IN 1905, the Halifax born John Hartley, the most prolific of all Yorkshire dialect writers, published a poem called ‘Yorksher’. In it he praises the place, the people and the language, of which he writes:

An noa saand ivver greets mi ear,

As welcome, an as sweet,

As th’ quaint an hooamly Yorksher tawk,

I’ th’ Yorksher village street.

Fowk say, “Its quickly deein aght,

An sooin will pass away.”

That may be true,- but still aw daat; -

It weant pass i’ my day.

There were certainly concerns towards the end of the 19th century that, as more people received an education and began to travel further, Yorkshire dialect was dying out. Well, Hartley was right when he said it wouldn’t pass in his day. Indeed, it’s still around today. We have to admit, though, that language is constantly changing, and that there are few, if any, natural dialect speakers around now. However, those of us like myself, brought up in a working class family, surrounded in their formative years by the sounds of the “quaint an hooamly Yorksher tawk” as Hartley put it, have no difficulty in going back to it, regardless of the fact that we may have enjoyed a grammar school and university education, followed by a professional career.

The Yorkshire Dialect Society, the oldest dialect society in the world, was founded in 1897. It was through the activities of Bradford-born Joseph Wright, (1855 to1930) that the society came into existence.

His is a most remarkable story: after some time in the workhouse in Clayton, Joseph soon learned that he had to contribute to the meagre income his mother earned as a charwoman, at three farthings an hour.

Firstly, at the age of six, as a ‘donkey boy’, he would take the delver’s (quarrymen) tools to the blacksmith to be repaired or sharpened.

When he was seven, his mother took him to Salts mill where he worked as a doffer, removing full spindles from the spinning machines.

At 12 he became an apprentice wool sorter (“T’ best paid job in t’ mill,” they used to say) and at fourteen was a fully qualified wool sorter, very good at his job, on piece work earning between 20 and 30 shillings a week, a good wage for a working man at this time. When he was 16, Joseph heard a worker who could read reading to one who couldn’t and decided it was time he learned to read and write. He did so firstly at home with the Bible and The Pilgrim’s Progress and then at evening classes at the Mechanics’ Institute. Over the following years Wright developed an interest in languages and linguistics and learned to read and write in English, French, German and Latin.

At the age of 21, Wright took himself off to Heidelberg University in Germany to do a term’s study in linguistics. When he returned to England, he made the transition from mill worker to school teacher, teaching English and maths - it has to be said for less pay.

In 1885, at the age of 30, he returned to Heidelberg University to do a PhD in linguistics, the title of his thesis being ‘The Qualitative and Quantitative Changes in the Indo-Germanic Vowel System in Greek’. He then began lecturing at English universities and at the age of 46, he became a Professor of Comparative Linguistics at the University of Oxford. Not bad for a Bradford lad who started out in the workhouse.

Joseph Wright’s great legacy was the English Dialect Dictionary, which was meant to contain any word used in any English dialect in the previous 200 years. In order to collect the material for this massive work, Wright set up committees all over the country. These consisted of academics like himself and natural dialect speakers. Their job was to send him slips of paper with details of dialect words or expressions. He received more than one and a half million of these slips. Eventually, in 1897 Wright published the first volume, at which point no further material could be accepted, and all those committees were disbanded except one. That was the one in Bradford and it became the Yorkshire Dialect Society.

The society has two annual publications: Transactions, which reflects the academic side, containing articles on dialect research and Summer Bulletin which contains pieces of prose and verse written in dialect by members today.

The Yorkshire Dialect Society constantly strives through these publications, meetings, talks and its website to keep alive what is after all part of our heritage.

I’ll finish, as I started, with a quote from Hartley: “Yorksher for ivver!”

*Rod Dimbleby is chairman of the Yorkshire Dialect Society and a Yorkshire dialect storyteller