Wednesday 24 March 2010

'Ard wok? Yeah, but worth mekkin' the effort, me duck

Still on a historical theme, I read this at the weekend.

I'm always wary of Hollywood versions of Robin Hood (well, I'm wary of pretty much any adaptation, be it TV or film or whatever), but I really can't wait to see this film now. Honestly. It'll be good to hear an attempt at an East Midlands accent. In the past, on the rare occasions that a TV programme has been set in the region, everybody's spoken like Brummies (Steve Coogan's Saxondale is the honourable exception). The prospect of England's greatest folk hero greeting his outlaw band with a gruff "ay up, me ducks" is too good to miss.*

I am sightly baffled by some of the pronunciations they mention. 'Corp' for 'cup'? No, and 'Noddinham' doesn't sound right, either. More like 'Nottnum', I'd have said. Still, 'tekking' is dead right, and hopefully they'll remember to drop their aitches and shorten all their vowels to ridiculous extremes. 'Wok' for work.** 'Oss' for horse, etc. And of course, they'll have to refer to their ill-gotten victuals as their 'snap'. Kudos to Crowe for even trying, though. I'll be first in the queue to see it.

* The comments thread, predictably, gets into the old Nottinghamshire vs Yorkshire debate. But we all know he was really from Leicestershire, don't we?

** Essential in terrible joke usually only intelligible to people from Whitwick (Johnny Wong's is the Chinese takeaway in the Market Place)...
"Have you heard? They're laying people off at Johnny Wong's."
"Really?"
"Yeah, they've got no wok."

2 comments:

Kirk Wisebeard said...

surely it should be woth mekkin the effort....

Matt Merritt said...

Yer right, youth.