Competition time part II

OK, how about all the stuff they talk about whilst down the mine?

Ok I think Ive got it. Its like PitYak is the coal face! Yackas or Pit Yackas are the miners working at the coal face down a mine?

Is that it or am I still going?

You're swaying around the correct answer, but you're so close now it's making me cringe!

I can't bear the excitement!

We have a winner.

Mack, you sure you didn't tell him?

---

OK, here we go; explanation and bit of history.

England, and particularly the north east borders from whence I hail, is very territorial, far more than someone who has spent their whole life here could probably grasp. Fair enough, North Islanders have a dig at South Islanders, and Wellingtonians will always laugh at the dork-landers and vice versa, but in my neck of the woods it's orders of magnitude worse.

We have been a tribal society for thousands of years, and despite what people will tell you, the borders are still pretty much the same. We have families who have never moved from the same village since that village first appeared. Feuds and wars between neighbouring villages are commonplace, and while we tend not to ride off in the night to rustle the neighbours cattle any longer, there is always low key, generally amicable (but not always) hostility to "foreigners". Now by foreigners we mean someone who may live less than two mile away, whose house is actually visible from yours. Add to this the fact we are the buffer between England and Scotland, were under attack from both for hundreds of years and you have a culture who are very mistrustful of outsiders. My part of the world has more castles and forts per square mile than anywhere else in the world for example; everything from iron age hill forts, to year 0 ruins, to keeps built by William the conqueror's cronies, still lived in by the inbred descendants of the original owners. An old Northumbrian joke goes;

Lord rides up to a poacher on his land
"I say, what are you doing on my land?"
"Your land? Why's it your land"
"My ancestors fought for it!"
"Tell you what, I'll fight you for it…"

(One small town, Berwick, which sits directly on the border, is still technically at war with Russia, but that's a different tale).

So where was I? Small towns, small minded population with small horizons. Although I moved to the exact opposite end of the world, I would never have considered moving to Blyth, which is the opposite bank of the river my village sits on. Ashington at a push, they're at least on my side, but never Blyth!

All this insularity leads to the development of unique dialects. Not just accents, but dialects.That is we don't just pronounce words differently, we use different words altogether (I use words that are actually Norse / Norwegian rather than English for instance - the Vikings decided our area was great for a spot of rape and pillage). Now I realise someone from Gore will probably sound different to someone from Auckland say, but the dialects I am talking about are unique to areas about two mile across. I had an old uncle whose house I could see from my bedroom window, and I had trouble understanding him.

My little wee home "town" had been an industrial area for hundreds of years; incredibly early iron works, some of the first trains and rail tracks were made there, and ultimately coalmines, none of which have existed since before I was born. So it's a pit village. Folk from outside of the village would take the piss out of our dialect, calling it "pityak", and us "pityakas".

So there you go. Pityak is a derogatory term for my dialect, a term which would be completely unheard of if you were to travel more than five mile from pityak territory.

---

Let me know what size shirt you want, I'll send it off (when I get them that is, which should be next week).

You really wanted that shirt didn't you?

...and you'll do anything for a free t-shirt!

If anyone else would like one, I'll let members have them at cost, which will be about $10- $15.

do we get to see this fabled garment of heros?

i've got one of those mesh sunvisors for me bus. don't know if it'll go on yet. that's months doon the line!

erm. don't have a photo, or even a t-shirt ;D

I'm busy discussing prices / numbers with a couple of local printers at the moment.

It's looking like black shirts with "http://www.pityak.com" on the front, and possibly a backprint depending on cost.

It's funny, they keep trying to baffle me with science. I've got a BSc (hons) and DipHEd in textiles, and my first job was running the largest textile printing plant in Europe ;D