nunoncastors

Few people realise this, occasionally I’m thought to be from London or somewhere similarly southern but I am, for want of a better description, “a Nottingham lad” and all that that entails. Well, not all that it entails, I’ve never been involved in gun crime or any of the other stereotypes related to my fair city. I’m a good boy, me.

Still, I am from Nottingham and, apparently, in possession of the most difficult accent in the land to imitate. I’d never really considered this until I read May Contain Notts’s post over at – well, May Contain Notts. My mother, you see, is from Radford while my father is from Carlton Hill. They are “proper Nottn’m” as these things are reckoned for my father calls people “youth” while my mum tends towards “duck” and they’re both prone to greeting people with “ey-up” and talking “rammel”.

I, however, am not. Well, I talk “rammel”, that’s a given, but the rest? Not so much. And the reason for this? It’s because I was born and raised south of the river in Ruddington, out beyond Bread and Lard Island and on the way to Bunny. You see, there is a curious lingual divide in Nottingham that follows the course of the Trent. So, while my parents are undoubtedly “proper Nottn’m”, I sound like someone from far, far away and scarcely ever say “bokkle” or “sucker”, though I am occasionally “nesh”.

That isn’t to say I don’t know what people are on about when they say things like, “We s’ll ay to do it ussens.” Obviously I do, I just don’t talk like that myself, I’ve never spoken like that in fact. I am used to hearing it however, and I do understand what’s being said. I can appreciate that many do not.

So, any of you folk who are curious as to what we folk from Nottn’m sound like, have a chike at this.