After moving up to Leeds for university, I’ve come to the realisation that I’m quite sheltered when it comes to travelling in the UK; I’ve travelled across the world and have lived in Australia for 2 years but the furthest north I have ever travelled in the UK is Norfolk which is quite shocking even to me! Another shock is how as an A-Level Geography student, I didn’t realise that Leeds is actually further north than Manchester and Liverpool! Two of my flatmates, who live in Stockport and Warrington, were not too pleased about my mistake. The biggest shock however, is the major differences in language and social norms.
I live in the east midlands and during fresher’s week, I soon found out that I had to pick a side: north or south. After short deliberation I chose south, not thinking that it was a big deal, but now after living with them for over 10 weeks I am constantly reminded of my decision and am now referred to as the southerner.
There isn’t a day that goes by where my flatmates and I don’t argue about how we say certain things. A very touchy subject in our flat is the name of the thing that you dry clothes on – some of the northerners call it a maiden and the rest/the southerners call it an airer. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to agree on an answer even after 3 years when we all graduate. Pronunciation is another issue as I, among the other southerners, pronounce words in what the northerners call a ‘posh’ accent; scone as sc-own, bath as barth, and so on. When in reality, all we do is use the long form of the vowel ‘a’. However, they are adamant that scone should be pronounced as sc-on (apart from Annabel).
Food and drink is major running theme in our cultural differences. Firstly, northerners drink tea a LOT (quite a generalisation I know) and they also believe that tea fixes most problems. Since being in Leeds I’ve also started to picked up northern mannerisms; my best (Mancunian) friend introduced me to a new word – scran. I’ve learnt that scran can refer to food or the act of eating. I’ve even started saying it back home and my family have no idea what I’m saying. She’s also forcing me to try a northern delicacy of gravy on ‘chippy chips’ because gravy on regular oven chips isn’t good enough for her.
One reoccurring argument is what we call the 3 meals of the day; the obvious answer would be breakfast, lunch and dinner, right? Well after being up in the north, I’ve found that it’s also referred to as breakfast, dinner and tea which is very confusing come meal time! We also argue over what would call a bread roll – that’s one name we all agree on. However, there’s a range of other names such as bread buns, barmcakes and baps.
One social norm that is extremely different in the north from the south is how we approach strangers. Down in the south, you don’t ever dare make conversation with a stranger let alone make eye contact with one but my northern friends smile at strangers all the time. I’m also very used to the weather down in the south – overcast 80% of the time with rain the other 20%, all while having a moderate temperature and last year, we didn’t experience any snow. I’ve never been so cold or seen as much rain as I have up here in Leeds; it’s snowed three times over the past two & a half months and it’s only just December!
So here’s the moral of the blog: if you want cheap alcohol – go to the north, if you want daily arguments on pronunciation- go to the north, if you want to be picked on for being a southerner – go to the north and finally, always I mean ALWAYS, carry an umbrella around everywhere you go; I learnt that the hard way.
Eleanor Nightingale 