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Definition of “Brummie”, “Astonian” etc

I don't know Stephen. My Nan and Grandad were Blackcountry and her cousins were/are Brummies. My gran was a Coventry Kid. My Birth family are from Worcs. And Shrops. Leics. Staffs and Brum. I don't know if I qualify but I was born in Raddlebarn and no young Brummies ever heard of it. And I only stayed in Brum for 6 weeks. AT school we had to state where we were born. I thought I was born in Moseley and said so and I got accepted in Cov as Moseley has a good respectable rugger team.
Nico
 
Well I think anyone who wants to be a brummie should be and perhaps we should have honorary brummies anyway.
- which in my brummie book is the same brummie thing. :fat: .
 
Yes I agree. I never thought of myself as a Coventry Kid thought I have lived here all my life.
Apart from the 6 weeks in Brum.
My ex boss called himself a Plastic Paddy.
I was called english Paddy by my Dublin Friend who lived there.
Maybe it's a case of wherever I lay my hat, as the song goes.
 
hi nico ;
it was an old saying by the old irish communeity if you are a sibbling to an irish family whom the parents came over the water from ireland
you are automaticaly called a plastic paddy whether or not you was born in the mother land and if you was born here ;
i married into the irish family whom are well known back over the waters and there is a gentleman whom is really old in the orinional village
by the name of jim coady and his ancesters was wild billy hilcock [ coady ] and we have the orinional photograph of them sitting on the steps of there orinional horse drawn caravan smoking there clay pipe around the the fire way back ; this is my wifes parents his father and mother
jim is still very active and going strong and he aint altererd or decorated his little cottage since the year dot
nothink as never ever been done or changed since he was a little kid and he his clocking one hundred years old ;same bricks and mortar since it was built in the year dot he lives in southeren ireland and we go and viit him from time to time
best wishes astonian,;;;;;;
 
Hi Astonian I dont think my reply got to you.
Your post is fascinating.Not been to Ireland in over 20 years I wouldn't know Dublin city now I doubt.
I was there when Roache wone the cyle race the crowds went wild and they had Hercules the bear to open a toy dept in one of the big stores, maybe Clery's I forget or Roaches. My English Paddy title comes from me being mates with an irish lad since we were 9.
Nico
 
Hi Nico;
How are you today fine i hope ;i have only just picked up on your thread and thank you for your comlimenting my thread
on the subject of dublin ; we go there quite often and yes dublin as changed very rapid and dramiticaly over the years and still changing
infact the whole of Ireland as changed and Dublin tourist have gone crazy you cannot move on the pavements because of the nationaitiys
of foriegn nationals its a great city old cleary,s have not change abit in any sense it still got it s wideing carpeted stair case through out the store
and the river liffy is still running fast down to the guiness factory
i can see now where the english paddy expression comes from i to have lot of irish friends myself ; long before i married an irish girl ;
and to tell you the truth nico ; when i was young i always had the passion to marry an irish girl ;from an early age as young as you was ,
and i beleived that my destiny was worked out many years from a early age regarding meeting and marrying my irish coleen girl;
which i have never regretted from that day to this day ;
but any way i was born in aston in the slums of 5/92 lichfield rd amongest the cockroaches and the red plaster bugs
brought up on bread and slopp and dripping and the old tripe from thompsons the butchers whom where our old little one up and down bed room for eight kids and parents lived our living room wall backed into thompns premises and you would hear the pigs screaming and the heat at night brought out the cock roaches and the red bugs that got on you and all the walls and the bedding ;
but any way i have always said a true brummy born and breed between the city and aston just like the bow bells of london as a cockney ;
best wishes astonian
 
Ah Janey Mac Astonian!
I met some of my mate's cousins as he just lost his mam, I used to call her (my Irish mammy.)They asked me to write and read somthing at the funeral, he didn't ask me till after the 1st church reception. But I did it and I got a round of applause, I don't if you are supposed to clap in church. Anyway I met all these people I hadn't seen in yeas and they told me about Dublin. DO you like the song The rare auld times? I always stayed on the North side. Remember the Dandelion Market that maybe on the south side and the Hill? I have always been attraced to non English people too.
ANyway back to subject you must be a true Brummie. Was that a very long time ago where you lived. I have an Astoness friend. She loved in a high rise maybe that replaced where you live.
I used to go that way to see my mum in hospital. It was a very old one. It was dark when I got there and I got back home here late but my Irish mate used to come with me on a Friday and he showed me around the Brummie pubs as he was at Mathew Bolton College. Brum was being dug up then. I cant remember when it was maybe in the 80's. They were re doing the market area and they had a jazz band later on outside.
There must be a huge Irish community in Brum as there is here plus we have a multi national society now,.
Nico
 
