Scouse

Introduction

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Liverpool Visit

0:30Hello. One way or another, I find myself in the city of Liverpool about once a year. On one of my recent visits, the person driving me from the station to the venue pointed out the window of the car and said, That's Strawberry Field. As a child of the 60s, I sat up and tried to take in as much as I could as we whizzed past. I was, of course, thinking about the Beatles' 1967 song, Strawberry Fields Forever,

1:03as sung by John Lennon. By the way, don't worry about whether it's Fields or Field. The name officially changed from Fields to Fields sometime around 1900. Lennon clearly preferred Fields. In case you didn't know, the strawberry field that Lennon had named was a Salvation Army children's home, and Lennon used to play in the grounds when he was a child. I imagine perhaps he did what we used to call bunking in. Hey, let's bunk into that whole place. But I don't know. Remember, this was the 1960s, and British bands were not always singing about Kansas City and Memphis.

1:39They were putting local British names into their songs. Mind you, for a Londoner like me, Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane were as far away in mental terms as Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones singing about Route 66. And perhaps that's the point. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wanted to say something along the lines of The place we come from is ours, and it matters to us. You out there from other places may not have heard of Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, but they are part of who we are.

2:11To quote, Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes. And again, I might notice these are not just local names. They are, if you like, micro-local, neighbourhood local. And this is where and how, more often than not, language is made in our localities with people we know, meet and talk with.

Liverpool Language

2:31So, if you haven't guessed it, today we're going to talk about how people in Liverpool talk and what this tells us about the English language. My guide today is Professor Tony Crowley of Leeds University School of English, where he specialises in the politics and history of language, and he's the author of Scouse, Social and Cultural History. Welcome to the programme, Tony. Thank you, Michael. Nice to be here. So, as a starter, Tony, can I ask where you yourself come from? Well, I'm from Liverpool, born and bred in Liverpool. I left when I was 17 to go to university,

3:01and I've maintained content. My family still lives in Liverpool, so I've maintained close contacts with the city, particularly for football games and so on and so on. Yes, maybe we won't mention football. OK. And when did you become interested in the language? What drew you to that? Well, my PhD was on the question of standard language, actually. The history of the term and concept, standard English. When I went to Oxford University as a student, one of the things that struck me immediately

3:32was that my language was very different from the language of most of the people, most of my contemporaries, and certainly the people who taught me or most of the people who taught me. And I came up against a certain type of negativity towards my own language. Of course, when you're from a particular place, one of the interesting things about it is that you don't know any other form of language apart from the language of that place. So you don't know that it's different from the language of other places. So when I went away, I was 17,

4:03and I went to Oxford University, I was sort of struck immediately by this very different attitude towards language. And the fact that they saw my language as not just different, but peculiar in certain ways.

Language History

4:17And I noticed that there were words that people didn't understand when I used them. One of the things about going to a university and so on is that you learn language and you learn the language of others and you learn words that you're not familiar with. And that's part of the process. And that's a good thing. But this was different. This was a sort of negativity towards the words I use. So I actually, I started writing those words down. Let's come in there. Yeah. And say, well, what does one city tell us about the English language? Because you're looking through a keyhole of Liverpool. Yeah, absolutely.

4:48Well, one of the really interesting things that I found when I started to look at the language of Liverpool was that this was a language, a form of language, which starts to be created in the mid to late 18th century. Population of Liverpool expands enormously, 1400% in the 18th century. And it's clear that that expansion can only take place by lots and lots of people coming from different places. Now, most of that is on the back of the slave trade. So Liverpool becomes a major port. And by the end of the century, it's a major port.

5:18And then by the mid to late 19th century, it's enormous port. It's the gateway to empire. So it's a really important city. But of course, it's got this population, which is, people are coming from all over the world, all over Britain to work in this, you know, it was called the second city of empire, the gateway to empire. And so there's this enormous mix. Now, all of those people are coming with either different languages. A lot of people came from Eastern Europe, for example, from the Baltic countries, from the States, because Liverpool is the American port.

