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Definition of “Brummie”, “Astonian” etc

I remember the trouble they were having with the London dockers.

We were stationed in Colchester, around '65 and we had to drive the vehicles belonging to The Greenjackets (who were posted to Hong Kong, I think), down to the docks.

Before starting off we were told not to speak to the dockers on our arrival. The powers-that-be were worried that having squaddies making jokes about their idle behaviour would spark off another dispute.

They needn't have worried, the place was deserted. Apparently they were at a meeting in the canteen !
 
paul stacey said:
Was that 3RGJ Baz, they were in Ireland Londonderry, 1970.
paul
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I can't remember which battalion they were Paul but you're probably right, I think at the time they were stationed around Ipswich. We were very busy while in 19 Brigade and it's all a blur now !

(I've dragged us "off thread" a bit haven't I ?).
 
paul stacey said:
Funny thing I got on with most people, but the one's I always seemed to end up having problems with were the lads from Liverpool, "Scousers", if ever there was a problem, you could bet your bottom dollar there was a scouse at the bottom of it, even so I did have one or two friends from Liverpool.
paul
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Funnily enough, volatile as they are, I always got on with Scousers. One of the nicest blokes I ever knew was a Royal Signals sgt, attached to our regt. He was from the Wirral.

The "Estuary" accent seems to get up most people's noses, however stationed in Woolwich for over three years, I found the people friendly enough.

I was never comfortable around Geordies, generally speaking and while I'm very fond of the Welsh, I find people from Gwynedd difficult to get on with.

Brummies ayn bad noiva !
 
being in a Geordie Regt baz, I had loads of mates from there, but you think our accent hard especially the black country one, I spent the first week in the army running around asking "what's he saying, where we going" I felt I needed an interpreter.
paul
 
Here in Sandbach we have a hardware shop run by asians, called Price City. Most of the staff are young and born in this country.

One day, not long after my (now) 95-year old mother moved here from Wilmcote she had been buying a few things in Price City.
Hearing the accent on the bloke on the till, Mom said "oh, it's nice to hear a Brummy accent".
The youth, looking quite insulted said "we ay Brummies, we'm from Bilston !".

Tickled me.
 
paul stacey said:
being in a Geordie Regt baz, I had loads of mates from there, but you think our accent hard especially the black country one, I spent the first week in the army running around asking "what's he saying, where we going" I felt I needed an interpreter.
paul
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Forgive me Paul, I'm not too clued up on the Guards.

Which regiment recruits Geordies ?
 
The Coldstream Guards in my day, more Geordies than most regiments, but historically the regt served in the borders where the village of Coldstream is. I will say it had al ot of midlander's, and Yorkshire men too.
paul
 
I loved 233, something similar happened to me I was in Surrey and stopped at a post office, to get something's and it was an Indian lad who served me, I said "you've got a strong Brummie accent mate, quick as you like he said "No we come from West Brom mate", made me chuckel.
paul
 
Hey mikanmart I'm not bitter at all perhaps I didn't choose my words very well. What I was trying to say was that each generation adds to being a true Brummie like the cream rising to the top. We old codgers, The Blitz Mob' will be forgotten in a hundred years but so what, life moves on, and I can still take a bit of pride in being a pest. That's not bitter, thats taking things as they come. Kind regards, old misery guts, David.
 
What's a Brummie you might well ask. If you've pulled on a gansy, had taters in yer bags, collected shrapnel in the craters, snogged in Lover's Walk, watched the strong man pick up a horse at the Onion Fair, smelled Ansells, HP Sauce coal dust and horse muck, all at the same time. Had one of Granny White's toffee Apples and tasted the grit in an old fashioned fog welcome home Brummie for that's only a small part of our bloodline but it's enough for starters.. Kind regards, David.
 
David thats close on poetic mate - :-)

I also feel ... if you are a brummie in your heart then you are a brummie.
I have a brummie/handsworth accent - theres many types and we do seem to be more accepting (these days) of accents than we were several years back. I think thats a good thing.
 
