The presence or absence of any realisation of the definite article in Yorkshire dialects (Letters, 26 May) depends on which part of the county you’re talking about. An article in Leeds Studies in English in 1952 was the first to map the fact that in the local dialect of Hull and surrounding areas there is no definite article at all. A friend who grew up in Hull said that, when learning to read, she was intrigued by this little word “the” that didn’t exist in her speech. She mastered it and learned to use it correctly in writing, and her adult speech featured the standard versions, /ðə/ before a consonant phoneme and /ði/ before a vowel phoneme.
Greg Brooks
Emeritus professor of education, University of Sheffield
• As a Lancastrian, may I say that Yorkie Jeremy Muldowney ’its nail right on th’ead (Letters, 25 April). The conventional use of t’ to represent a northern glottal-stopped definite article in front of a consonant bears no resemblance to the actual sound, irritates many northerners and can be a source of confusion to everyone else.
A good example is in the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind, set in the Ribble valley, when London-born and Guildhall-trained actor Elsie Wagstaff, knowing the t’ should not be pronounced as written, omits the glottal stop altogether and shouts to Bernard Lee: “Are yer goin’ to pub?” It’s a horrible false note in an otherwise perfect film.
Michael Pyke
Lichfield, Staffordshire
• The Yorkshire t’ can indeed be a source of confusion. I remember the time when I left my hotel in Leeds to go out for a meal, asking the receptionist in passing to rectify a housekeeping oversight and to ensure that towels were put in my room. When I got back, it was full of birds.
Jem Whiteley
Oxford
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