5:49But there's also different forms of the English language. And all of this is mixing together. And it's producing this new form of language, which much later on is called Scouse. And it's drawing also on the local rural areas, isn't it? It's drawing on people from Wales, people from Lancashire, people from Cheshire as well. That's right. So people are coming in from the hinterland looking for work. This new form of language is being created. And when I looked at the language, it was clear to me that there's this amazing sort of multicultural,

6:19multilingual vocabulary, you know, that Scouse, as it became called much later on, has influenced us from lots and lots of different languages, lots and lots of different parts of the world. Have you got some examples there of this? Yeah. The internationalism, if you like, that's what you're talking about, as well as the wider local. Yeah. A good example is Akers, meaning money. Oh, yes. I think I've heard that. That probably came through forces slang. Now, Liverpool at the end of the 19th century, particularly in the early 20th century,

6:50is a major military post. So there's soldiers and sailors coming in and out all the time. And they're bringing with them forces slang. Now, Akers looks as though it's forces slang. It's actually Arabic, originally. It comes from Egypt. It means a small coin. But then some forces slang is taken from Arabic and the Indian languages, isn't it? Absolutely. And so another good example is Deco. Oh, yes. Meaning, have a look. Have a look. Yeah, which is Hindi. It's the imperative form of Dechna, to look or to see.

7:20I mean, I was in Liverpool last week and I heard someone say to someone else, give me a Deco. Give me a Deco, yes. And, you know, when I started thinking about Liverpool English in that sense, it just made me think more about the history of the English language itself because, of course, English itself is a mongrelised, hybrid language. And sometimes when people talk about global English, I do think, well, we're getting this wrong because everyone thinks about global English and thinks about the English language going out to the world. But the English language is composed of terms

7:52from different languages, you know, in the original sort of mix of the different languages. But then England, as a major trading power, one of the effects of that is to bring language. So there's all sorts of terms from all over the world in the history of the English language. So Liverpool English, in a way, made me start thinking about the history of the English language and start thinking, well, hold on, here's another way of thinking about English.

Scouse Origins

8:17This is a multicultural, multilingual language. Yes, we want one of those diagrams where the arrows go both ways. It's global because it goes out and then global because it's come in. That's right. That's right. Absolutely. There are other ports that you could argue are as significant as Liverpool in terms of trade and empire. So let's say Glasgow and, of course, London. So why do you think Liverpool developed its own form? I mean, it's very hard to piece it all together, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of that has to do

8:48with the nature of the population. Liverpool has an enormous shift in population. So it's growing exponentially throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. But a lot of people don't stay long. So there's a sort of transient population. And that makes it slightly different from, say, Glasgow. I think Liverpool and London are much more similar to each other than Liverpool and Glasgow, for example, or Liverpool and Bristol. In 1861, the 1861 census, 50% of the population of Liverpool are immigrant.

9:20Wow. So that's very distinctive about the city. But is there a substrate, I think it's a linguistic term, where you say there is a bed, if you like, of language in a place and then in come other forms? There's a guy called Frank Shaw who comes up with a story of Scouse. He's the first person to call Liverpool English Scouse. And he calls it Scouse in 1950. And he says, in 1837, people in Liverpool are still talking with Lancashire dialect.

9:51And then, a generation or so later, they're talking Scouse. So what happens? His answer is, the famine. All of these people come from Ireland and they bring their language with them. And what happened, what produces Scouse in Frank Shaw's story is that there's a combination of Lancashire dialect and Irish English. But my argument is that that story's wrong. There is a substrate, undoubtedly there's a substrate, of Lancashire dialect. So when we're talking about Lancashire dialect as a substrate for Liverpool,

10:21what kind of words, pronunciation? Well, I mean, there's a good example, which is to have a cob on, which is a Liverpool saying. It means to be in a bad mood or to be annoyed. And that's a Lancashire dialect word, cob. It means like a small round thing, hence cobble. But why to get a cob on means to be annoyed is unclear. And while we're on Scouse, where does the word come from? You say that Frank Shaw coined it in the 50s. Where did he invent it from?

10:52Okay, so there's three main meanings to the word Scouse. The origin is lobscouse. It's first recorded in 1708, which was a type of gruel which was served on ships. And it's a really negative comment about lobscouse because it was a really basic form of food. So lobscouse, we think it comes from Latvian lapscouse, which just means a good bowl. Scouse, which is a shortened form, because one of the interesting things about Liverpool English

11:22is that people shorten words all the time. Now, the Oxford English Dictionary has scouse from the 1840s. In fact, I found a reference to scouse meaning a type of stew, the original lobscouse, meaning a type of stew from 1792 in the records of the poorhouse. There's a menu for scouse. Oh, wow. And that still exists. If you go to Liverpool today, you can go to a cafe and order scouse. You can get a scouse pie at Anfield, believe it or not. But if you go to Hamburg, you can find lab scouse. And can I be clear?

