Don’t get your kegs, keks and kex in a twist | Letters

By Guardian Staff · The Guardian Opinion

Readers respond to Zahaan Bharmal’s experience of getting to grips with the Yorkshire dialect Zahaan Bharmal’s observation on the north-south pronunciation divide ( Could we be about to see the end of northern English dialects? My experience – and the science – says aye, 23 September ) is neatly corroborated in Rosie Webb’s otherwise delightfully rhyming children’s book Chimpanzees in Dungarees: reading aloud to our grandchildren, my Mancunian partner is forced to southernise the page about “gir-ar-ffes in scarfs”. A dozen miles from Webb’s Bristol base is a place that exemplifies the third, south-western variant: the long “aa” sound. I mean Bath, aka Baaff or Barth. The cities are close, but one is posh, the other not so much. Tony Benjamin Bristol • Please inform Mr Bharmal that up here in t’north as every Yorkshire (and Derbyshire) man knows, kegs can only store beer and the like. But kex is an umbelliferous flower to be seen while strolling through a meadow wearing your keks. Stuart Garside New Mills, Derbyshire Continue reading...