HI NICO ;
I Have just briefly looked at your thread and unfortunelately i have got to shoot off on bussiness ; so i cannot go into much detail
firstly wher i lived all those years they never built nothink on the site of old cromwell square it was in the seventys they demomolished the block of house
and the plot of land as never been built on from that day until day ; i am thinking that your friend may have been living in saphire tower one
if not the first block of council tennants ever had which was way back in the sixties and the rare old times is brill; and i could talk all day about the north and there song very well indeed as i know most of them very well ;
nico i have to go as the old biddy is calling me to get going but i will ppick up later best wishes astonian;;
 
Hi Guys - Posts 260 to 265 seem worthy of a separate or different thread as they seem to be straying from the subject of the main thread. Loving the read by the way.



Bernie
 
Bernie D'Boult said:
Hi Guys - Posts 260 to 265 seem worthy of a separate or different thread as they seem to be straying from the subject of the main thread. Loving the read by the way.



Bernie
Click to expand...
Sorry Bernie I will speak to Astonian on a private message. It is about old Brum though. It is amazing how some plots just don't get touched.It's the same in Cov as some have become carparks that were houses raised to the ground, then when they decide to do something they find a UXB. As you are where you are, Bernie, what does Silhillian mean? I had a friend whose sister lived in Solihull and she always called it Solihill! Nico
 
Thanks Nico but as I mention in my IM this could warrant a thread on its own. I have replied about Solihull/Silhill.
 
Does black country actually incorporate Brummie or the other way round. If I keep on with this train of thought I'm bound to upset someone or other tho. I could never get over how bad the brummie accents were on TV. but they're better these days or is it me ?
 
I would say no. When you get in to Stourbridge the accent changes. As I imagine it does around the edges of Birmingham.
I hear it in Berkswell and Balsall Common and Droitwich to name but a few places but I think it depends where the person hails from originally. My Nan was from just outside Stourbridge and she said she wasn't Black Country either she said Gornall and Dudley were. Maybe asks some more natives?
Nico
 
My mum used to imitate her dad's mum who came from Silver End. She was very broad I am told. "What d' yow want yow moost want soomat." When the coal man came she told him to type it ere, not tip it. That, I am told is Black Country.
My Brummie older relatives all gone now would say weeeeel, instead of well. They lived in Selly Oak nr Weoly Castle, they worked in Bournville. They seemed to me to talk slowly with a sort of, not lisp exactly. If they said but, it would sound like buth to me? Clear as mud I suppose. The younger ones now in their 80's and younger have very light Birmingham accents. Maybe it changes with time. The old Cov accent my dad spoke is nothing like the kids speak now. I hear 'I fink and I fort' and 'ferty free' with 'innnit an' its mo cowtyooa '(culture) and maaaan! dropped in the middle, which of course it isn't, peppered by a smattering of swear words used as adjectives,,. The doc's surgery has a sign up saying anyone swearing or using a mobile will not be attended to. A sig of the times I suppose.
Nico
 
HI Elisebeth
yes thats very true factory industry as changed very dramaticly considering our days and our fore fathers when we used to do the work in the factorys and in the foundrys it was very hard sweaty and grimely and dark ; but now to the health and safety issues its a dammed bit better
but saying that elisabeth ; shop work was very crueling along with the catuering proffesion standing on your feet all day was very tire some
where the office was very taxing on ones brain ;
aston was the most industreal side of birmingham in those 18OO,S and there little house of slums with no lavs inside and shared toilets by twelve family in
a terace or court yards compared tpo most birmingham areas of birmingham and the early 19900s boundry changes and the sixties boundries changes as i recall from balsall heath to mosely which was previuos balsall heath and even then the house was larger and better and posher
on the subject of the bow bells it was a poor area and hard working people good people helping each other out ;
in my ideas and figure of speech was st phillips and aston parish church is an eqivererlent to bow bells
best wishes astonian
 
I was told when doing my family research, by a Brum Historian that they built the canal and railway to divide the rich from the poor by what is now Fiveways. The rich side being where Mr Cadbury lived. I am told there is a plaque on his house.
It is amazing how people lived then. Some of my family ended up in Barnardos. 13 and 15 children were commonplace. Up till about 10 years ago my old neighbour lived in a rented terraced house. He was disabled and a widower looking after his mum. They had 1 gas fire downstairs, she couldn't get upstairs and slept on a campbed, no hot water! he boiled a kettle, no inside loo he knocked a door through from the pantry to it,. No washing machine. I wonder if any habitations like this still exist now?
 
