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Dialect won't be written off
DON'T feel sneeped if you can't understand every word in F Philip Holland's latest book – it probably just means you've never been the four or five miles from Buxton to Stryndall...
"Sneeped" is White Peak dialect for having your nose put out of joint, and Stryndall is Philip's home village of Earl Sterndale, also known as Steender.
It's old dialect words like these which Philip - well-known locally for his poetry and piano playing – hopes to rescue from oblivion with his latest book, "Words of the White Peak".
Many of them have died out because the things they describe have been consigned to history: the bakestone – a cast iron plate on an old cooking range; a cambrell, or wooden rack to hang meat from; or clippet, a "horseshoe" for humans, hammered into their clogs for grip.
Some survive in local speech today – everyone knows Southerners are nesh even though there isn't a word for it in the South, while most people around here have been accused of faffing about at some time or another.
And some of the words are just gloriously descriptive. No wonder a poet like Philip wants to keep on the books "eye-server" - a hired hand who only works when his boss is looking; "wheelbarrow farmer" for a smallholder and "lumpy tums" for a children's bedtime dish of oatmeal and milk.
And he's in good company.
"This book has been written just in time," the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire has written in its foreword.
"The richness of a fast-disappearing vocabulary in what was once a remote area of the HIgh Peak is very fascinating. Everyday words and phrases have been lost at an ever-increasing rate partly due to the incredible changes in agriculture and rural life as a whole."
"Dialect can make you wonder and it can make you laugh," said Philip.
"It has some words and phrases which even Shakespeare or Dr Johnson would be hard-pressed to better."
Babies who "nurdle" with quiet contentment, for example, or the "mayblobs" of marsh marigolds.
And at just 8.95 from Anecdotes Publishing, this is a book bound to give everyone something to yammer about...
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Weather for Buxton
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -6 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: -4 C to -1 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South
