Geordie
[4] The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who arrived became ascendant politically and culturally over the native British through subsequent migration from tribal homelands along the North Sea coast of mainland Europe.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that emerged in the Dark Ages spoke largely mutually intelligible varieties of what is now called Old English, each varying somewhat in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon.
In Northern England and the Scottish borders, then dominated by the kingdom of Northumbria, there developed a distinct Northumbrian Old English dialect, which preceded modern Geordie.
[14] The British Library points out that the Norse, who primarily lived south of the River Tees, affected the language in Yorkshire but not in regions to the north.
This source adds that "the border skirmishes that broke out sporadically during the Middle Ages meant the River Tweed established itself as a significant northern barrier against Scottish influence".
[23] A number of rival theories explain how the term Geordie came about, though all accept that it derives from a familiar diminutive form of the name George,[24] "a very common name among the pitmen"[1][25] (coal miners) in North East England; indeed, it was once the most popular name for eldest sons in the region.
The Jacobites declared that the natives of Newcastle were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian kings, whose first representative George I reigned (1714–1727) at the time of the 1715 rebellion.
In the English Dialect Dictionary of 1900, Joseph Wright gave as his fourth definition of "Geordie": A man from Tyneside; a miner; a north-country collier vessel, quoting two sources from Northumberland, one from East Durham and one from Australia.
All the explanations are fanciful and not a single piece of genuine evidence has ever been produced.In Graham's many years of research, the earliest record he found of the term's use dated to 1823 by local comedian Billy Purvis.
[32] The Linguistic Survey of Scotland included Cumberland and Northumberland (using historic boundaries) in its scope, collecting words through postal questionnaires.
[33] Tyneside sites included Cullercoats, Earsdon, Forest Hall, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, Wallsend-on-Tyne and Whitley Bay.
The total population of this conurbation, which also subsumes Gateshead, Jarrow, North and South Shields, Whitley Bay, and Tynemouth, exceeds 800,000.Geordie consonants generally follow those of Received Pronunciation, with these unique characteristics as follows: The Geordie dialect shares similarities with other Northern English dialects, as well as with the Scots language (See Rowe 2007, 2009).
[51][52] In her column for the South Shields Gazette, Samuelson-Sandvid attests many samples of Geordie language usage, such as the nouns bairn ("child")[53] and clarts ("mud");[54] the adjectives canny ("pleasant")[55] and clag ("sticky");[54] and the imperative verb phrase howay ("hurry up!
as a term of encouragement for a sports team for example (the players' tunnel at St James' Park has this phrase just above the entrance to the pitch), or Ho'way!?
[66] However, some have theorised that it may come from slang used by Roman soldiers on Hadrian's Wall,[67] which may have later become gabinetti in the Romance language Italian[67] (such as in the Westoe Netty, the subject of a famous painting from Bob Olley[67][68]).
John Trotter Brockett, writing in 1829 in his A glossary of north country words...,[65] claims that the etymon of netty (and its related form neddy) is the Modern English needy[73] and need.
[74] Bill Griffiths, in A Dictionary of North East Dialect, points to the earlier form, the Old English níd; he writes: "MS locates a possible early ex.
