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Definition of “Brummie”, “Astonian” etc

Glad you guys like it,(thats real brummy en it)nothing better than a trip out on the number 11 red sauce on your bread that your mom made,or a trip up town have a sit down at the back of Rackhams:beam:
 
Quote " and they speak posh some times when in company i think i let them down ......."



Never Never Never Astonian like you i have a broad brummie accent i,ve never tried to hide it we of the inner city know what its like to live the hard life it made us what we are, some of the memories still hurt today but these are put aside and the good time come to the fore , Our roots are deep we are all part of Birminghams History.Dek
 
I agree with Astonian. I don't think that speech patterns / spelling is always a true indication of whether someone is a true Brummie. My MUM was a true Brummie and came from a family that had lived and worked in Brum for generations (mainly the Brass/gun industry) However she taught me to write MUM. Sometimes I used to hear her use Brummie words/ sayings but not very often which is probably why I don't use them.
Also you have to remember a lot of Brummie children were evacuated in the war which meant they attended Schools in rural areas - my mum lived on a farm in Hereford for a few years and this would have obviously affected her accent/word usage which would have been passed on to me.
You are a Brummie if you have Birmingham on your birth certificate - and in your heart!
Polly :)
 
Polly i spent 6 years from the age of 6 --12 living with my aunt in Sutton Cold field i spoke posh i came back to Vauxhall to live with sibling i didn,t know within 6 months i had lost my posh accent and became a broad speaking Brummie. I had to, it was a completely different way of life you had to fit in or fight for your life as it happened i could hold my own in the playground so i had respect of other boys and became one of them. Dek
 
My parents were from Ireland,when we were kids in the house we spoke with an Irish accent,as soon as we crossed that doorstep we spoke with a brummy accent,not a deliberate thing it just happened,even now if i am just with my family you would think we had just arrived from Ireland,with people outside i still unintentionally revert to brummy,although i have to say over the years the accents get a little mixed and i sometimes have a strange accent:confused2:
 
Born in the U.S.A makes me a true Brummy... UP STAIRS in ALLESLEY ST Astonbrook.... Christened at St May's Astonbrook, growing up in Aston, Highgate and Nechells... " me Mom sez you aint sayin nufin that can change that... :)"
 
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I was tricked into coming to Birmingham from the tiny mid-Wales village in which I was born and lived until 9 years of age on the pretext of being taken to the Scout Jamboree in Sutton Park in August 1957. I started at Bordesley Green Junior School three weeks later. Unlike Dek, I was never teased, taunted or humiliated by my accent and pronunciation. Although I was involved in the occasional fight, it was never due to my being "verbally" different, but because of schoolboy disputes, differences of opinion and "position within the pack", i.e., competition over girls!!
Although I lived, studied and worked in Birmingham for 13 years (the most influential years of my life), I never lost my childhood accent and now there are thousands of southern Italians all over the world saying "boyo, Aberystwyth and see Naples and Dai".
So thank you, Brummies one and all. Birmingham is nowhere to be found on my birth certificate and I've never undergone open-heart surgery, but it's very much in my head and I look back with enormous nostalgia to those years between 1957 and '70. David
 
David, I love the Welsh accent! Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas - perfect!
I really enjoyed your post, You do have Birmingham in your heart!
Polly :)
 
The Welsh accent is amazing love it, i remember being there once and there were a group of young lads,they looked like Asian lads
then they started chatting,in there Welsh accents it was wonderful,i must have looked surprised because they laughed,
 
HI LIZ;
Thats very true our kin folks did work in horrandous conditions long before my time and as you say your and my parents workrd in very poor conditions indeed[ as the old saying used to go up to ya eyes in muck and bullets
thank god for the transformation of conditions and thank god for the unions of yesteryear
i,m not to sure of the unions of today still we have cleaner envoiramental now
many thanks for your thread Liz have a nice day best wishes Astonian ;;
 
If you want to be seroiusly rigid about this, St Martin's was the original and only parish, which would narrow it all down quite a bit.