Interesting points. Looking back us brummies can't complain with our lot now can we.
Be interesting to have a landmark or something though to associate with brummy-ness.
( eg. as cockney's live ... within the sound of Bow-Bells) as you say.
 
Sorry I cannot agree that we need a divisive way to sort out Brummies from None Brummies I was born in 'Loveday Street' but brought up in Yardley Wood/Billesley. My sister was born in Selly Oak so by the suggested measure - of being within the sound of St Phillips or Aston Parish church - she would not be a Brummie but I would although she has the stronger accent. Cocknies are but one sector of London's population whereas being a Brummies is [and we are] inclusive.

Sorry but I said similar soon after this thread started that I was not happy about any lines being drawn within the city boundaries.
 
As I said in an earlier post surely if the word Birmingham is on your birth certificate you are a Brummie.
 
why do they say Brummigum and Bernymung? And the Brummigum ow do ya do. (my dad said that). Is it like Blighty and Erin.
 
You reminded me of our house when I was little. We had one cold water tap with a very deep sink. No electricity upstairs, no bathroom, a bath on a Friday night before bed, in the tin bath, in front of the paraffin heater. No fridge, my mom used to buy 'stera' off the milkman and put in in a bucket of water to keep fresh. On Sundays the jelly for tea, would sit outside on the kitchen windowsill to set. We didn't have a TV until someone gave us one, we used to have a Dansette radio, which took huge batteries, and my mom used to put them in the oven to get more charge out of them.
Nico said:
I was told when doing my family research, by a Brum Historian that they built the canal and railway to divide the rich from the poor by what is now Fiveways. The rich side being where Mr Cadbury lived. I am told there is a plaque on his house.
It is amazing how people lived then. Some of my family ended up in Barnardos. 13 and 15 children were commonplace. Up till about 10 years ago my old neighbour lived in a rented terraced house. He was disabled and a widower looking after his mum. They had 1 gas fire downstairs, she couldn't get upstairs and slept on a campbed, no hot water! he boiled a kettle, no inside loo he knocked a door through from the pantry to it,. No washing machine. I wonder if any habitations like this still exist now?
Click to expand...
 
I'm not sure that I agree with Birmingham on your birth certificate either - the hospital allocated to mom was Marston Green, which was listed as Meriden, but I was brought up in Birmingham for the first years of my life, so count myself as a Brummie - my brother would fit the criteria though as mom had a home birth with him,not popular with the midwives for a first baby apparently when I was born.
Sue
 
I agree, sistersue, Birmingham doesn't appear on my birth cert. either.
My parents were living in Cotford road, "up the Maypole" prior to my birth but Herr Goering decided to send his bombers over and it was decreed by The Powers That Be that I was to be born in Leamington Spa.
A week or so after that, my parents moved to Winson St, Winson Green and from then on I grew up in Brum.
So, am I a Brummie ? 'Course I am !
 
Nico said:
I was told when doing my family research, by a Brum Historian that they built the canal and railway to divide the rich from the poor by what is now Fiveways. The rich side being where Mr Cadbury lived. I am told there is a plaque on his house.
It is amazing how people lived then. Some of my family ended up in Barnardos. 13 and 15 children were commonplace. Up till about 10 years ago my old neighbour lived in a rented terraced house. He was disabled and a widower looking after his mum. They had 1 gas fire downstairs, she couldn't get upstairs and slept on a campbed, no hot water! he boiled a kettle, no inside loo he knocked a door through from the pantry to it,. No washing machine. I wonder if any habitations like this still exist now?
Click to expand...

Maybe not in Brum but this year I visited a relative in a country that's in the EU and she didn't have running water, she had an electric pump on the well and obviously had the internet !
 
I love this thread, it's bostin!

My mother was born in Erdington, her father born in Warley. My father was born in Smethwick.
I was born in Sutton Coldfeild & as a child lived in Aldridge, then Walsall, then Brownhills. I moved darn sarth when I was 19. And although im not sure I count as being a brummie, I have similar vocab.

I know what a cob is, & get into many fun debates with southern mates who call it a roll. It is a cob or course.

Tomato ketchup I call red sauce

I call my mother mom, or mam, & not mum. Mum is underarm deodorant, which brings amusement to my friends.

I know what an outdoor is.

My p.e. shoes were called pumps, not plimsoles, & I carried them in a pump bag.

I was the babee of the family, not the baby.

I moved south & was constantly corrected & told islands are roundabouts, which was confusing, as a roundabout was something I played on at the local park as a kid. I prefer the word islands.

I love a scon, especially with a strong cup of tea

I remember shopping in Rackhams

I love pikelets.
 
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