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Why do Sheffielders call sweets "Spice"


abigaler

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As a kid in Scotland, sweets were sweeties, and sherbert was kelly! Pop was lemonade - didn't matter what flavour, you'd get orange or cherry 'lemonade'! Lemonade was 'plain' lemonade.

 

Loads of different words for everyday things, even pronunciation is different. I always say scone to rhyme with on, here people say it to rhyme with moan. Neither is wrong. I've been in South Yorks for 30+ years, and I've only really been confused once. Some folk use 'our' in front of every family member's name. I once thought a colleague had a daughter called Ann Marie, months later I realised she was called 'our (pronounced aar) Marie'!

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Many people will know that Sheffield used to be spoken of as the “Largest village in England” due to its isolation in years gone by. I have often wondered if our dialect has it’s roots in early English and has changed slower than in other parts of England due to fewer outside influences?

 

What do people think?

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As a kid, I used to buy "spice fish" at the open market. I could never recapture the taste, until on my last visit to Sheffield I bought a bag of "Yorkshire mixtures" which had some fish in it, and they did taste the same.

Alas, in Queensland heat & humidity, I had to eat them quickly, before they went sticky and melted

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When I first came to Sheffield, I got lost and an old boy gave me directions which included going through a jennell. It was only later I found he meant an alleyway. Similarly I was totally confused at being offered spice - I thought it must be some weird local custom to carry around nutmeg, or cinnamon or something of that ilk. As for working out what on earth a breadcake was, or trying to get an ordinary fishcake and chips for my tea .....!

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Moving fm Sheffield to Leicester 1946,I was the kid always stood in front of the class to tell one of my many many learnt poem's,with not only Sheffield accent but a very rough one.The class then sat for 1-2hrs to try and decypher my English.Ialways remember my mother sending me to shop for some soop what sort of soop iwas asked tomata soop,Nor silly bugger big block green soop ya wash clo'e or kids we'n.

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it relates most likely to the initial concept of delicacies made from "spices" as the original sweets of the early era's were made from cinnamon, liquorice sticks,etc. obviously imported spices & not the sweet sugared items we know today as confectionary.

as the only intelligent race in the Uk, Sheffielders decided to maintain the term as the correct historical terminology.

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On the subject of "Spice", I've got an original Willy Wonka CD Soundtrack up on ebay this week (!) (tenuous link, but what the hell)

 

Come on folks - it's on at 99p is sealed and is from the original version and not the Tim Burton "remake" / interpretation from last year.

 

See it here...

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4828504728

 

It's scrumdiddlyumptious!

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