Site Last Updated
2 January 2008

Reproduced from Kent on Sunday, 6th February 2005

In the 19th century the clerics WF Shaw, vicar of Eastry, and WD Parish, chancellor of Chichester Cathedral, got to grips with ‘Kentish’, writes Neil Clements.

They published their Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect and Provincialisms in Use in the County of Kent in 1888, writing: “The Kentish pronounciation is so much more coars and broad than that of Sussex, that many words which are common to both dialects can scarcely be recognised a few miles from the border; and many words of ordinary use may become completely altered.”

Worse still, they found that people in East Kent were prone to making up their own words and deliberately mispronouncing those they didn’t approve of, especially words used by “furriners”.

They were even less impressed by the influence of London on the local dialect, commenting: “The purity of the dialect diminishes in direct proportion to the proximity to London...”

“It maybe said that the dialectical sewage of the metropolis finds its way down the river and is deposited on the southern bank of the Thames, as far as the limites of Gravesend Reach, whence it seems to overflow and saturate the neighbouring district.”

Examples of Kentish dialect can be found in a downloadable e-book from this dedicated website supported by the Kent Archaeological Society website.  The file is large (7.62 Mb) and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it [Acrobat is free to download]. You will find such delights as: marm=a jelly; jawsy=talkative; Gilligaskins=trousers; Polrumptious=rude; wood-noggin=half-timbered houses - and so on.

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