I've always thought of myself as being a Brummie and thought I had very little accent as I've not lived in Brum since I was 12,however I was handing over to a work collegue last night and said something about a patient's tongue,she did'nt understand me!
Barb( Graham Harding's cousin) also looking for the elusive Briscoe's
 
The first time I went home after living in Australia for a few years my mom started to cry I asked her if she missed me so much and she repied, 'No but you do talk all funny'. Regards, David.
 
In answer to the ealier thread from the person born at St Chads .St Chads was in the district of Ladywood according to my birth certificate.
 
db84124 said:
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
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How lovely - thank you
My DH came up from dahn sowf back in the sixties and thinks he's a Brummie - just cos he talks like us don't make him one.
 
Elizabeth Redmond said:
I think people used to call them Islands,but seem to say Roundabout now,my sister always referred to a slice of bread as a piece,she would say can i have a piece or would you like a piece, i used to say a piece of what
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My auntie always said eat yer peacy, (bread and butter) don;t know where she was born but she lived in Selly Oak and worked at Cadburys.
 
mkeyfoo34 said:
Mike G....I don't think agel an omma is Brummie.... in fact the Black Country lot wouldn't like you to claim that, it refers to the chainmekers in Netherton.
Mike.
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Aah, Nan used to say ov urt me ond an ite me ommer ond, she was from near Stourbridge and she used to put her accent on to make me laugh, she said that wad the Dudley Accent and Box Hill and the women chainmakers spoke it who had little workshops on the end of their kitchens.
Nico
 
Bishopsmate said:
How lovely - thank you.
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Thank you, Bishopsmate.
I've just got back to my adoptive home in Salerno, Italy after a six-week grand tour of England and Wales. I spent eight days in the Land of my Fathers …… and a few days with a cousin of mine in Birmingham. Unfortunately I have few ties with Brum these days: one relative living in Moseley...... and £38.45 on an account in a bank in Small Heath!
My family and I drove 7,733km (4,833 miles) during our 43-day holiday and thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with – among many others - three former mates from Bordesley Green Tech. One of them is fellow Forum member David Fowler, who treated me, my partner, our two little girls and baby son to a delicious lunch followed by two kinds of cake he had made himself and his own fantastic home-made raspberry ice cream which would make an expert Italian ice-cream seller's mouth water!
Thank you, David!
Thank you, Bishopsmate, for getting me involved in the BHF again.
Best wishes to everyone on the Forum, David
 
Shortie said:
Oh Col h, I hasd to smile when I saw that. I moved to Tamworth in 1972 - and they did hate Brummies then. We were called '021's'. I remember having an extension built to our house about 1981, and the bricklayers said to me 'for an 021, you make a good cup of tea'. On further enquiring, it was because they considered all the folk of Birmingham used sterilised milk (I never did). We were very much resented for a while, but I really think it has disappeared now,possibly due to the fact that there are so many more 'emigrants' to Tamworth than at that time. The town is probably twice the size it was in, say, 1970. Until you mentioned it, I had compltely forgotten the initial dislike of the Brummie here.
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Whilst doing my family search, I discovered my birth gran was from Tamworth. One of my ancestors was Lily Edden a former Mayor of Tamworth. She made Des O'Connor apologize I am told when he said Tamworth was like a cemetary with lights on.
I am now told t is an overspill for Birmingham? Nico
 
Shortie said:
Whatever you call them, they are delicious, especially with a dollop of Lurpak on, and occasionally a smear of Bovril. Yum!
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Mum toasted pikelets over the fire on a long toasting fork. No one else I have met calls them Pikelets they are muffins or crumpets. We had butter on ours that melted and I dribbled it all down my chin. Mum called her mum, mom or our muth.
 
Shortie said:
I am a brummie who had never caught a buzz in her life, neither did my parents or grandparents - at least on my maternal side. My father's mother used to say 'lung' instead of 'long' but I am not sure where that comes from, I cannot remember anyone speaking like that.

