Posts Tagged ‘Yorkshire’

01 2010

Yorkshire dialect, Purge, Weekly Ukulele World Tour

After a week of regenerating sea air, cycling against the wind around the salt marshes and treating myself with plenty of ‘caramels à la fleur de sel’, I am back for a new Ukulele World Tour.

Hope this picture will make you salivate…

Today we’ll celebrate Yorkshire day with a popular folksong in the Yorkshire dialect, then learn how to let it all pass away from the United-States, hear a Portuguese child song, move over to Brazil and listen to some fine singing by Agathe on Paris Plage.

To be honest I never knew there was a Yorkshire Day until I found the following song, On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at, and did some research on it which rather indirectly led me to find out about it. I love songs telling stories and this one says a lot about the practical sense of Yorkshire people.

Ukulele and dialects, Hull, Yorkshire, Schwäbisch and more…

I spent the most memorable of my study years in Hull, in the North-East of England. Some people might be prejudiced and frown at the mention of Hull, but to an exchange student determined not to meet any French people for a full year, Hull was the perfect place to be.

One of the reasons my year in Hull has been so special was that there were students from many different countries of Northern Europe, many of them being as interested in languages as I was. Besides, trying to understand the locals (which was pronounced more like ‘løøcals’) was another endless source of fun, not to mention listening to all of us foreigners trying to imitate the accent. So yeah, it was never dull in Hull, it was f#’ ace !

The student house I lived in was also an excellent playground for a language lover as two of my housemates were from Yorkshire and taught me to pronounce ‘water is boiling in the kettle‘ something like ‘wa’er is boiling in ‘he ke’el‘ as well as many idiomatic Yorkshire niceties.

To travel around the cities of Yorkshire, why not listen to Tony, a Yorkshire ukulele player, singing A Dalesman’ s Litany. Lyrics can be found here.

Ukulele songs in Dutch, Yorkshire dialect and Russian

I was very pleased to see that my first post on Ukulele and native languages was well received.
Thanks to all who left a comment, whether on the blog or via YouTube.
HaileIsela and Al both mentioned their interest in a Gaelic ukulele video but I’m still looking. So if you know of any, send me the link (Use the contact form).

Here are today’s additions to the Ukulele and Languages videos:

9. Dutch
I have lived in the Netherlands a couple of years and I was pleased to see that I could still understand some Dutch, this guy’s diction is so very clear !