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"Littler grew up in the 1970s, in suburban Manchester, where he remembers being “always scared, always frightened of what I was faced with.”" I lived in Manc i
by gerdesj 5y ago
"Littler grew up in the 1970s, in suburban Manchester, where he remembers being “always scared, always frightened of what I was faced with.”"
I lived in Manc in 1977 - Wythenshawe to be a bit more precise. I was seven so a little young to be scared about much that I could articulate coherently. It was the Queen's Silver Jubilee year and summer seemed to last forever. I loved going to school (!) "Button Lane Infant's". The mums in our area organised a rota of four mums at a time to walk around 20-30 odd kids to school - about three miles or so for me and my brother. On the walk we whittered on endlessly and I remember we played a game where the world was made of sweets and discussed it. You'd be surprised what interests a seven year old to the point they can recall it aged 52.
Manc in the 1970s was a bit of a grey place. I do remember a lot of concrete and a lot of dog shit. However, where we lived there was lots of impromptu footie on the field near the allotments, behind some really crappy concrete garages, lots of bike riding and generally having a great time. I spent a few days in Wythenshawe hospital, to have the grommits removed from inside my ears that were put in by army surgeons in Rinteln (West Germany). Forty odd years later, I read in New Scientist article that "glue ear" is a bit of a dodgy diagnosis. I do have tinnitus probably due to surgery but it isn't that bad. I recall a smell of boiled cabbages and the walls being green. The nurses were lovely.
I could go on but that's more than enough.
Anyway, Scarfolk isn't really that much of a pastiche. My main complaint is with the name! It combines two English town naming parts but Scar- is mostly seen in the north and -folk is mainly seen in the south. Scarfield, Scarthorpe or Grenfolk or do the job properly and go for a really weird English name: Ryme Intrinsica, Hatch Beauchamp, Chew Magna and Curry Rivel are all near me. The name Scarfolk is quite obviously wrong Even so I can tell you how to pronounce it, if you are not too familiar with English place names. It is a bit like "Skaffuck" - you run both syllables into each other and folk loses the l sound. The final k sound is softened too - I put fuck in because it is a fairly well understood syllable.
- gerdesj 5y agoI'm just getting started on how we pronounce place names! A few years back I went skiing in Banff (Alberta, Canada). Near there is Norquay which I pronounced as Norkey as in Torquay. Nope it's: Norrkway or perhaps Nork-kway. That's fair enough - the locals can call their place whatever they like and I can damn well like it or bugger off. The thing is that the place was clearly named by people from these parts but the language has changed and moved on. Here in the UK, Norquay means North Quay. I have no idea what Norquay means in Canada - is it just a legacy name. Here in the UK we have legacy names too. For example River Avon - Avon means river in several Brythonic languages (Afon). The land that contains the modern UK has been done over quite a few times by all sorts of well organised interlopers - Vikings (lads doing the vik), Romans (Senatus PopulusQue Romani), more viking types now called Normans and with a thin veneer of respectability thanks to duffing up Normandy and settling.
- smcl 5y agoNorquay/Norkway reminds me of quite a few places in North America where the original pronunciation gets mangled, like Versailles in Kentucky (pron. "Versaylz"). It's not just a US thing though, you mentioned River Avon ("ay-von", if I'm not mistaken) - there's a mountain in Scotland called Ben Avon which is pronounced "Ben Ahn".
- gerdesj 5y agoAfon/avon means river in Welsh. The Ben Avon thing is likely an accident of transliteration. I known "Ben" means mountain in Scottish (Gallic). The Brythonic languages - Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and I think there's one in Brittany (Franch). Those are the still living ones and as well as those there is a Cornish revival and languages such as Cumbric which only now live on in counting numbers. That lot is the, if you like, the old, original languages of Britain. Britain here means the lands of the Britons which also includes lesser Britain as well as Great Britain, which is northern France - Brittany. So, although we have the johnny come lately English language, which is only about 1500 years old, we also have the far older languages here in the UK. All of those languages have fed and fed off each other. The Brythonics have taken on the Roman alphabet in their own distinct way as has English. It is all too easy for us anglophones to forget that the alphabet we use was not invented here (Latin), nor was the term alphabet (aleph-beth - Hebrew I think). English is often described as the lingua franca - "language of the Franks" or French! Lingua Franca is a hangover from the days of the Holy Roman empire.
- ed_elliott_asc 5y agoI live near a village called “Horsted Keynes” pronounced “Horsted Cains” - thought it was odd but found an old map from 1750ish and that has it written as “Horsted Cains” - somewhere along the line the name must have changed but the locals kept calling it by the old name and it has stuck. Before we moved here my wife phoned up the local pub trying to reserve a table and said “are you in horsted keens “ the lady quickly, and quite sharply, corrected her “it is pronounced cains” - so I can see why it has stayed, the locals can be quite terse about it and generally always correct people.
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- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoNot a pastiche at all. And the BBC kept at it for decades. This is fairly recent. https://youtu.be/WqsjYYrrmiI?t=5682 https://youtu.be/WqsjYYrrmiI?t=5682 (Warning: graphic!)
- andybak 5y agoJesus Christ.
- ed_elliott_asc 5y agoI had glue ear when I was a baby, I couldn’t hear anything around the age of three - had gromits put in (which fell out by themselves) and I could hear. I don’t remember much but do remember driving home from the hospital and hearing a whistling sound from an open window that scared me. Until around 4 I could lip read, wish it was something I collect still do!
- T786373478 5y agoI suspect that growing up in the Manchester area in the 70s was the inspiration both for the wonderful Beasley Street by John Cooper Clarke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37QUUwp9xIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37QUUwp9xIs and for Frightened by Mark E Smith (The Fall): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4dP43KWaSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4dP43KWaSU