lestah
The words we use tell a story. Whether I choose to say so and so is being a right mardy arse today, or tell someone to cut through the jitty round the back of my estate. When I say my hair's dead cotty, when someone asks if I’ve got a chewy and I say I ain’t gone none. When I ask for a laggy band at work and get blank stares. These are all words that tell my story: of a working-class girl growing up in Leicester. Of being called m’duck by the men in the garage where I got my first Saturday job; of asking for baps down the bakery on the Saff; of saying like every other word.
The fact that my computer is trying to autocorrect these words as I type is another story. Of what words are 'allowed' and what words are not. I’ve lived in London for seven years now and my words have changed. I don’t say no I never, or ain’t, or innit. I consciously drop in jitty and cotty and cozzie when I want to confuse Southerners and stake my claim on my working class Midlands roots. But sometimes it comes out wrong, a pastiche of the words I once inhabited unconsciously. And when I’m back home my family say I’ve changed, I sound different, I speak different — my story shifted without me being able to stop it.
You can find more Leicester words here and here