The Cumbrianator
As regular readers of this blog may have gathered - Cumbria is full of clever people with too much spare time. How else to explain the existence of The Cumbrianator? All credit to Dan Gibson, who has played midwife to the bastard offspring of Douglas Adams' Babel Fish & the Cumbrian Dialect Dictionary. Now you too can enjoy hours of harmless fun translating web pages into Cumbrian dialect. Clearly this is what online parsing software was invented for. Just click on the link above, go to the Cumbrianator, select the 'Web-site' option & type 'nfbtnw.blogspot.com' into the field. Suddenly you'll find yourself reading these words in dialect.
Note to Dan Gibson if he's reading this: fabulous idea. Any chance of expanding the parser's lexicon? At present it seems a bit limited. If, a thousand years into the future, the Dialect Dictionary were all that remained of 21st century Cumbria, the anthropologists of the fourth millenium would deduce a county in which people were permanently (i) drunk, (ii) short of cash or (iii) both, and the only entertainment available was endlessly watching horses jump over gates. Errm. Wait a minute . . .
Note to Dan Gibson if he's reading this: fabulous idea. Any chance of expanding the parser's lexicon? At present it seems a bit limited. If, a thousand years into the future, the Dialect Dictionary were all that remained of 21st century Cumbria, the anthropologists of the fourth millenium would deduce a county in which people were permanently (i) drunk, (ii) short of cash or (iii) both, and the only entertainment available was endlessly watching horses jump over gates. Errm. Wait a minute . . .
posted by Nick at 3:41 pm
2 Comments:
Lex, by curious coincidence there is a post in preparation on the regional origins of Hagrid. Not in Cumbria, alas, but don't let that stop you from entertaining young Hooper . . .
I found in Exeter library a set of volumes, of english dialects,this gave most of the words that I know, including the singular form of shillies. Unfortunately I can't give you a reference, but be aware that it does exist, and might be available, on inter-library loan.
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