Yorkshire Slang

How's your Yorkshire slang?

Ey up! If you move to Huddersfield from outside of the UK, or even outside of West Yorkshire, then you will probably find that some of the local words and phrases take some getting used to - as well as the accent!

It might take a few weeks, but soon you'll know your 'bagsy' (to claim something) from your 'butty' (sandwich), and your 'fettling' (thorough tidying) from your 'flippin' eck!' (to show surprise).

And living in Huddersfield, of course, you'll never have reason to get mardy (be annoyed)!

We asked a few of our students to tell us some of the new phrases they learnt whilst studying here.

See how many you know.

'Ginnel'

"One word I had never heard of was 'ginnel' which is used to refer to something that I would call an 'alleyway'. If you still don’t know what I mean, this is a cut-through or passageway," Rhianne, a final year Mechanical Engineering student told us.

"This might not seem like such a common word that you would come across, but in my first year when staying in halls, there was a cut-through that everybody used to get to the bus stop. This prompted a heated discussion amongst my flatmates in the first week as to what it actually should be called…we agreed to disagree!"

'Lads and lasses'

"Words you will hear a lot are 'lads and lasses' to refer to boys and girls/men and women/groups of people respectively. This is obvious, but where I’m from the word 'lasses' is not generally used and is more of a Yorkshire thing."

Flamborough, East Riding of Yorkshire

'Nowt, owt'

"Other more common words would be 'nowt' and 'owt', meaning 'nothing' and 'anything'. For example: 'Do you want owt from t’ shop?," Rhianne added.

"You can see in this sentence as well 'the' is commonly dropped from a sentence and just a 'T' sound is used. This is also done in place of 'to'. Eg: 'I’m off t’ shop.'"

'Reyt / reight / reet'

"The word 'right' or 'reyt' is often used and basically just means 'very'. Eg: 'That’s not reyt good' = 'that’s not very good'.

'Eh?'

"One thing that I have picked up from living in Huddersfield is saying 'eh?," said Rhianne.

"I’m not sure that this is such a good habit to pick up, but I don’t mind too much. This is something you would probably say in place of 'what?', when expressing confusion or disbelief."

Scarborough, North Yorkshire

Aqsa, a final year Computer Science student, originally from Rochdale had some other slang words for the list.

'Tea', 'eck', 'butty' and 'aye'

"When I started studying at the University of Huddersfield there was a range of words that I didn't understand. The most common words being 'tea' instead of 'dinner'. Then there was 'eck' being used for 'goodness me'; 'butty', meaning sandwich, and 'aye', as another way of saying yes.

"I am always open to learning new slang words and enjoyed learning them from others. I often had to ask people to explain the words and before I knew it, I actually started using them."

Knaresborough, North Yorkshire

Knackered

Knackered, meaning 'tired' really stood out to Onalie, a student from Sri Lanka.

Y’alright?

'Y’alright?' which can mean both ‘how are you?’ and ‘hello’, was also new to Onalie.

Advice to new students moving to Huddersfield

"Whilst I understood the meaning of these words, I’d not really heard anybody actually use them before in conversation until moving to Yorkshire", said Rhianne.

"You will also come to the realisation that a lot of the words and phrases that you use are actually local to where you’re from - and nobody will know what you’re on about!

"Be prepared to spend the first couple of weeks learning new words from across regions and teaching other people about yours!"

Marsden, West Yorkshire

Thinking about studying in Huddersfield? Read Drama student Joseph’s blog about why he loves studying in Yorkshire.

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