Pitmatic
UK English dialect / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Pitmatic (originally: "Pitmatical", colloquially known as "Yakka") is a group of traditional Northern English dialects spoken in rural areas of the Northumberland and Durham Coalfield in England.
The separating dialectal development from other Northumbrian dialects, such as Geordie, is due to mineworkers' jargon used in local coal pits. In Tyneside and Northumberland, Cuddy is an abbreviation of the name Cuthbert but in Durham Pitmatic cuddy denotes a horse, specifically a pit pony.[1] In Lowland Scots, cuddie usually refers to a donkey or ass but may also denote a short, thick, strong horse.[2]
According to the British Library, "Locals insist there are significant differences between Geordie [spoken in Newcastle upon Tyne] and several other local dialects, such as Pitmatic and Mackem. Pitmatic is the dialect of the former mining areas in County Durham and around Ashington to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne, while Mackem is used locally to refer to the dialect of the city of Sunderland and the surrounding urban area of Wearside".[3]
Traditionally the dialect as spoken in Northumberland, with rural Northumbrian communities including Rothbury, used the Northumbrian burr. This is now less frequently heard; since the closure of the area's deep mines, younger people speak in local ways that do not usually include this characteristic.[citation needed] The guttural r sound can, however, still sometimes be detected amongst elderly populations in rural areas. The variety spoken in Durham is non-rhotic but traditionally still subject to the Nurse-north merger in words like forst 'first' and bord 'bird',[4] which came about as a result of burr modification.