Pitmatic

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Dialects spoken in former mining areas of Northumberland and Durham

title: "Pitmatic" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["northumberland", "county-durham", "north-east-england", "english-language-in-england", "working-class-culture-in-england", "coal-mining-in-england"] description: "Dialects spoken in former mining areas of Northumberland and Durham" topic_path: "geography/united-kingdom" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitmatic" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Dialects spoken in former mining areas of Northumberland and Durham ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Pitmatic
familycolor	indo-european
altname
pronunciation
region	Great Northern Coalfield
speakers	?
fam2	Germanic
fam3	West Germanic
fam4	Ingvaeonic
fam5	Anglo-Frisian
fam6	Anglic
fam7	Northern English
fam8	Northumbrian dialect
ancestor	Early Modern English
script	English alphabet
isoexception	dialect
glotto	nort3300
lingua	52-ABA-aba
notice	IPA
map	British.coalfields.19th.century.jpg
mapcaption	Map of 19th-century coalfields in Great Britain showing, near top-right, the Great Northern Coalfield, the home of Pitmatic.
::

Pitmaticoriginally 'pitmatical'is a group of traditional Northern English dialects spoken in rural areas of the Great Northern Coalfield in England.

One lexical feature distinguishing Pitmatic from other Northumbrian dialects, such as Geordie and Mackem, is its use of the mining jargon prevalent in local collieries. For example, in Tyneside and Northumberland, Cuddy is a nickname for St. Cuthbert, while in Alnwick Pitmatic, a cuddy is a pit pony. According to the British Library's lead curator of spoken English, writing in 2019, "Locals insist there are significant differences between Geordie 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".

Traditionally, the dialect used the Northumbrian burr, wherein /r/ is realised as . This is now very rare.

Dialectology

While Pitmatic was spoken by miners throughout the Great Northern Coalfield from Ashington in Northumberland to Fishburn in County Durham sources describe its particular use in the Durham collieries. Pitmatic is distinct from the traditional agricultural speech of the Wear and Tees valleys in County Durham, which is classified as part of the 'West Northern' dialect group.

According to Bill Griffiths, the emergence of Pitmatic in County Durham is closely tied to the historical spread of heavy industry southward from the lower Tyne, beginning in the northern and western parts of County Durham and subsequently extending into the eastern districts. As industrialisation progressed, the speech of Tyneside, associated with the 'North Northern' dialect group, functioned as a superstrate, particularly among mobile industrial workers and in urbanised mining communities. This Tyneside superstrate came into contact with the older County Durham substrate, resulting in a series of contact varieties.

Dictionaries and compilations

Although he did not use the term "Pitmatic", Alexander J. Ellis's seminal survey of English dialects in the late nineteenth century included the language of "Pitmen", focusing on the region "between rivers Tyne and Wansbeck" and drawing on informants from Humshaugh, Earsdon, and Backworth.

A dictionary of East Durham Pitmatic spoken in Hetton-le-Hole, compiled by Rev. Francis M. T. Palgrave, was published in 1896 and reprinted in 1997. The heritage society of nearby Houghton-le-Spring produced a list of words and phrases in 2017 collected over the preceding five years. Harold Orton compiled a corpus (dataset) of dialect forms for 35 locations in Northumberland and northern Durham, known as the Orton Corpus.

Pit Talk in County Durham, an illustrated, 90-page pamphlet by Dave Douglass, a local miner, was published in 1973. In 2007, Bill Griffiths produced a dictionary of Pitmatic where each entry includes information on a word's etymology; it was well reviewed. In an earlier work, Griffiths cited a newspaper of 1873 for the first recorded mention of the term "pitmatical".

Vocabulary

Pitmatic words and expressions include:

*alreet**alright, how are you?
*bairn**child
baitmeal eaten underground
*blaa**blow
*breed**bread
*browt**brought
byethboth
*beuk**book
*beut**boot
*cannet**cannot, can't
*canny**nice
*chods**lumps
*clag**to stick
*cyak**cake
*clarts**mud
*de**do
dinnet, dint *don't
*duds**clothes
*dunch**crash, bang together
*fyace**face
gan canny owwer the greasermind how you go
*gannin**going
*gansey**have a go
*had yer hand**hold on a minute
*heed**head
*hoggers**shorts worn by miners
hosepipe conveying compressed air
*hoss**horse
*howk**to remove or extract
*hoy**to throw
*hyem**home
*impittent**impudent
*jesting**joking
jiggervibrating trough for cleaning coal
jowlingtapping the wall or ceiling of a mine to check its condition
*keep had young'un**take care
*kets**sweets
*knaa**know
lektrishunelectrician
*lass**girl
*lugs**ears
maingateprincipal roadway in a mine
*marra**mate, friend, work-mate
myak*; myek, makmake
myestmost
*ne**no (determiner)
*netty**toilet
*nivver**never
oot-bydirection towards the mineshaft
*ower**over
*plodge**to walk through mud or water
rammelworthess stone mixed with coal
rappingtransmitting signals
*rive**to tear or rip off
*shul**shovel
skeetsguides for cages going up or down a mineshaft
*spelk**splinter
*spuggy**bird, sparrow
*speun**spoon
*syam**same
*syek**sake
tadgerelectric drill
taktake
tak hadtake hold, steady yourself (in the cage)
*thee**your
windy pickpneumatic pick
*winnet**won't
*wrang**wrong
*whe**who
ye're gettin yersel aheed o the buzzergetting above your station, being forward
*yummer**bad mood

from Houghton-le-Spring Heritage Society (2017)

Culture

In 2000, Melvyn Bragg presented a programme about Pitmatic on BBC Radio 4 as part of a series on English regional dialects.

