Talk:Northumbria

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There is a slight mistake in this article. The modern Northumbria region (as used by the tourist board) is primarily Northumberland and County Durham. Cumbria is in North-West England (but does border Northumberland and Co. Durham).

Cumbria was however part of Northumbria for a short while in betwewen being part of Rheged and later Strathclyde Penrithguy 23:12, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

In the modern use of "Northumbria" it is non-inclusive of Cumbria, which is counted as Northwest England and not Northeast England/Northumbria.

Contents

[edit] Flag

Can someone give me more details aboput this blue and white cross flag? I have only ever seen the yellow and red flag flying? It is flown quite widely, and is also used even more frequently as a car sticker. I have no recollection of ever seeing the cross flag.

Grinner 08:21, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

The Flags of the World website has an extensive discussion on the Northumberland flag. Several alternatives to the red-and-gold flag are discussed, but none of them seem to be in actual use. No mention is made of a blue-and-white cross flag, though.

--McMullen 17:12, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think I shall remove the reference to the blue and white cross flag then. Grinner 08:47, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

It seems that the gold and red striped flag shown here is actually the flag of Northumberland county (to be flown only in that county) and not the flag of Northumbria. The older flag of Northumberia could be inserted if available. Let's remove the current image.Nesbit 05:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Would the kingdom of Northumbria have flown a flag as I have never heard of any of the other pre-conquest kingdoms of England having used flags in the modern sense. Penrithguy 23:12, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

The red and yellow striped flag must be the flag of Northumbria as the Northumbria police and Fire services (which cover Northumberland and Tyne & Wear) use the stripes in their emblems. Though I can see how if it was the flag of Northumberland it might be confused as a flag of Northumbria; and of course there's the fact that Tyne & Wear is majoritively formed of former parts of Northumberland. As a side note, I thought the blue and white flag was Durham's flag(?). SKC

[edit] Dialect

User:80.44.76.119 changed

Three major Northumbrian dialects are Geordie, Mackem and Pitmatic.

To

Three major Northumbrian dialects are Geordie, County Durham/Wearside (which is derogatorily refered to as Mackem by Geordies) and Northumbrian (ie from Northumberland)which again is given a derogatory name (Pitmatic) by Geordies.

I don't think that mackem and pitmatic are derogatory - they are widely used by people who speak with said accents. So I reverted this bit. Grinner 09:56, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

Mackem is the Sunderlanders' word and refers to the practice of shipping unfinished boats to Tyneside to be finished. "We mak 'em and they tak 'em" as the ship builders would have put it. It's not derogatory. I've not heard of 'pitmatic' but 'pityakker' (literally miner) is pretty derogative.GordyB 15:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Are Scouse and Tyke really Northumbrian dialects as opposed to them all being examples of North of England dialects? I suppose Yorkshire (Tyke) dialect probably has things in common with Northumbrian due to the historial Scandinavian influences but Scouse? To me this inclusion seems strange. Does anyone better qualified than me have an opinion?Reynardthefox 23:17, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


Scouse has no real connection with the Northumnrian dialect as the area around modern day Liverpool was only under Northumbrian rule for a short period and also the Scouse accent/dialect has a larger Irish influence so I have deleted Scouse from the article. Personally i wouldnt think of the Yorkshire dialect as being Northumbrian either. It would bel ike saying that the Cumbrian and Lancashire dialects were as well although they are all northern English dialects ands in some parts of Cumbria there is a Northumbrian influence. Penrithguy 23:12, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Yorkshire was part of 'Northumbria' (which means lands North of the Humber). The Humber flows through Yorkshire. It is not inaccurate to refer to Yorkshire as a Northumbrian varient of English though it does seem rather odd to a modern ear as Northumbria these days is more commonly used to mean the North East which does not include Yorkshire.

Although Yorkshire and North East accents are quite different from each other. They do (to my ear) merge in Middlesborough where the local accent is half way between Newcastle and Leeds.

There is a very strong connection between West Cumbrian dialects and Geordie. 'Gan yam' is the local varient of 'gan hyem'.GordyB 15:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The Yorkshire dialect sounds significantly different from the other Northumbrian dialects due to different dialects preserving words and phrases from different times. I.e. Geordie English has preserved more Anglo-Saxon sounds, terms, words and phrases whereas Yorkshire and southern Durham dialects have preserved more Middle-to-Early Modern English sounds, terms, words and phrases. There is significant evidence to support that, most strikingly around the dialectical forms of the word "you".SKC

Also, Yorkish has more Norse influences than the Northumbrian dialect, the dialects of Northumberland are closer to Old English. Yorkish is similar and has a similar accent in many ways. DR. Martin Hesselius 10:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be helpful (indeed it would make the material comprehensible) if, in the section on language, the variant pronunciations of book were rendered in phonetic script.