11:53If I say scouse, am I being abusive? Because I say it in my word. If I say, he's a scouser. Does that sound offensive in your ears, me saying? Not now. But, I mean, that's the interesting second. Go on, you can tell me. Okay, it's the interesting second term, second meaning of the word scouse, because at the end of the 19th century, sailors, soldiers to a certain extent, but mostly sailors, used to refer to the inhabitants of Liverpool as scouse, because they ate scouse. Now, that wasn't a popular word.

12:23So that's kicking down, isn't it? It is. And it wasn't a popular word within the city. And when it was used within the city, it was a very negative word, and it meant the poorest of the poor. Yeah. So the word scouse, meaning people from Liverpool, doesn't really take off until the 1960s and 70s. But in the 20th century, the common word for scouse was whack or whacker. Ah, yes. That's what, which is what my dad, that was the term my dad, I never heard my dad use the term scouse. So scouse, meaning someone from Liverpool,

12:54I think it really doesn't take off until about the 1970s. But again, it's a sort of negative term to it. But there's a third meaning of scouse, which is the language of Liverpool, and that's not used at all until Frank Shaw coins it in 1950 in an article in the Liverpool Echo called Scouse, the Scouse lingo. Well, as we're pulling this word apart, let's look at some others. I heard at least one of your footballers called a scally. Scally. This does seem quite pejorative,

13:24but again, it was owned, I think. So I won't say who it was talked about, which particular footballer, but it was said, well, he's a bit of a scally, or he's a scally. Yeah, I can guess who that was. Yes, his initials are RF. Yeah. Yes, okay. So let's pull that one apart. So where does scally come from? So scally is a really interesting term because it's an Americanism, actually. Oh. And again, it's a good example of what linguists call hypochorism, which means an abbreviation. But my argument is that there are a lot of Liverpool examples

13:55where it's not quite abbreviation, actually. So for example, Bessie, meaning best, is hypochorism, when you sort of shorten a term or you defamiliarize a term. So you're not saying best, you're saying Bessie. Scally is a good example of hypochorism in the sense of abbreviation because it comes from scallywag. Oh, right. Yes. But scallywag in America had very specific meanings. Now, it meant a rogue and so on, but it also meant in trade union discourse, for example, it meant someone who wouldn't work.

14:25But it had a political sense, meaning someone from the southern states who didn't accept post-Civil War reconstruction. So it was a very, very negative term, scallywag. And then it sort of lessens when it comes into English and means more like something like a rascal. Yes. But in Liverpool, scally originally meant football supporters and it was a sort of neutral term. It referred to football supporters originally who wore particular types of fashion, casuals they were called, young working class men

14:56to wear particular types of clothes and so on. And they were called scallys and it was a sort of neutral term. And then it pejorates, it worsens and it becomes extremely negative. So scally today, if you're called a scally today in Liverpool, it's a very negative term. I won't do it. I won't do it. Is Romani present in Liverpool language? There's a lot of Romani in Liverpool. Bar meaning pound, which is a Romani term. Custi or custi meaning excellent from custo in Romani meaning really good. And then there's

15:26a whole series of words. Douse, nix, noak. Keep douse, keep nix, keep noak, which all mean keep a look out. And they're all Romani terms. And then how about items of clothing? They quite often feature in dialects, don't they? So trousers? Keks. Keks. Oh, yes. When I went to university, I was horrified because people, when people used the term keks, it meant underpants, which is clearly wrong

15:56because it just means trousers. Yes. Obviously it just means trousers. I think I must have met that from people certainly north of where I come from. Keks. Yeah. Yes, definitely. And keks is a cant word. Now, cant is one of those really strange linguistic categories that nobody quite understands, like slang. If anyone can come up with a good definition of slang for me, I'd be very grateful. If you look in the OED, it says the language of lower people. Well, I have a book called The Elizabethan Underworld. Right.

16:26And you probably know it. And it's full of thieves cant, as it's called. And there are cant poems, aren't there as well, written in cant. And cant actually is from cantare to sing. Oh, right. It's the same route. In fact, it's the same route as accent. There's a guide to cant, a sort of history of, a sort of dictionary of cant, Thomas Harmon's caveat in 1567, which appears 40 years before the first English dictionary. So there's a dictionary of cant before there's a dictionary of English. The reason for that

16:57is because cant was the language of rogues and peddlers and thieves and so on, constructed as that. And therefore, good bourgeois people needed a guide in order to be warned against it. And it's got this collection of what we would now call Romany words. Of course, in the 16th century, they're called gypsies. And the reason they're called gypsies is because people thought they were from Egypt. Yeah. That's where that comes from. The interesting thing is when those words

17:27that were deliberately secret then move into people who are not travelling, who are not thieves, who are not on the road, quite legitimately, not thieves necessarily. And it's when other people are using it because it sounds, you know, a bit hip, a bit kind of cool or groovy, as the Beatles might have said. That's the interesting point, isn't it, is when those words cross over. Yeah.

