Geordie Glamour.

This week I will be examining something that has less to do with Geordie pronunciation or Geordie word origins and more to do with grammar, no don't groan... Grammar is not something to be thought of as tedious. Grammar is glamour! Grammar is magic! Grammar is art! The word itself comes from the Greek Grammatike meaning art (of letters).

I will be looking at a particular aspect of Standard English grammar and comparing it with Geordie. To be honest, it is not positive stuff. That's right, I will be looking at negation.

Negation is a process that forms affirmative statements into the opposite. This is achieved by placing the word not after an auxiliary (be, have, do) or model verb (can, could, should, will, would, may, might, must, ought).

Of course, you are aware of this, and you might utter such statements as "I'm not pleased, Todd" or "I couldn't care less, Todd" or "I can't help you, Todd" or "I don't have time for this, Todd". To which I will say... maybe you're being too hard on Todd but then again that dude is annoying.

In Geordie the negation process differs ever so slightly. Instead of contracting the verb and not (e.g. aren't/haven't) we favour the verbs to be and to have with a fully articulated negative particle. Such as 'I've not seen Todd in a while' or 'It's not Todd's fault he's a moron'.

The contracted 'can't' is almost always spoken as cannot and pronounced cannit. And, 'don't' is spoken as divn't ...although you should note that 'do' is not spoken as 'div' (that would be ridiculous, we're not Todd, we're not morons).

We also like a little bit of the double negative in the North. So if we do contract a negative verb it is probably because we are adding 'nothing or nobody' to the sentence, for example 'Todd doesn't know nothing'.

That's it. Sorry for the grammar lesson. And, sorry if you're called Todd and you read this! So here's another joke. A Geordie has tea with the Queen (it could happen) she asks "Would you like an eclair or a meringue?" he says "Nar you're not wrang I'll have an eclair".