\n But if they had been joined by a third man from north of the Humber they would have found him incomprehensible, neither would he have understood them.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Rev Robert Forby (1759-1825) who wrote a Vocabulary of East Anglia was born at Stoke Ferry, went to school at King\u2019s Lynn, became a Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, and then returned as a clergyman to the same district which he sprang and spent of his life as Rector of Fincham.\n<\/p>\n
\n He is just one of the many great characters, from all walks of life, written about by Jonathan Mardle (Eric Fowler) in his delightful book Broad Norfolk published by Wensum Books and edited by George Nobbs, which was published several times in 1973 because it kept selling out.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dew yew make him dew as you dew (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n And it was brought to life by the brilliant cartoons from his collaborator, Joe Lee, who illuminated the Eastern Daily Press with his political cartoons.\n<\/p>\n
\n And as the author wrote: “My first acknowledgement must be to the Eastern Daily Press, for which I have written for more than 40 years \u2013 thus gaining the experience of Norfolk on which much of this book is based.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Turn the pages of this book, which became more important as the years roll by, and we meet some great Norfolk characters and the stories are brought alive by the illustrations.\n<\/p>\n
\n This book is devoted to our county \u2013 the people, the places, and the way we spoke and lived our lives.\n<\/p>\n
\n That dorn’t come noo more\u00a0 ‘n halfway up our master’s\u00a0 ducks (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n And in the final chapter he asks: Can Broad Norfolk Survive?\n<\/p>\n
\n “I should like true Norfolk to survive because of its expressive vocabulary and vivid turn of phrase \u2013 so much more vigorous (and honest) than the gobbledegook of the bureaucrats and sociologists, with which we are nowadays so smothered that the language itself is in danger of losing its meaning,” writes Jonathan.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The English country dialects, if they do indeed remain alive, may well because the last repository \u2013 outside of old books \u2013 of good plain English.\n<\/p>\n
\n “And yet I feel uncomfortable when people talk of \u2018preserving\u2019 Broad Norfolk, and organise competitions in speaking dialect.\n<\/p>\n
\n A gotch of beer for the bell ringers (Image: Supplied)\n<\/p>\n
\n “I ask myself whether when a dialect becomes so self-conscious, it can possibly remain a genuine dialect and not an affection,” he says.\n<\/p>\n
\n “As time moves on and the way we live our lives in this “high-tech” world continue to change apace, books like this, which was the third in the Broad Norfolk series, become more important.\n<\/p>\n
\n “And goodness knows what Mr Mardle would think of the gobbledegook we hear today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But if they had been joined by a third man from north of the Humber they would have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-193396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}