17:51As I'm listening to you, I mean, I can hear that you're from Liverpool and I'll admit, I'm also thinking of Liverpool people who come in front of us, comedians, footballers and so on. So I'm thinking, I'll name some names, Stephen Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, John Bishop. What about the R? When I hear Peter Kay, he pronounces the R or in a word like warm or card, Liverpudlians, people from Liverpool? It's non-rottic. So Liverpool is distinctive.

18:22One of the really interesting things about the language of Liverpool is that within Britain there's a dialect continuum, as you know, Michael. Across the country, there's a whole series of dialects. Now, each of those dialects is very similar to the dialect next to it. The further you go along, the more different it will be from the point you started at. That pattern runs right across the country. It runs north, south, it runs east, west, with the exception of Liverpool. When you get to Liverpool, then it's so different from the areas which are contiguous to it. That's why, that's one of the reasons

18:53why I started to think, hold on, there's something different about this. In a way, it's a kind of dialect island, you're saying? Yeah. You know, because if Frank Storr's story was correct, Lancashire dialect plus Irish English, then people in Manchester would be speaking the same as people from Liverpool because there's a fantastic influx of Irish immigrants into Manchester. Yeah, and into Salford, yes. Yeah. And that's really not the case. Let's look at some other sounds. Let's be really, let's really home in. The t sound,

19:23I think I hear in some Liverpool speech, it doesn't, it's not as t-ish as I'm making it there. Yeah, so you get aspiration with, particularly with initial T, so Tommy, for example, is often pronounced Sommie. Sommie. Sommie. And that's a very common feature of Liverpool English. Happy tenting is another example. So in Manchester, you know, there's a certain point on the map where happy becomes happy.

19:53Oh, yes. And in Liverpool, it's happy, but you cross that, you cross the linguistic boundary and then it becomes happy. Yeah. And that's very distinctive. The t sound in the middle of the words, can that, in Liverpool, does that sometimes more like the American d sound? It can be d, often glottalised though, so there's often, there's a lot of glottal stops. Yes. As you just heard. Now, one thing that I hear in Stephen Gerrard's speech, so if I, if he says the word back, right,

20:24I hear him say it sounding more like the Welsh word bach. Yeah. I can hear a ch. So you get the fricative, yeah. Yeah. And that's. And where does that come from? Does that come from Welsh? Well, I think it's very difficult to say it comes from Welsh. It's certainly a feature which is in Welsh. It's certainly a feature which is in some forms of Irish English, but then it would be in the English language spoken by German immigrants to Liverpool, East European immigrants

20:54to Liverpool. They would probably use ch. Yeah. My forebears who came through Liverpool. Yes. Exactly. You know, I must mention to you, Michael, of course, you know, there are some Yiddish terms in Liverpool. Now, everyone knows nosh. Yes. Right. Which actually comes from American English into English English. But the other one, this is used in Liverpool and the East End of London. Michael, you'd be glad to know. It's highfaluting. Oh, highfaluting. Now, I just know that

21:25as to do with cowboys or something. I was just, as an American, it's a Yiddishism, is it? It's a Yiddishism. I didn't know.

21:32It's halufela. And it means ostentatious or showy. Oh, right. So it's a Yiddish term. Now, I mean, I had no idea that it was Yiddishism. Well, that's all played out in football again, but we won't go there. Instead, let me throw this at you. So you'll know much better than me that there, of course, there are accent and dialect variations across the city. And I was told by the jazz saxophonist Tim Whitehead, who comes originally from Liverpool, that there was once a campaign run by the Liverpool Bus Company that said,

22:04I'm going to pronounce it my way, treat us fairly, travel early. Now, there's some sort of joke there. Just fill me in on the joke. What the joke is, treat us fairly, travel early. It's the Square Nurse merger. It doesn't exist in Liverpool. The distinction between Square and Nurse, let me give you the best example of this. So in 1965, Frank Shaw, who I mentioned earlier, Frank Shaw wrote a book called Learn Yourself Scouse. It was published because all of those tourists

22:34who were coming into the city to watch games in the World Cup at Goodison Park, they'd all need a guide to understanding the language of Liverpool. So Scouse, Learn Yourself Scouse. So this is volume one. Now, it was hailed, so it's actually reviewed in the TLS, believe it or not. Times Literary Supplement. Yeah, Times Literary Supplement, and it is really welcomed, except in Liverpool, there's an outcry because this is South End Scouse, which is to say the language of the south end

