YORKSHIRE dialect is one of the oldest languages in the kingdom, says dialect expert Ron Scales.

He told a packed audience at the Memorial Hall at Pickering how accusations that Yorkshire dialect was the speech of the ignorant and uneducated were completely false.

"Dialect was not the speech of the ignorant. It was the natural speech of the people who belonged to and worked the land. Around 60pc were not educated and could not read or write."

Dialect is associated with the spoken word and the countryside. However, he explained Yorkshire dialect covered a wide area and should not be confused with "folk speech" such as the local language spoken within a quarter of a mile of Whitby harbour by the fishermen.

"We speak the king's English," he proclaimed. "Except the king is Alfred."

In the 19th century, the King of Denmark even sent a study team to gather ancient Danish words which had disappeared in Denmark, but which still survived in Yorkshire.

A local example, said octogenarian Mr Scales, is the word "brand" meaning "steep" as in the steeply-climbing Brand's Hill in Pickering.

"It is a racing certainty that the man who gave Brand's Hill its name wore skins."

He added: "This is a rich, spoken language. Norse left a heritage that has had a great effect on the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, more than any other single event."

And he reeled off words that had the audience smiling and nodding: "Esp, skep, poke, gardelic, wreklin, steg. Then there was garth, tarn, fell, tot, ness, howe and foss and rigwelted sheep: a sheep that could not get off its back."

It was nonsense to say that Yorkshire dialect was a limited language. In fact, the vocabulary was far in excess and richer in its expressions than standard English.

"Look at 'chastise'," he said. "bang, bash, brey, bessel, bunch, clout, clatter, jowl, plug and thresh. How about 'not so wise': in dialect you find: daft, sackless, gormless, naffeared, garbison, fuzzock and ninny.

"Then look at the metaphors. 'As deaf as a yat stop', 'dead as a maggoty rat', 'trang as a woman's tongue', 'wik as a scoprel', and 'op to oxters in snaw'."

There is a great humour with dialect, said Mr Sparks.

"One old lady to another on returning from the south: 'I doan't like those London papers, there's neever any dead yan knaws.'

"It's gentle, too, and full of common sense: 'If there isn't summat, theres allus summat else'."

Dialect draws people together. In the war, when Mr Scales was captured by Russians, the first thing he and his fellow prisoners did was to form a White Rose Club.

"We spent many long times speaking the Doric dialect together."

Sadly, he said, the dialect dies as a more

sophisticated life has a diluting effect on language.

"Sixty years ago, the only people who were heard speaking standard English would have been the doctor, the parson and the solicitor."

Mr Scales added: "I'm very sorry that dialect has died in my lifetime. Before World War Two, you would hear nothing else in Pickering Market Place."

The evening was arranged by the Beck Isle Museum which is collecting for a dehumidifier. The museum is still drying out after the August floods.

Updated: 10:37 Wednesday, September 11, 2002