The Pocket Geordie English

From ’Howay man!’ to ’Haddaway!’ become fluent in Geordie, including the variant found in historically coal-mining villages, ’Pitmatic’.

Geordie, spoken in Newcastle and on the banks of the river Tyne in the county of Northumberland in the north-east of England, is one of the most easily recognisable British dialects. At one time it was rare to hear Geordie elsewhere in the UK, but TV programmes such as Byker Grove, footballers such as Paul Gascoigne and Alan Shearer, and the presenters Ant and Dec have helped to make it more widely known.

Geordie, which has its own distinctive vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation, remains the best preserved British dialect largely because of its geographical isolation - there are parts of Scotland which are further south than Northumberland. Many present-day features of Geordie were once present in other dialects, but these were mostly eradicated when the English language was standardised during the eighteenth century.

Further from the Tyne, the dialect becomes softer, sounding almost Cumbrian before the western boundary is reached; and in the colliery villages, a distinctive variety of Geordie, ’Pitmatic’, is spoken, in which terms used in mining have entered everyday speech.

This compact, handy book will help you to understand the English of the north-east.