Posted by PeterH on June 04, 2006 at 09:06:33 from 86.130.138.74 user Peter_H.
I’m just halfway through Swallowdale yet again. There’s lots to comment on in this fascinating book. For a start, in Ch III there’s Mr Dixon’s way of speaking, and by coincidence on another thread I pointed out yesterday that in Ireland ‘grand’ is used to mean ‘fine’, ‘excellent’, marvellous etc, as well as ‘big’ or ‘important’. Of course, ‘grand’ also has (or had) the first meaning in the far north-west of England, and so we have Mr Dixon saying ‘It bids fair to be a grand day’. This I translate as ‘It promises to be quite a fine day’ in modern parlance. A few sentences earlier, Mrs D, when encouraging Mr D to go and talk to the Swallows, says ‘they’re nobbut childer’. ‘Nobbut’ is dialect for ‘nothing but’, but what about ‘childer’? I am surprised Ed has not queried this word (perhaps he has?). This seems an unusual plural, but apparently it is a much earlier plural form of ‘child’. ‘The modern ‘children’ is a ‘double plural’ – child-er-en. So old Mr D, and other Lake locals presumably, were still using the simple plural which was basically Old English. I wonder if they still are?