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We sure this is right?

‘Ey up duck’ is not a phrase often associated with inhabitants of Jordan, Syria or parts of Africa.

Yet for asylum seekers living in Bradford, not only has learning how to ‘speak Yorkshire’ has become an integral part of English lessons – it may also be the solution to bridging the north-south divide.

Forster College, which is part of Bradford College, is running 12-week courses in Yorkshire dialect for mature students “to improve their spoken English”.

‘Ey up’, ‘ta love’, ‘I’m off t’shops’, and ‘flippin’ ‘eck’, are just some of the words and phrases which are taught to help them understand everyday conversations and to feel like they fit in with the local community.

Dunno. Might not نريد بعض المحبوبين فتاة صغيرة؟ aid a little more. Or maybe کچھ پیاری پیاری لڑکی چاہتے ہیں؟?

19 thoughts on “We sure this is right?”

  1. Dunno. Speaking as a Londoner, always regarded the North & Yorkshire as somewhere strange, foreign and… what’s the opposite of exotic? Nothing would surprise me.

  2. This is vile cis-hetero patriarchal racism at its worst. It would be far more useful if the white hegemonists of Bradford were to learn Farsi.

  3. When I was taking German lessons in Munich we used to love pronouncing words with a broad Bavarian accent. Much to the annoyance of our German teacher who was from Frankfurt.

    For those of you unaware of the difference between high and low Deutsch it’s a bit like going to Newcastle to learn English and adopting a broad Geordie dialect.

    If the immigrants want to belong I imagine they’ll embrace the local dialect. If they are just there for the benefits and have no intent to integrate, well who knows.

  4. I am old enough to remember Charlie Williams telling jokes in a broad Yorkshire accent in the 1970s on the TV show The Comedians.

    Nobody I know took a blind bit of notice of his colour – he talked like “one of us”.

  5. ‘‘I’m off t’shops’’

    Definite article missing.

    It should be – I’m off t’t shops. (But dinna fash thee sen ower it.)

  6. Me duck or just duck as in Ta very much me duck Love you duck and other variants I have heard mostly in Leicester and surrounding but close by smaller towns.

  7. Yes, ‘t indicates a glottal stop, which is a speech sudden stop which isn’t voiced. So it’s “trouble at ‘t mill”. DON’T pronounce the t, either of them!

  8. If they really wanted to fit in, they could try either of not raping nor blowing up little girls by the thousands.

  9. Bloke in North Dorset

    “I am old enough to remember Charlie Williams telling jokes in a broad Yorkshire accent in the 1970s on the TV show The Comedians.”

    I saw him in Scarborough – side splitting.

    As woman arrived a bit late and it went something like:

    Come on in, luv, no need to be embarrassed..

    I see you’ve got some freckles, you want be careful, that’s ‘ow I started.

  10. This is called the “cost of empire”. The benefits of empire are front-end loaded and the costs are back-end loaded.

    Brits colonized everyone and taught them British culture so when they emigrate, they head for the motherland.

    Same for France. Might have something to do with all that messing around in the Maghreb.

    France has the largest number of Muslims in the Western world primarily due to migration from North African and Middle Eastern countries.According to François Héran (fr), former Head of the Population Surveys Branch at INSEE and Director of INED (French National Institute for Demographic Research) between 1999 and 2009, about one eighth (12.5%) of the French population is of Muslim origin in 2017 (8.4 million).

  11. The cost of Empire?

    The Muslim population of Sweden is about 8% of the total, nearly twice the percentage in the UK. I do not recall the Swedes having a massive empire in the Middle East & Asia.

    3rd world immigration is actually a cost of liberal idiocy and self hatred.

  12. My Grandmother from Kettering would say ‘me duck’ all the time. Didn’t realize it wa a Yorkshire thing too.

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