'I will never abandon my 79-year Cumbrian dialect'

As a medley of England's dialects come together this weekend for a national festival, a woman says she "could never abandon" the mother-tongue she has spoken for nearly eight decades.

"Speaking my Cumbrian dialect is like putting a comfortable coat on," Jean Scott-Smith says.

Growing up in Shap, the 79-year-old said her first language, which derives from Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse-Irish influences, was spoken by "all of her family, friends and neighbours".

In the 1950s, she was told "to speak properly" at school and forbidden to speak in her mother-tongue. However, undeterred she is now the president of the Lakeland Dialect Society, visiting schools and encouraging Cumbrian pupils to keep the words alive.

"It takes great enthusiasm," she says, adding she "could never abandon" the "beautiful language" which remains a key part of the county's heritage.

"Cumbrian dialect is a language within a language which tells you a lot about the history of where people came from," Scott-Smith says.

She said it has Celtic influences with "very short words, like brat for apron, clout for cloth and kiln for oven".

"We also use sheep scoring numerals - how farmers would count their sheep - which go from one to 20," she said.

"The Anglo-Saxons gave us ingham and ington which are place names, ton means town and ham means hamlet," Scott-Smith said.

The town of Workington which means the "town of people, originating from someone named Work", while Addingham, "means the hamlet of people coming from someone called Addi", she explains.

"But the greatest influence for the Cumbrian dialect of all was from the Norse-Irish, who gave us words such as fell for mountain, beck for stream, force for waterfall.

"We have a very close relationship with Icelandic - it is wonderful," Scott-Smith said.

Marnie Calvert, historic environment assistant for the Lake District National Park Authority, said when Norse settlers came to the area they built several churches and stone monuments.

Calvert said they introduced a new way of farming known as "hefting" with Herdwick sheep, which was when sheep "instinctually graze on a certain area of land due to generational learning" and which still survives in Cumbrian flocks today.

She said there is also "one word above all that defines Cumbrian dialect" - "scrow" which means "an untidy mess".

"I still live in the same house I was born - a dialect-speaking household - so the language is my identity and it feels comfortable to me," Scott-Smith said.

Scott-Smith said she drew inspiration from her mother to join the society, who attended from its inaugural meeting in 1939.

"We did not have a television so I would sit and read dialect stories and poems as entertainment," she said.

The society works to preserve Cumbrian words in which "town and country folk talk, sing and recite poetry, in the dialect of the Lakeland region".

Its members are competing in a national dialect festival this weekend in Bradford.

"It's usually quite a lively carry on - everyone has the same purpose to preserve and give spotlights to their dialect," Scott-Smith said.

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