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NICE
Apr 16, 2018 02:03
6 yrs ago
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English term

`Aye, Darry, ye ken dole neara forty kil a doy,\' ...

English Art/Literary Poetry & Literature
`Aye, Darry, ye ken dole neara forty kil a doy,' said the first mate.
`Nay, Peta. Beeng oot to King's Lynn wi' it, whin aul check, the winnie neara blown the cran' shaff', said Darrell.
`Gaa. Darr, you in King's, goo-ann, just lik the tame you slooped the crank wi' yo teeth,' said the second mate, followed by guffaws".

This is a dialogue from "Seventeen Years. Take Note", a story by Lynn Scott Myers (in "Pleasures. Women and Erotica" (ed. by Lonnie Barbach), Perrenial Library, New York, 1985).

I'd like to know a" Standard-English" equavalent of this dialogue. It is very difficult to understand if you are not a native speaker.

Discussion

Alison MacG Apr 16, 2018:
I also found a newspaper review of the original story, which states:
But perhaps the most believable story is "17 Years, Take Notice," by Lynn Scott Myers, about an American girl who loses her innocence to a Scotsman.
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/70664661/
However, I think that Darrell is a Wisbech local [He talked about his urges and guilt in wanting to burst from Wisbech and discover the world. I represented one peephole. America, Europe. His father was a farmer and he'd have a farm of his own one day, but after, only after he traveled, or worked or fought or whatever, someplace. He loved his country and his "Mather and Ba" and his brothers and sisters. Darrell was nineteen and celebrating, himself and his land] and that this reviewer, like us, is unsure about the accent the author is attempting to represent. Apart from the odd word or two, e.g. “oot”, “lass”, Darrell certainly doesn’t sound like a Scotsman to me. Here are some of the other things he says:
"Me noime is Darrell, but me mates call me Darry. This 'eres Low and Peta,"
“Ken au tek you bock to comp?”
"Au won to tauk to ye, is that all right?"
Alison MacG Apr 16, 2018:
FWIW Here is what a German translator made of it.
„He, Darry, kannst fast vierzig Kilo am Tag wegbringen“, sagte der erste.
„Nee, Peter. Ich war damit in King’s Lynn, mit dem alten Ding, und es hat mir fast die Kurbelwelle zerrissen“, sagte Darrell.
„Komm, Darr, du in King’s hör doch auf. Weißt du noch, als du die Kurbel mit den Zähnen wieder hingekriegt hast“ sagte der zweite Bursche, und alle brachen in Gelächter aus.
... und mein Verlangen ist grenzenlos: erotische Erzählungen von Frauen für Frauen - Lonnie Barbach - Gondrom, 1992
Rachel Fell Apr 16, 2018:
I agree about those words Katsy has mentioned, and I don't think they say "Nay" either. Maybe the author wasn't very good at representing the accent if the sailors are meant to be from East Anglia.
katsy Apr 16, 2018:
Agree with Rachel. Not native of the area (Cambridgeshire, East Anglia) but in contact with it from time to time. 1. I thought it was Scottish/Geordie at first 2. In that area they don't say "Aye", nor "oot" nor "doy", though the goo-ann sounds familiar... NOt sure that I'm helping things along any....
Rachel Fell Apr 16, 2018:
When I first read it, I thought it was meant to be in a Geordie accent.
Tatyana Leshkevich (asker) Apr 16, 2018:
Dialogue version Considering the proposed opinions, I would reconstruct this dialoge in the following way:

“Yes, Darry, you can do nearly forty kilometrs a day”, said the first mate.
"No, Pete. Being out to King’s Lynn with it, when old check, the winner nearly blown the crankshaft”, said Darrel.
"Ha-ha. You in King’s, go on, just like the time you screwed the crank with your teeth”, said the second mate, followed by guffaws.

I suppose King's Lynn refers to a tractor-driver contest.
Charles Davis Apr 16, 2018:
@Rachel I can well believe it. In practice the author probably made up a bit of "weird" pronunciation and the details are a bit arbitrary.
But you're the person we've been waiting for here! If you can't make sense of it I'm going to stick my neck out and say it doesn't make sense.
Rachel Fell Apr 16, 2018:
It doesn't look to me much like the way East Anglian - Cambridgeshire, Norfolk - sounds (grew up there).
Charles Davis Apr 16, 2018:
Local drivers in Wisbech in 1966 are not likely to have been either Australian or Scottish. The accent is obviously intended to be eastern English.

I also think it's unlikely that they would have referred to a Winnebago or to kilometres.
Tatyana Leshkevich (asker) Apr 16, 2018:
Charles Davis, Tony M. That's what the girl says about it: "I could hear their conversation now, but it was almost unintelligible". And "dole" probably "do" or "deal"?
Tony M Apr 16, 2018:
@ Charles, Asker Aha! That's important extra context!

So 'Winnie' almost certainly 'Winnebago'
'ken' possibly 'can'
'dole' probably 'drive, go like mad, etc.'
'neara forty kil a doy' = nearly 40 km a day (or km/h?)

This now sounds to me more like an Australian accent than a Scots one.
Charles Davis Apr 16, 2018:
That's very interesting If the narrative viewpoint is that of the American girl, who overheard this conversation and is understood to be recalling it some time later, it suggests to me the possibility that the parts that are not meaningful to us (or at least to me) are not actually meaningful at all, but deliberately nonsensical: at that point they said something weird that she didn't understand. So the intention might be to convey the impression of a kind of speech utterly alien to the listener which is intermittently comprehensible, though very strangely pronounced to her ear, and occasionally apparent nonsense.
Tatyana Leshkevich (asker) Apr 16, 2018:
I believe this is really an American writer. And the plot is set in Wisbech, “a small town three hours, by rail, north of London, close to the Wash on the east coast of England”. The main character is an American girl stident, who, along with some of her classmates, arrived in Wisbech in summer 1966 “to pick the fruit”. And this “unique” dialogue takes place between the local drivers “at the Rising Sun Inn”.
Charles Davis Apr 16, 2018:
With Phil This looks like a mess to me, in terms of dialect. I don't think "ken" has its Scottish sense of "know" here, but "oot" for "out" does suggest Scots pronunciation to me (do they say it like that in East Anglia?).

I think the first bit means "Yes, Darry, you can [?] nearly forty [?] a day". But I've no idea what "dole" and "kil" mean here.

The obscurity arises not just from what seem to be dialect words, but also from what I presume is professional jargon: a sailor might know what "slooping" a crankshaft is, but I certainly don't.
Tony M Apr 16, 2018:
@ Phil Sound much more like an attempt at reproducing a Scots accent to me — especially the (still current!) use of "ye ken" for "you know". If you try saying it with a Scots accent, it reads a little better.
'Winnie' I suspect might be short for the brand of the engine whose crankshaft came close to being damaged; you know, like 'Landy' for 'Land Rover' — often a kind of metonymy is ued, citing the name of the brand rather than the fact it was an engine: "We nearly lost the Evinrude..."

"a doy" could be 'a day' — or plenty of other things!
philgoddard Apr 16, 2018:
It's very difficult to understand if you *are* a native speaker!

I wonder if this is an American writer (she's described as Atlanta based) trying to imitate eastern British English (I assume that's what it's meant to be, given the reference to King's Lynn), but overdoing the local colour to the point of incomprehensibility.

Here's an initial very fragmentary attempt:

Yes, Darrell, you ???
No, Peter, been out to King's Lynn with it, the ?? nearly blew the crankshaft
Go on, Darrell, you in King's Lynn, just like the time you ? the crankshaft with your teeth.
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