"An example is the Geordie 'gan hyem' (to go home), which sounds identical to the Danish 'gå hjem', and means the same." Sounds even very German: "geh heim". -- 80.135.231.41 (talk) 16:53, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] University of Northumbria

There is no longer a University of Northumbria campus in Carlisle It was recently transferred to the University of Central Lancashire


[edit] Scope of this Article relative to history of Northumberland

I propose that we limit the scope of this article to the history of the kingdom and earldom of Northumbria. Later history (from 1100? on) should be covered in the History of Northumberland article. Also, the article on Northumbria in the Early Middle Ages should be folded into this article on Northumbria.

sounds sensible, whoever you are Johnbod 01:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Without responding to the earlier proposals for splitting up this portion of the article (I don't care either way), some of the history that is here is nonsensical and needs to be thoroughly reworked for whichever article it ends up in. The section describes Northumbrian sectarian volatility following the Restoration but says it was pacified after Scotland's King James accepted the English crown. As any student of English history knows, the aforementioned "Restoration" was the placement of James' grandson Charles II on the thrown. So the events are out of order and the cause and effect make no sense. The entire section is also unsourced. Once that has been fixed, I'd like to add a section on the Northumbrian contribution to the major settlement trends of North America. But let's see someone unravel the section on Northumbria proper before I add any further confusion.Ftjrwrites (talk) 18:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it somewhat. The previous version actually was talking about the restoration of peace after the union of the crowns, not The Restoration. But no matter, it still needed some work. Nesbit (talk) 20:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

For sure this should only be about the Kingdom and at a stretch the Earldom... what came to be known as Northumberland was essentially a small slice of this kingdom at its peak and when you consider that York was its capital, then Northumberland area wasn't actually the center of this thing. - Yorkshirian (talk) 18:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scandinavia

...Due to the roots of Northumbrian dialects, it is often said that visitors from Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands often find it much easier to understand the English of Northumbria than the rest of the country. An example is the Geordie 'gan hyem' (to go home), which sounds identical to the Danish 'gan hjem', and means the same.

I live in Newcastle and I often hear this. Whilst the 'gan hyem' example is commonly used to support this assertion, I wondered if scandinavians do actually find Northumbrian english easier to understand, or whether this is just a piece of hearsay. I've just done a quick search on Google and I haven't found anything that would neccesarily seem to support this. It might help to have a source quoted for this section.

Moa nalo 31 July 2006

"gå hjem" is Danish for "gan hjem" (and "gang hame" in Scots :} 82.41.4.66 21:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I noticed this on the Wikipedia Danish language page :} Danish was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many Danish derived words such as gate (gade) for street, still survive in Yorkshire and other parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Danish settlement of Jorvik.82.41.4.66 00:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

heres some info on the Danes in Eastern England in the late Dark Ages http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab86

}82.41.4.66 00:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Scandinavians do in a sense find it easier to understand northeastern English. Though they do recognise the odd word it is actually the TONE they recognise. Northeastern English is more tonal than standard English, which is more akin to the Scandinavian languages, specifically Swedish language. It must be noted that although the Vikings and their language (Old Norse) massively altered pronunciation and introduced new words, the bulk of the northeastern dialect actually retains Old English sounds and words. The "gan" of "gan hyem" comes from Old English "gān", with the "hyem" coming from Old Norse "hjem".

I have to disagree with this, i have spoken to many Scandinavian students in and around Sunderland University and they (like many not from the region) sometimes struggle to understand the dialect and accent, Western TV and culture has definately altered the ear and i cannot speak with them in the same way i would we a local person in a less formal way. gazh 14 Apr 2007 12:30

I am of Swedish descent and all the Swedes of my family recognise our tone and the rhythm of our speech even when they don't recognise the majority of the words being spoken. Much like the way Frieslanders (tone and rhythm-wise) are most similar to east Anglians. It is however the Danish who are perhaps most in tune with our tone and rhythm. The very way we speak was altered and established by the Danish vikings.

Well maybe that is true with the rhythm and tone, but in my experineces when speaking to the students at Sunderland from Scandinavia, they struggled with the broad accent, if i wanted them to understand me i had to speak more RP and slow. Gazh 13:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map discussion

Yorkshirian recently added this new version of an old map to this article; it was removed by Deacon of Pndapetzim and re-added by Yorkshirian. I'd like to replace it with this map instead, which doesn't use boundaries. The changes were made to several articles, so to centralize discussion, please post at Talk:Mercia#Map if you have an opinion. Mike Christie (talk) 02:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of name

Where does the term "Northumbria" come from? Is there some link with the Roman Umbria regio? --Cantalamessa (talk) 11:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

No relation, it comes from the River Humber and was coined by Bede to describe the northern Anglian kingdom, which was separated from the central one (Mercia) by the Humber. Angus McLellan (Talk) 11:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
An earlier version of the name is North-humbria, which would be derived from the Humber like Angus said. --Merovingian (T, C) 11:46, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Excuse me if I investigate further: is there some root in the Humber term which can connect this river with the central Italy regio? Because, in (pre)historic times, a piece of Umbria was covered by the lacus Umber. --Cantalamessa (talk) 08:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)