Pitmatic

Pitmatic (originally: "Pitmatical", colloquially known as "Yakka") is a group of traditional Northern English dialects spoken in rural areas of the Northumberland and Durham Coalfield in England.

The feature distinguishing Pitmatic from other Northumbrian dialects, such as Geordie and Mackem, is its basis in the mining jargon used in local collieries. For example, in Tyneside and Northumberland, Cuddy is a nickname for St. Cuthbert, while in Alnwick Pitmatic, a cuddy is a pit pony.^[1] According to the British Library's lead curator of spoken English, writing in 2019, "Locals insist there are significant differences between Geordie and several other local dialects, such as Pitmatic and Mackem. Pitmatic is the dialect of the former mining areas in County Durham and around Ashington to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne, while Mackem is used locally to refer to the dialect of the city of Sunderland and the surrounding urban area of Wearside".^[2]

Traditionally, the dialect spoken in Northumberland in rural communities used the Northumbrian burr [ʁ]. This is now very rare.^[3]: 40 The variety spoken in Durham, while non-rhotic, is traditionally still subject to the Nurse-north merger in words like forst 'first' and bord 'bird', which came about as a result of burr modification.^{[citation needed]}