cannot get the fire to light.

aheyt adverb, adjective in the air [Probably from Geordie pronunciation of height]

In pitch and toss yee hoy two coins up aheyt and cross yer fingers. TRANSLATION: Gambling is not a reliable form of occupation.

ahint preposition, adverb behind [From Old English aethindan]

amang preposition among

Aladdin must have been reet dim to faal amang them gadgies. TRANSLATION: Aah the innocence of youth.

argie verb to argue

Yee would argie yer way through the Hobs of Hell. TRANSLATION: Your disputative nature will bring you to a very sad end.

arly adjective early

arn verb to earn

atween preposition between

Ah feel ah’m atween a rock and a hard place. TRANSLATION: The wife and the mother-in-law are in cahoots against me.

aye1 sentence substitute yes [Old English a always]. Compare aye2

aye2 adverb always; ever [Old Norse ei ever]

Yer aye deein that! TRANSLATION: Why not try to introduce some variety into proceedings?

ayont preposition beyond

Hey bonny lad, that’s weel ayont a joke. TRANSLATION: Your attempt to flatter me with humour is an insult.

WOR HISTORY AND WOR HEROES

I suppose the first Geordie was the Venerable Bede who sat in his monastery at Jarrow about 1200 years ago and described the pillaging Vikings in much the same way as Toon football supporters describe the Mackem hordes: daft lads who go berserk after a couple of lager shandies. There is, in his works and the writings of his isolated pals on Lindisfarne, a sense of tribe that has come down through the ages, a sense of ‘ganging up’ against the rest of a hostile world. I like to think of Bedey and a few of his muckers drying off their quills, sloughing off their hair shirts and swanning along to a pleasant Saturday night hop in Bamburgh. Drop of mead, quick Gay Gordons with the local talent, then back in time for a cold shower and a mumbled matins…

Moving to the colourful hectic age that Shakespeare immortalized, we have the doughty figure of Harry Hotspur, a cross between Lord Lucan and Arthur Scargill, part wild-child, part local hero. He spent his time fighting for whatever king was in power in London or sitting in Warkworth Castle planning to join the Jocks and invade London. Harry also had a terrible problem with pronouncing his Rs. So his granny made up this verbal mantra – one that many of us still use as an exercise today. ‘Roond the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.’ It is best attempted by pushing out the cheeks like a hungry gorilla and trying to get imaginary claggum (chewing gum) off the base of the tongue.

The identity of Geordies became crystallized as sea-borne trade, particularly in coal, developed on the Tyne. Nowadays the ‘bonny lads’ who strut their stuff along the Quayside are rich footballers, legal eagles or IT wizards – all fat knots and designer stubble – but around 1750 the cocks of the walk were keelmen. These were an elite band of experts who rowed boats full of coal to and from merchant sailing ships in the Tyne. They had their own guild and their badge of honour was a blue bonnet, set off with a red neckerchief and silver shoe buckles. They earned top dollar, were known to enjoy a swallow or three, and occasionally broke the hearts of the ladies. Nobody knows why the legendary ‘Bonny’ Bobby Shaftoe – trained on keels but later a seafarer – went off over the briny, but I reckon it was to do with sex or drink or debt – or all the above. Our bright-eyed verbalized romanticism has always been deeply shadowed by excess.