What is Cumberland and Westmorland dialect?

Driving yam for Christmas? I’m not. Not this year.🚗

Yam is Cumberland and Westmorland dialect for home.

As garn yam means I’m going home.

I love my home dialect. It’s so colourful. I sometimes find standard English variants don’t cut the mustard and don’t quite mean what I want to say.

Take waffy.

You could substitute the standard English equivalent of wobbly, but it doesn’t quite mean the same thing.

A waffy ladder probably just has a bit of a lean, not a full-on wobble.

To feel waffy, you’re not outright ill. Just under the weather.

Ratch is another. Search doesn’t quite mean the same thing. When you ratch through a drawer to find a safety pin, there’s sort of an element of sorting and sifting.

But you can also go for a ratch, or a neb, when you’re in a new place – getting your bearings, your whereabouts, having a look.

So, as not garn yam for Christmas this year. I’ll stay in Lancashire instead, my adopted county.

I don’t hear quite as much dialect around here. Just lots of talk about butter pie! Lancashire folk: are you all just very well-spoken, or am I not mixing with the right people to get a flavour of your dialect? Educate me. I’d love to know.