BBC VOICES RECORDINGS
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Title:
Sunderland
Shelfmark:
C1190/23/07
Recording date:
2005
Speakers:
Donkin, Michael, b. Sunderland; male
Hutchinson, Kelly, b. Sunderland; female
Lock, Adam, b. Fulwell; male
Pratt, Gordon, b. Hendon; male
Roberts, Rosemary (Rose), b. Barnard Castle; female
The interviewees are all members of Sunderland Volunteer Life Brigade.
PLEASE NOTE: this recording is still awaiting full linguistic description (i.e.
phonological, grammatical and spontaneous lexical items).
A summary of the specific lexis elicited by the interviewer is given below.
ELICITED LEXIS
○
see English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905)
see Survey of English Dialects Basic Material (1962-1971)
∆
see New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006)
◊
see Green’s Dictionary of Slang (2010)
⌂
no previous source (with this sense) identified
*
pleased
tired
unwell
hot
cold
annoyed
pleased; chuffed; ecstatic
shattered; bushed; knackered (censured for using in past, “we used to get wrong”)
bad; poorly; ill; sick
sweltering (suggested by interviewer); roasting; clammy; sweating
freezing cold; freezing; Baltic◊ (suggested by interviewer); chilly
wound up (suggested by interviewer); it narks us; gets your goat (suggested by interviewer)
throw
toss; hoy○
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BBC Voices Recordings
play truant
sleep
play a game
hit hard
dolling off1; dolling1; skiving
kip; power nap (of short daytime sleep immediately after work)
(none supplied)
punch; thump; got lashed all over, clip, belt, spark (of hitting person in fight)
clothes
trousers
child’s shoe
clothes
jeans; strides; pants (used in Tyneside but not locally)
sand-shoes; trainers (used by children now); punjabs⌂ (used by younger sister and school
friends); plimsolls, baseball boots (used as child in past)
mother
mum; mam; mammy (used as young child); mother (used when annoyed with mother); ma
(used in Hendon, “your ma and your da”); the old woman
gmother
nana; gran, grandmother, grandma (used by speaker’s children in preference to ‘nana’)
m partner
boyfriend; my lad (suggested by interviewer, heard used); partner, man friend (no other
term available, “impersonal”)
friend
mate; pal; marrow [maɹə] (used in Tyneside, heard occasionally locally)
gfather
(none supplied)
forgot name thingummyjig∆; whatsit; whatchamacallit; thing; doofer (“where’s the doofer for the telly?”
of e.g. TV remote control)
kit of tools tool-box
trendy
charver; tart
f partner
our lass; the other half; me bitch (of wife); missus, the wife, her indoors (used in presence
of wife); babe (used as “pet name” to wife); girlfriend
baby
(none supplied)
rain heavily
toilet
walkway
long seat
run water
main room
rain lightly
pouring down; chucking down; pissing down; hoying○ (“hoying it down”); pouring
loo; bog; toilet
alley-way; lonnen○ (heard used); pathway; passageway
settee; sofa; couch
stream; beck; burn; dene2
lounge; sitting room; front room; living room
drizzling; drizzle; spitting down
rich
left-handed
unattractive
lack money
drunk
pregnant
attractive
insane
moody
flash
left-handed; cuddy-handed*; lefty (suggested by interviewer)
minging; ugly; miserable; a minger (of “unclean” person); plug-ugly; pig-ugly
skint; broke
parlatic; mortal; pissed
pregnant; up the duff; up the stick; in the club; bun in the oven (suggested by interviewer)
fit; smart; sexy; lush (suggested by interviewer); stunning
mad; nutter; radgie; radgie gadgie∆
(none supplied)
© Robinson, Herring, Gilbert
Voices of the UK, 2009-2012
A British Library project funded by The Leverhulme Trust
1
Lourdes Burbano Elizondo’s ‘First Approaches to the Unexplored Dialect of Sunderland’ in Miscelánea: a journal of english
and american studies (N° 27, 2003 pp. 60-61) includes ‘doll off’ in this sense.
2
Wicked Geordie English (2003) records ‘dene’ in sense of ‘valley through which burn flows’.
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