Is Nowt Sacred?

[Gromit]

A Primary School in Middlesborough has issued a lust of banned words and phrases. On the list is a word I use every day - 'Nowt.

I can see why some words should be banned but not dialect words. Such words denote regional character.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/9851236/Middlesbrough-primary-school-issues-list-of-incorrect-words.html

Do you agree with banning regional words from the playground?

[Gromit]

A LIST of banned words - f*cking iPad keyboard.

[rockyracoon]

I've got mixed feelings about this, their spelling definitely needs to be corrected, speech I'm not so sure, after all it is part of who they are and where they come from but, if there is proof that getting a job is made more difficult in speaking this way then it probably should be addressed.

[B00]

not in the playground no, but definitely in the written form yes.

[mrs_overall]

I can't see nowt wrong with using regional words in the playground

[ummmm]

No, they shouldn't ban words but they should be corrected when written.

I had a Spanish doctor live next door to me. One day I opened my door and he was standing there (timing, he was about to knock) I gasped and said 'You frit me' He finds that really funny as the only place he's heard 'frit' is in Northampton.

[rockyracoon]

We use frit down here Ummm.

[emmie]

keep dialect words, yet English seems to be going the way of the dodo.

[Old_Geezer]

I thought frit was some kind of snack food. Not sure where I've seen it.

[emmie]

sure most won't agree... but i find it hard to comprehend a lot of folk around our way, they don't, won't speak English. Perhaps like all languages it will change or go eventually, absorbed by other languages, people's that settle here.

[emmie]

pommes frit perhaps, fries...

[FredPuli43]

The earlier the better. Children need to know that there are two forms of English, the everyday and the formal, the local and the standard. I expect we all have friends who can speak both. Privately educated, a friend is bilingual; she speaks RP but can speak the dialect of her grandmother, by whom she was brought up in Chipping, Lancashire, equally fluently and utterly incomprehensibly ( I suspect to many other Lancastrians). She learnt the hard way. She was unaware that she was 'odd' until she was sent to boarding school where she was mocked and bullied mercilessly because of it.

[naomi24]

I don’t think colloquial English can or should be ‘banned’, but when children make mistakes they should be corrected. Standards in written English seem to have declined since educators stopped correcting errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but instead awarded marks for ideas alone - and that does our children no favours whatsoever because it means that ultimately, we are failing them.

[EcclesCake]

I think it's a good thing and is teaching the children about appropriate behavious in different circumstances. Let them use their regional dialect in the playground but in the classroom they should speak and write properly.

[jake-the-peg]

Properly?

What is properly?

is that defined as the form that you were taught?

[mrs_overall]

I have an aunt who is 92. She has lived all her life in an obscure Yorkshire hamlet and her speech is virtually incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't know her. She uses a wide range of regional words, some of which have almost died out.
She has written several books and her written English is perfect.
I am using this example to illustrate that using regional words/slang verbally do not have to have any bearing on the written word

[anotheoldgit]

Middlesbrough eh? I doubt regional words are the not the only problem, seeing that a large proportion of children in our schools only speak English as their second language.

Head Teacher Carol Walker, would have a field day in Tower Hamlets for example.

[ummmm]

Frit = you frightened me.

Where are you Rocky?

We use lots of sayings that people don't understand. 'now' is one of them.

[FredPuli43]

That presupposes that the English that children learn in Tower Hamlets is not correct English, doesn't it, aog ? If it isn't, then they are no better off than the local anglophones but there's a fair chance that they will acquire a better standard.

[sp1814]

AOG

Children who speak English as a second language wouldn't have to be corrected in this manner - because they've been taught the language and it's structure.