23:05of the city, which is actually where I'm from. So, they produced volume two the same year of North End Scouse. Love it. And then everyone was happy after that. But that tells you that within the city, there are variations within the city, and of course, there are class variations, there are gender variations, you know, so with this slogan on the side of the bus, treat us fairly, travel early, the way I say it, in different parts of the city, excuse me for saying it,

23:36it could be treat us fairly, travel early, or it could be treat us fairly, travel early. Michael, that's terrible. It is terrible, completely terrible. Now tell me, is that the gag? Yeah, that's the gag. Do we know why there are differences across such a relatively small distance? I mean, this doesn't apply purely to Liverpool, you know, people talk about, you know, Yorkshire, they can tell differences between valleys or dales, they can tell the difference. So, do we know why this happens? Well, I mean, sociolinguistically,

24:07the answer in the end is always identity. It's identity formation. They often are very, very small pronunciation differences, but they locate people in terms of identity. Yes. You know, I mean, that's another, the Liverpool accent, for example, is highly stigmatised. Now, things which are stigmatised tend to, tend to die away. And yet, that hasn't happened in Liverpool. In fact, exactly the opposite has happened in Liverpool, which is that the accent is spreading. Now,

24:37sociolinguistically, that's really interesting because it's, nationally, it's a very stigmatised form. Locally, it's spreading. Some phonologists, sound linguists, they argue that Scouse is, is now, now sounds more Scouse. than it did in the 1970s. Now, I'm slightly sceptical of what, what that means, but, but they mean particular sounds are produced now in ways that, that signal Liverpool identity.

25:07and that's spreading, so it's spreading up into Lancashire, almost as far as Wigan, it's spreading out as far as St. Helens, so the younger generation in St. Helens now sound more like their Liverpool counterparts than their Manchester counterparts. Likewise, it's spreading down towards Chester, even up into North Wales. So, so that's really interesting about the accent. It's actually spreading. So that means it's become a local prestige dialect. It's become local prestige. 102 miles ago,

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26:12You're listening to Word of Mouth and as you may know, the programme is teamed up with The Open University, the OU. Recently, linguists from The Open University sat down with me for a conversation about the words we use, where I talk about my own language journey and what I've learnt from the stories behind how we speak. So to listen, visit the BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth page and follow the links to The Open University. So why, in your view,

Language and Comedy

26:37is the language so inventive and so full of comedy? I mean, people constantly observe that, you know, if you stand on the terraces at your beloved Anfield, you know, the humour at levels are just quite extraordinary. It's just, it's like, it's like a comedy show to be standing there. Well, I mean, Liverpool's a very oral culture. Great store is set to people who can perform publicly. So, you know, being able to tell a joke, being able to banter, for want of a better term,

27:08being able to stand up in public and tell stories, funny stories and so on and so on. They're sort of privileged oral forms in Liverpool. And the more creative and inventive you are, then the more sort of prestige that you get as a sort of, as a local speaker. And, you know, actually, I think they're great skills. And hasn't that made its way into the media, either through sitcoms or through comedians? I mean, I've already mentioned John Bishop, you know, who's a great storyteller. You know, the moment he gets on the couch with Graham Norton or something, he's got

27:38ten stories and sometimes they're just like, just enlarged form of a tiny little anecdote. Obviously, he's not solo, he's not alone, he's got a cultural hinterland of that. That's right, yeah. I mean, that's a sort of recognised cultural form, I think. I think, I mean, you touch there on the history. One of the really interesting things about Liverpool is that since the very late 1950s, right through the 60s and then through the 70s and then on,

28:08is that Liverpool has been present in broadcast media, whether that be sitcoms, Brookside, you know, which ran for 21 years and so on and so on. Brookie, Brookie, you know, very good example of hypochorism, I call. So, you know, Liverpool was present which means, of course, Liverpool language is present. Well, we're getting towards the end of the programme so I'm thinking about how to sign off. Thank you, of course. Of course, immediately comes into my mind is Scylla's, Scylla's sign off, which I think possibly

28:39at one point half the nation was saying, imitating Scylla Black and the way she said it, I'm not going to say it. Instead, maybe can I say that I've been made up? Made up? Yeah, I've been made up to talk about scouts with you. Tony Crowley, thanks ever so much for coming on the programme. Thank you, Michael, really enjoyed it. 102 miles ago, the oil light came on. 100 miles ago, you noticed. Now, it's time to head to Take 5. This oil change, fall in love with your car

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