As I type this, I am wondering if some accents just develop on their own. My four year old grandson is called James, but he always says Jayams - nobody else says that. He can spell it correctly though, which is half the battle!
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What do you call under the stairs? Mum called it the bung 'ole, nan the cubby 'ole. Gran the coal 'ole. Have also heard the bogie 'ole.?
Nico
 
Shortie said:
I have lived in many places in Birmingham, owing to the fact my mother had itchy feet (when my dad died she went to America), but mum was born in Monument Road, Ladywood. None of the family have ever said buzz. I am wondering if some of this comes from the fact my gran (who lost both her parents by the age of four) was brought up by her aunt. This aunt was, like my gran, born in Cheltenham, and she only came to Birmingham as an adult. Folk in Cheltenham never say buzz.

I suspect the answer to your other point is that the Birmingham accent is not easy for anyone to imitate - it always sounds false and vaguely unpleasant and very much Black Country. I don't think anyone south of Watford thinks there is a difference - they seem to think Birmingham is BC.
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Auntie lived in Montpelier, Cheltenham, Nan said she was stuck up. I loved it there and her.
Nico
 
Shortie said:
Oh Col h, I hasd to smile when I saw that. I moved to Tamworth in 1972 - and they did hate Brummies then. We were called '021's'. I remember having an extension built to our house about 1981, and the bricklayers said to me 'for an 021, you make a good cup of tea'. On further enquiring, it was because they considered all the folk of Birmingham used sterilised milk (I never did). We were very much resented for a while, but I really think it has disappeared now,possibly due to the fact that there are so many more 'emigrants' to Tamworth than at that time. The town is probably twice the size it was in, say, 1970. Until you mentioned it, I had compltely forgotten the initial dislike of the Brummie here.
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Shortie, Is a gambol when you turn over? Like head over heels? That's what mum called it. She said she could never do a gambol. Nico
 
Shortie said:
I feel very similarly to Linda, I also left Birmingham in 1972. From 1976 I worked in Sutton Coldfield, gradually making my way right into Birmingham and worked there until I finished work in 2001. No matter where you live, it is where you feel you have roots that counts the most. I used to say I was 'going to town' when I was going into Birmingham, now I say into Birmingham, because 'town' to me is now Tamworth.

There is something magnificent about belonging to a place that, despite what those south of Watford think, actually provided about 80% of the world's brass 150 years ago. A place that gave England the Crystal Palace, Palethorpe's sausages (Palethorpe's started in Gooch Street), M&B Beer, Bird's Custard and pen nibs galore. Birmingham supplied the whole world with pen nibs!

I am now sure I agree with Astonion about you cannot get more brummie than being born in Aston, because Aston was not Birmingham until 1911, and also I was not born within the town centre, I was born at Warstock, but my birth certificate still states BIRMINGHAM. However, it is as one views onself, I guess.

I think I am probably right in saying that if people were not proud of living or being born in Birmingham - the City of 1000 trades, then they would not be part of this Forum.

Long may this Forum, and the Brummie, live.

shortie
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Palethorpes Shropshire Sausages? I can never say that
 
maypolebaz said:
Funnily enough, volatile as they are, I always got on with Scousers. One of the nicest blokes I ever knew was a Royal Signals sgt, attached to our regt. He was from the Wirral.

The "Estuary" accent seems to get up most people's noses, however stationed in Woolwich for over three years, I found the people friendly enough.

I was never comfortable around Geordies, generally speaking and while I'm very fond of the Welsh, I find people from Gwynedd difficult to get on with.

Brummies ayn bad noiva !
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Had a Scouser counter part working in Manchester a nice lad he got a load of stick from the Mancunians, he said they used to say hide the spoons here comes the Scouser. I found out that scouse is a sort of stew.
 
I'm sure you "can" be a brummie with a non-brummie accent !
Especially if you can understand the brummie sayings ( AND be able to put on a brummie accent when you want to ).

But, I feel some of the accents listed here are more black country ... arent they ?
 
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