Should you mind your language? Not if yer from the East Midlands

THE question of our wonderful language raised its head once again this week – specifically our local dialect. I was, as ever, working from home and had locked myself in the back room as I video-conferenced into Derby Crown Court, owing to having a new carpet fitted.

Throughout the day, I had made socially distanced small talk with the fitters as they asked what I did for a living and complimented me on a poster I have in our hallway of a particular band who, it transpires, we had a mutual appreciation of.

They finished the very well done job by mid-afternoon and cleared away their stuff, leaving a copy of the invoice on a kitchen surface.

Then, as they left, this beautiful piece of advice flowed from the mouth of one of them: “If yuv gorreneh problums giyyusabell.”

Now, like many of you reading this, I am from the East Midlands so I knew exactly what he said to me.

Not so much my wife when I relived it after she arrived home from work.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

It is not the first time and it won’t be the last that my Merseyside bornand-raised better half has been left flummoxed by our regional accent.

I recall one time she phoned me in a confused state saying her then neighbour had asked her if she would help him later by putting some cream on his cat’s tabs.

Having not long moved to the area all those years ago she was completely unaware and then slightly relieved to hear said neighbour meant his poorly pet’s ears.

There is no doubt that our speech here borders on the almost lazy sometimes.

Our insistence on ending certain words with a dulling “eh” sound is perhaps the prime example.

Many of us enjoy or enjoyed days out in “Skeggeh” or call someone we know “Ju-leh”.

One of the lads I play cricket with is almost always referred to in our WhatsApp group as “Ashleh” rather than the correct spelling (and pronunciation).

And who among us hasn’t overheard someone from around here refer to liking “that Toneh ‘Adleh from Spandaah Balleh”?

Mrs Naylor claims that we speak in vowels only sometimes and at least one person she knows has an accent so strong that even after knowing them for two decades she nods along and laughs in the right places as she often has absolutely no idea what this person has said to her.

And like all regional accents, especially in my case one I have grown up with for the vast majority of my life, I love it.

I love that a carpet fitter asks me to “giyyusabell” if I have any problems or that a neighbour wants someone to put cream on his cat’s tabs.

I like how a jitty in Derby (Derbeh?) is a twitchel in Nottingham – just 16 miles down the road.

And I absolutely adore how someone from outside of our region would look at you “gone aaht” if they were with you when you walked into a local institution to us here and ordered some “Birdsus cobs and an elephant’s foot”.

Then again, who doesn’t adore a Birdsus elephant’s foot?

An accent is a geographical pinpoint of where someone grew up – a familiarity that, in the days when we went abroad on holiday, you could instantly recognise someone was from your area as sure as they were wearing a replica Rams shirt.

We should celebrate our lazy dialect. Shouldn’t we, duckeh?