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The history of languages in Yorkshire predominantly focuses on the story of its unique,
distinctive dialect — sometimes known as Broad Yorkshire, or Tyke.

The Yorkshire landscape (and thus the geographical area covered when we discuss the Yorkshire
dialect) is varied and diverse — ranging from large industrial cities such as Leeds, Bradford and
Sheffield, to wild open spaces like the coast, Dales and Moors.

A large chunk of vocabulary in the Yorkshire dialect is understood to be derived from Old
English, the language of old Germanic tribes, as well as Old Norse, the language of the Vikings.

This is where the story begins.

The rough start of the history of a Yorkshire dialect can be traced back to 400AD, with the
arrival of Angles, Saxons and a number of other Germanic tribes on mainland Britain. The
Angles settled in Yorkshire, with the Saxons to the south; this created somewhat of a language
divide.

With them, they brought Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon), the earliest recorded form of
the English language.

In rough geographic terms, modern-day North Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire were
part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria — which can be translated to ‘land north of the
Humber’, with West and South Yorkshire belonging to the kingdom of Mercia.

This created its own interesting mini-dialect divide between places north and south of the River
Wharfe. Old English Yorkshire dialect words include ‘nobbut’ (nothing but), as well as the short
‘i’ in words like ‘blind’ (such that it rhymes with ‘tinned’).

As well as Old English, linguistic historians have also noted uncanny similarities between some
aspects of the Yorkshire dialect and languages of Scandinavia. Many words unique to the
Yorkshire dialect have very similar counterparts in Norse languages. The reason for this is the
two common forebears that Yorkshire and Scandinavia have — Vikings.

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The first thing you should work on is how to pronounce the vowel a. Rather than the long a
sound common in Southern England, pronounced as if it were followed by an r, if you want to
sound like a proper Yorkshire native, then you should opt for a short and sweet a sound, and
practise saying “bath” and “grass” until you’ve perfected it.

Next, chuck “the” out of your vocabulary. No more definite articles! “The” is often shortened to
simply “t’,” essentially becoming a glottal stop. This is also true of other single syllable words
that start with “t.” For example, if you were really proud of yourself, then rather than saying
“I’m very proud of myself,” you could instead employ the Yorkshire phrase “I’m chuffed t’bits!”
(notice how the word “to” has been shortened to “t'”).

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Firstly, ye ‘ave tuh drop yer ‘H’ as in ‘has’ and ‘her’, and yer ‘T’ as in ‘that’ and ‘cat’, replacing
the ‘T’ with a slight ‘h’ sound, known as a Glottal Stop (try not to choke!).
Everyone has heard of the phrase “Tin Tin Tin”, usually spoken as if it means something.
Actually, it should be written more like: ‘t’in’t in’t tin.. as in “It isn’t in the tin”. See how it
works? Lots of dropping of T’s.

Nobody really uses that phrase by the way.

As for H’s at the start of words and G’s after INGs, Yorkshire folk tend not to bother with them
if they’re not too important. We’re far too busy.

So we aren’t having a very nice time on holiday staying in a hotel. Instead we would be ‘avin’ a
reet good ‘olidee at an ‘otel

You’ll notice AY sounds tend to be more of an EE sound, as do some I sounds (as in right). So
nothing is very nice, it’s reet good.

We tend not to say “OUR”, instead we say “US” as in “Where’s us car?”

THE almost always becomes a Glottal Stop. As it AM OFF T’ SHOP (I’m going to the shop)

GOING usually gets replaced with OFF.

I’M sounds more like AM

TH can be dropped into a Glottal Stop at the end of a word. WITH would become WI’ – as AM
‘ERE WI’ JOHN.

Anyone can be called “LOVE”, “M’LOVE” “PAL” or “FELLA”. it’s one of the things that
makes Yorkshire folk seem so friendly.

As mentioned above, Yorkshire dialect rarely uses “VERY”, instead “REET”. We also have
some very old-English based words for that, such as “GRADLY” and “GRAND”. Something
great would be “REET GRAND” instead of “VERY GOOD”.

Friendliness and politeness are heavily implied in the way we speak. Any compliment we give
you is laced with true and deep feeling – otherwise you wouldn’t get one.