Arnold Kellett

Shouldn't such a big county have a bigger book?

This is a fascinating volume about the language of Yorkshire, and what the language reveals about the history and culture of the county. As such, it is a brilliant achievement. The only real complaint I have is that the book is a little too small and a little too parochial. It covers all three ridings ("thirdings") of Yorkshire, which is after all England's biggest county, and given the many local customs and variations in that large area, there really isn't room for all of it. I'd have wished to see some sort of appendix on Yorkshire history, and a lot more on Yorkshire phonology (after all, if you know the phonology, you won't need as many linguistic glosses), and more detail in some of the entries.

And it is sometimes too short-sighted, because the book fails to distinguish Yorkshire-specific words from those which, although not found in southern England, are common in the north or are shared with Lowland Scots speech. So the book cannot be a final reference on anything.

Those rather substantial nitpicks aside, I learned a lot from this book, and think it a useful item for those who cannot afford the major works of the scholarly dialect surveys -- and I am looking for more in this series.… (mere)