Back of my hand

Now write a whole story with a first person narrator like that!
And anyone remember Joseph in Wuthering Heights? Almost incomprehensible!
And then there's:
Chap sez t'me cantow sing? Ah sez sing? E sez Aye. Ah sez Oo? E sez Thee. Ah sez Me? E says Aye. Ah sez No. E sez Oh!

flopsy, I like the way you start off in cockney and end up in broadest Yorkshire. You can always spot the real thing of course, rather than a southerner, like myself, masquerading as a northerner! Though I did live in Yorkshire for three years and I discovered something priceless. Mushy peas!! I had never eaten them before going oop north and unlike a well known politician I didn't confuse them with guacamole either. With chips in a butty they was a reet treat lass!

PS I don't think the back of my hand has anything much to do with spanking. No more than the southern equivalent "a smack in the mahf".

This is fantastic, especially since we Canadians do not have accents. Before I went to the U.K last summer I asked the guys at work if I had an accent, and they all said, "Accent? No way, eh."

Rap

Canadians don't have accents? I think everyone has an accent of some sort, Rap. Even members of the royal family have accents, although posh accents of course!

Ah but don't forget blimp, we are talking a Canadian dinosaur here... they are prob very well travelled and therefore have no discernible accent

Ps I don't really have an accent

Ach Lassie, ah dinnae believe that! Surely yons tha wifey frae bonnie Scotland? I am sure I remember you discussing birch trees in the Highlands on another thread! If you have lived up there a while small things become "wee" , potatoes "tatties" and children "bairns". I should know I once spent two back breaking weeks picking "tatties" in my student days. Slave labour it was too! I think it was 50p an hour, and when I complained to the farmer about the miserly wages he laughed and said I wasn't worth even half that! Since then I have always avoided manual labour wherever possible!

I will admit to saying aye a fair amount, oh and tatties yes, oh and wee too... hmm I am seeing a trend here

Picking tatties would be hard work and 50p and hour is shocking, I would have paid you 10p :p See I do have Scottish tendencies... been up here 5 years now, it rubs off

The October school holiday in Scotland used to be known as the tattie howkin' (potato picking) week. It was to allow the children of farmers to help with that task, and of course, those of us who were not from farming families could earn extra pocket-money. To my mind it wasn't worth the sore back and frozen fingers!

Manual Labour? Didn't he play left back for Madrid?

My oh my, I didn't think they had invented tatties when you was ickle Linda

Ok, for the sake of my gingercake... sorry

This is beginning to remind me of the old Monty Python sketch in which they start saying how hard life was, and each subsequent story gets progressively more ridiculous!
My father's family come from Yorkshire, and he spoke with a Yorkshire accent all his long life, despite having left in his twenties.
Being brought up in the deep south I have no trace at all and friends where very surprised when I informed them proudly of my northern working class antecedents -Howarth Mill a few generations ago!
As well as being taught Ilkley Moor at a young age, I well remember another northern saying my Dad used to say.
"Doctor, doctor, will I die.-Yes my son and so shall I."
It was many years before I fully understood the wisdom of this.
Personally I prefer pea fritters to mushy peas. In my boyhood we bought 6 of chips and a pea fritter after cubs and scouts.