Do Sheffield kids still say 'thee' and 'thou'?

I've been away from Sheffield for nearly 40 years (and away from England for twenty), and I was wondering if Sheffield kids today still say 'thee' and 'thou' and use plenty of dialect as my generation used to do when we were kids, or whether the dialect is losing ground due to the more standard English of TV?

40 years ago people said children, no kids...

Thanks, but I wasn't asking what they called kids 40 years ago. I was asking whether kids today use dialect as much as we did.

Hallo Beery and welcome back. I work with 16-19 year olds and there are a fair few who still use some of the old Sheffield pronunciation of words. "Eead" for "head" is quite common, as is "Gi' 'oer" and "Nar den". It has no place in street slang, though and is only really used by white kids from working class backgrounds and often in a joking way. I love to hear it and hope it never dies out.

Thanks, but I wasn't asking what they called kids 40 years ago. I was asking whether kids today use dialect as much as we did.

Kid is a horrible Americanism such as movie.

Depends where you are in Sheffield, there are some places where the use (sorry, I should say usage) of thee and thou is still widespread, others where it's completely died off.

i use it when i get angry for some reason

I lived in Wolverhampton as a kid (after I moved from Sheffield) and everyone there used 'kid', as in "Ow yauw doin' arkid". It may be an Americanism, but it was deeply entrenched in the West Midlands in the 1970s. Anyway, the word 'kid' comes from Old Norse, so it's hardly something that the Yanks made up after 1776.

The American rhotic accent (the heavily pronounced 'R') is also an Americanism, but it's also closer to the original English that was spoken 200 years ago. Also, the rhotic accent only died out from Yorkshire in the last 100 years - in the 19th century folks from West Yorkshire rolled their 'R's with as much gusto as any Texan, Ohioan or Californian.

So some of those 'horrible Americanisms' have more of a pedigree (and more of a claim to be 'proper English) than do many words in modern British English. It might surprise folks to know that 'Fall', as in the Autumn season, is a Yorkshire term that went out of usage in England, but which the Americans retained. Many words that are now seen as 'horrible Americanisms' are actually old English words that have simply gone out of favour in England.

H.L. Mencken wrote, in "The American Language":

"...when an artificial prudery in English ordered the abandonment of the Anglo-Saxon sick for the Old Norse ill(r, the colonists refused to follow, for sick was in both the Old Testament and the New; 46 and that refusal remains in force to this day.

A very large number of words and phrases, many of them now exclusively American, are similar survivals from the English of the seventeenth century, long since obsolete or merely provincial in England. Among nouns Thornton notes fox-fire, flap-jack, jeans, molasses, beef (to designate the live animal), chinch, cordwood, home-spun, ice-cream, julep and swingle-tree; Halliwell 47 adds andiron, bay-window, cesspool, clodhopper, cross-purposes, greenhorn, loop-hole, ragamuffin and trash; and other authorities cite stock (for cattle), fall (for autumn), offal, din, underpinning and adze. Bub, used in addressing a boy, is very old English, but survives only in American. Flapjack goes back to Piers Plowman, but has been obsolete in England for two centuries. Muss, in the sense of a row, is also obsolete over there, but it is to be found in “Anthony and Cleopatra.” Char, as a noun, disappeared from English a long time ago, save in the compound, charwoman, but it survives in America as chore. Among the verbs similarly preserved are to whittle, to wilt and to approbate. To guess, in the American sense of to suppose, is to be found in “Henry VI”:

Not all together; better far, I guess,

That we do make our entrance several ways.

In “Measure for Measure” Escalus says “I guess not” to Angelo. The New English Dictionary offers examples much older—from Chaucer, Wycliffe and Gower. To interview is in Dekker. To loan, in the American sense of to lend, is in 34 and 35 Henry VIII, but it dropped out of use in England early in the eighteenth century, and all the leading dictionaries, both in English and American, now call it an Americanism. 48 To fellowship, once in good American use but now reduced to a provincialism, is in Chaucer. Even to hustle, it appears, is ancient. Among adjectives, homely, which means only homelike or unadorned in England, was used in its American sense of plain-featured by both Shakespeare and Milton. Other such survivors are burly, catty-cornered, likely, deft, copious, scant and ornate. Perhaps clever also belongs to this category, that is, in the American sense of amiable."

So, if we are to err on the side of conservatism in language, we must take the American side, for it is American English that has changed least, and perhaps Americans would be justified in calling certain of our words and phrases 'horrible Britishisms': the word 'pan', for example, is (although an old word) a horrible Britishism - I much prefer the American (and just as old) 'skillet'.

But I've never heard an American have anything less than reverence for British English. If only the same could be said of English folks, many of whom (including myself when I was younger and more ignorant) scorn American usage and the American accent, not knowing that they are, in effect, scorning the usage and the accent of their own great great great grandparents.

Kid is no way an Americanism. When I wor a lad (OK then, a kid) in the very late 40s and all through the 50s, almost everybody's brother (especially, dare I say, in more working class families than ours) was known by his sibling(s) as 'our kid.' I was brung in in Donny, where it was certainly used, but from memory it was even more prevalent in Leeds, where I often visited.

Certainly, in our household, my sister and I were always referred to by our parents, when talking about us to other people, as 'the kids.'

Talking of Sheffield dialect (such as: 'Dee gi'oer' translates as 'Would you kindly refrain from doing that'), wasn't there a book around at one time entitled: "Teach thissen Sheffield"?

I was born in an era where "thee and thou" were part of everyday speech, not in derogatory terms, working men used it in their everyday lives whether it be in the steel or cutlery industries.

Admittedly, when at home the mothers of the households would attempt to tone it down in front of the children as it was considered to be "working language" so, during my childhood during the late 40's/50's/60's it was going out of fashion you might say. I suppose it was also a sign of the times that industries were changing too as we all know that they did quite drastically.

Nowadays, when I'm in the city centre and I hear younger people in a group I'm amazed that the language is not of Sheffield origin, it's more of a "street culture" slang, a combination of many origins just as I suppose the population of Sheffield is now.

I've a relative in his 60's who uses the Sheffield dialect all the time, finds it difficult not to and he says he feels like an alien when he's in town!

I was also born in the late 40's and I was my older brother's "our kid"!

Duffems

Darn, somebody stole my thunder about 'kid'.

Well, at least somebody on here speaks some sense. Nice one Beery.