I was born and bred in Birmingham,l and am proud to think of myself as Birmingham born. I never say Brum, I never say mom, but I do know what a gambol is and I still say 'red sauce'. My mother was born in Ladywood in 1923, but moved to Warstock in 1928. I was born in Warstock in 1947 and after moving to various areas over time, I moved to Tamworth in 1972, but worked in Birmingham until 2001. I don't like Brummie slang, and none of my family have ever spoken like that, although I do admit I must have a midland intonation.

So, all in all, I consider myself a Brummie, but it looks like half the forum at least would not consider me so! Hmm, not quite sure what to make of all this! Shortie
 
I reckon if you could hear the crowds cheering at either the blues or the villa grounds.

Close as you'll get to the sound of bow bells.........?

Then again, forget that. It would rule me out, I was born at Marston Greeen Hospital.
 
hi fatfinger
we will except you being you are a blue nose and mentioned the magic words villa ;;
the fact you as born in marston green and which i beleive was in the district of solihull
which years ago was under the birmingham council years ago
before they wanted to change the council to the royal borough of solihull just like
sutton coldfield did years ago so technichaly you was born under the brummie flag
and as the saying goes what ever mother flag you was born under makes you that person
so really you are a really true brummie regardles of marsden green
best wishes Astonian ;;;
 
Astonian said:
hi fatfinger
we will except you being you are a blue nose and mentioned the magic words villa ;;
the fact you as born in marston green and which i beleive was in the district of solihull
which years ago was under the birmingham council years ago
before they wanted to change the council to the royal borough of solihull just like
sutton coldfield did years ago so technichaly you was born under the brummie flag
and as the saying goes what ever mother flag you was born under makes you that person
so really you are a really true brummie regardles of marsden green
best wishes Astonian ;;;
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Was Meriden in them days I think, had to get my birth cet from Chelmley Wood iirc.
 
Blimey, (got to be a Brummy to understand that ) I thought I was a Brummy, I think of it with affection, although it hasn't been home for 50 years now. My birth certificate says West Bromwich because mom went to her mom's for my birth. We, mom, dad and me, lived for a couple of years in Perry Barr, then we moved to Witton, well within shouting distance of Villa Park. Witton was home until I married and moved just a step away from Perry Barr - Birchfields. Home is here where I have lived for the longest time. I don't have a Brummy accent, I never did have, but I am sure there is an indelible stamp in my heart that says Made In Brum
 
We wont call you ex Pat then Di

Its ex Di:)

I've passed my 50th year as well Di
 
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you can count me in too,as its been 52years since i left brum,still consider myself a brummie though and always will,one can take a brummie out of brum..... but you'll never take brum out of a true brummie....Brenda...does that make sense....
 
If you could smell the HP sauce factory and the hops from Ansells I would say you were a brummie
 
How about me Patty?born on Aston Cross,and, untill my teens, lived within the sound of the roar from Villa Park.That might make me an Astonian...but then,we were posher than Brummies.:rolleyes::).
 
Ray I was born in Tower rd and then lived in holte rd righr by the villa I think we are of the same ilk
 
dek carr said:
And me it was built in the late 50s i was about 16 when i worked on there as an electrical apprentice. What was it called before that?Dek
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Hi Dek - See Buildings 4 on the attached 1732 sketch - described in 1762 by a visitor from London "on one side of this Churchyard the buildings are as lofty, elegant and uniform as those of Bedford Row, and are inhabited by people of fortune, who are great wholesale dealers in the Manufactures of this Town. These buildings have the appellation of Tory-Row (Temple Row) and this is the highest and genteelest part of the Town of Birmingham"
 
Although I was born in Quinton and left Birmingham in 1960 I can trace some of my families back more than 200 years - I think of myself as a Brummie and proud of it.
 
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