Wednesday 4 November 2009

Welcome to Vichy

As I've mentioned before my illustrious institution's student paper is locked in a cupboard, bound and gagged in case some rogue student journalist thinks that massive job cuts, ill thought-out curriculum changes, bigger classes and alienated teachers might, possibly, be news.

Luckily, some thoughtful Walsallian (is that the word) has collated the stories in one place, on theyamyam.com, a site for all things Walsall. (For non-Black Country readers, the local dialect and people are called yam yams, referring to certain grammatical and pronunciation variants).

3 comments:

Benjamin Judge said...

To clarify the Vole's nebulous description of the origin of yamyam hear is a more detailed one:

In Black Country dialect "you are" becomes "yow am" which in quick speech becomes "y'am".

So a yamyam would say "yam doing this, yam doing that"

Sorry to feel the need to clarify that but if it had been a Welsh or Irish accent he would have written 500 words describing its origins and beauty in heartfelt purple prose and I felt that the Black Country accent deserved, at the least, an explanation.

The Plashing Vole said...

That's fine Ben - I know the basics but didn't dare go into detail in case I arsed it up. I love dialect.

I know a little bit:
Ow am yow? - how are you?
Tara a bit - good bye.
Yow'm bostin' - I'm very well thank you.

Zoot Horn said...

- and "ahday know" which means that my step grandson has no idea who left the fridge door open for 16 hours.