Pitmatic is heard in parts of the second episode of Ken Loach's 1975 series Days of Hope, which was filmed around Esh Winning in Durham; the cast included local actor Alun Armstrong.

The poet, singer-songwriter and entertainer Tommy Armstrong worked mainly in Pitmatic and Geordie.{{cite news |newspaper=Darlington & Stockton Times |date=10 December 2010 |title=Detective work reveals the true coalfield bard |url=https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/8732200.detective-work-reveals-the-true-coalfield-bard/ |access-date=6 September 2024

Related forms of English

Other Northern English dialects include:

Cumbrian and Northumbrian dialects
- Geordie (spoken in Tyneside); see also Geordie dialect words
- Mackem (spoken in Wearside)
- Smoggie (spoken in Teesside)
Yorkshire and Lancashire dialects
- Scouse (spoken in Merseyside)
- Mancunian (Spoken in Manchester)

Notes

References

Redmayne, R. A. S.. (October 1903). "The Coal-Mining Industry of the United Kingdom. II: Recent Development in British Coal-Mining". Engineering Magazine.
[[Michael Sadgrove. Sadgrove, Michael]] (3 July 2005). [https://web.archive.org/web/20140523230552/http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/worshipandmusic/sermon-archive/mining-for-wisdom Mining for Wisdom] (sermon). The Ordination of Deacons. [[Durham Cathedral]]. Archived from the [http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/worshipandmusic/sermon-archive/mining-for-wisdom original] on 23 May 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
Robinson, Jonnie. (24 April 2019). "Geordie: A regional dialect of English". [[British Library]].
(1972). "The Northumbrian Burr: A Sociolinguistic Study". Lund Studies in English.
(2012). "Urban North-Eastern English: Tyneside to Teesside". [[Edinburgh University Press]].
(21 August 1885). "The New Electorate". [[The Times]].
Hitchin, George. (1962). "Pit-Yacker". [[Jonathan Cape]].
Priestly, J. B.. (1934). "English Journey". [[Harper (publisher).
(1999). "North East Dialect: Survey and Word List". The Centre for Northern Studies.
Ellis, Alexander J.. (1889). "On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Reference to Shakspere and Chaucer : Part V, Existing Dialectical as Compared to West Saxon Pronunciation". Trübner for the [[Philological Society]], the [[Early English Text Society]], and the [[New Chaucer Society.
Heslop, Richard Oliver. "Northumberland Words. A Glossary of Words Used in the County of Northumberland and on the Tyneside".
Palgrave, Rev. Francis Milnes Temple. (1896). "A List of Words and Phrases in Every-Day Use by the Natives of Hetton-Le-Hole in the County of Durham, Being Words not Ordinarily Accepted, or But Seldom Found in the Standard English of the Day". [[Oxford University Press#Henry Frowde.
(1997). "Hetton-le-Hole Pitmatic Talk 100 Years Ago: a Dialect Dictionary of 1896". Johnstone-Carr.
(January 2017). "We're Not Mackems: A Pitmatic Dictionary".
Rydland, Kurt. (January 1992). "The Orton Corpus. A collection of dialect material from the north-east of England". [[Anglia (journal).
Rydland, Kurt. (1998). "The Orton Corpus: a Dictionary of Northumbrian Pronunciation 1928-1939". [[:no:Novus forlag.
Douglass, Dave. (1973). "Pit Talk in County Durham: A Glossary of Miners' Talk together with Memories of Wardley Colliery, Pit Songs and Piliking". [[History Workshop Journal#The History Workshop movement.
Griffiths, Bill. (2007). "Pitmatic: The Talk of the North East Coalfield". [[Northumbria University]] Press.
Wainwright, Martin. (2007-07-30). "Lost language of Pitmatic gets its lexicon".
Griffiths, Bill. (2004). "A Dictionary of North East Dialect". [[Northumbria University]].
A Man on the Streets. (19 April 1873). "Amongst the People". [[Evening Chronicle#History.
"County Durham Area, Old Words and Phrases, Commonly known as Pitmatic".
Bragg, Melvyn. (23 November 2000). "Pitmatic".
Loach, Ken. (18 September 1975). "1921".
Reviewer, Young. (12 June 2013). "Review: The Bobby Thompson Story, Theatre Royal Newcastle". Chronicle Live.

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