community tales

I've been spending some time skimming the wonderful things on offer at the Community Projects section of Tomorrow's History " the regional local studies site for the North East of England". (via bifurcated rivets)
Definitely a site to return to and explore slowly, but some highlights to date include:

The Durham Dialect Project led to their website, which includes a dialect quiz (in frames). See Puzzles and Games/Caal my dialect Bluff.

The Bewick Collection of Watercolour and Pencil Drawings 1760 to 1849
The Natural History Society of Northumbria
Quadrapeds

and some harrowing reading In the Shadow The Foot and Mouth Outbreak in West Durham

I kind of think humans get what they deserve somehow. We’ve made the mess, so we should suffer a wee bit. The most poignant things for me are with the animals. A calf that was born that morning and its mother’s just finished licking it off and then you come along and do what you have to do or what you’re told to, anyway. But then, the last farm I was at, the farmer obviously suffered with his nerves (from The Cull - 3)

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Comments: community tales

A few months ago, inspired by a photo on junk for code (http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/)of a particularly ugly building, I went to the website for my English home town. Only to discover that actually my family speaks dialect. I grew up with it, and my father still speaks it. And my gran, who was once recorded on cassette, has another dialect. I prefer it because its a nice west country burr which was disappearing from Hampshire as she grew older. I don't have either of them because I was raised to reach up to the middle classes. But then, I really speak Adelaide anyway.. its an odd thing.
Posted by David Tiley at January 30, 2004 02:20 AM

Ad'laide is indeed an odd dialect.
Hope that doesn't disappear.
Always good to be able to quickly identify any croweaters in the crowd ;)
Posted by boynton at January 30, 2004 12:16 PM

Have to, or we will make off with the silver. SA is to Melbourne as NZ is to Sydney. Except we are smaller than maoris and smugger than pakehah..
Posted by David Tiley at January 30, 2004 05:09 PM