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Authors: George MacDonald Fraser

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

The dialects of Cumberland are among the purest and, to the outsider, least comprehensible in the English-speaking world. Rendering them phonetically is difficult, but I have tried because that is the way my comrades talked, and to translate their conversation into normal English would be to change the characters of the speakers out of recognition; they were the way they spoke: tough, strong, forthright, and frequently aggressive. But while I hope I have conveyed their accent, I have to rely on meaning and context to suggest the style in which their speech was delivered. For example, the Cumbrian voice is well suited to derision; everyone knows the common English expression of disbelief, “Get away!” and the equally familiar North Country “Give over!”, meaning “Stop it”, but as rendered by the Cumbrian “Girraweh!” and “Give ower!” have respectively a snarling contempt and a violence which have to be heard. At its heaviest, the accent is a harsh, rasping growl, and it is this as much as the occasionally archaic vocabulary which baffles the foreigner. Just to give one quick example of pure Cumbrian, I give the translation of:

“Have you seen a donkey jump over a gate?” which is

“Est seen a coody loup ower a yett?”

That sentence, in Cumbrian, illustrates one of the most distinctive features of the county's speech—the occasional use of the second person singular: “Est” or “Esta” is “Hast thou”. I emphasise occasional use; the Cumbrian, especially the countryman, will use “thou” (pronounced “thoo” or “tha”) and “you” or “ye” indiscriminately. “You will” in Carlisle may be spoken as “you'll” or “ye'll”, but out on the fellside it is liable to be “tha'lt” (“thou wilt”). Similarly, his assent may be “yes”, “yiss”, or “aye”; he alternates “well” and “weel”; “go” may be “gaw”, “gan”, or “ga”; he may say “how” perfectly normally, but he may also say “’oo”. The list is endless: “don't” is usually “doan't” or “dawn't”, but occasionally it is “divvn't”—and don't (or divvn't) ask me why.

I have said the dialect is pure, because it is both ancient and grammatical; Chaucer might well understand a modern Cumbrian better than he would a modern Londoner. But it has its antique ungrammatical lapses, too—“Ah's” (“I is”) and “Thoo's” (“Thou is”) are examples to balance against the purity of “Th'art” (“Thou art”) and “looksta” and “sista” (“lookest thou” and “seest thou”).

All of which may convince the uninitiated that my characters might as well be speaking Turkish; in fact, I don't think their speech will be too difficult to understand, and where I think it may be I have appended footnote translations. The glossary at the end consists largely of Hindustani words and slang expressions current in the British Army fifty years ago.

G.M.F.

GLOSSARY

Foreign words are Hindustani unless otherwise stated

admi
man
bait
food, snack
basha
native house, hut
bibi
,
bint
girl
bidi
native cheroot
bund
embankment
bundook
rifle
burgoo
porridge (Turkish,
burghal
)
bus
finished, the end
chaggle
canvas water-bag
chah
tea
charpoy
native rope bed
chaung
river gully, watercourse (Burmese)
cheeny
sugar
chota wallah
little fellow
coggage
paper
kaguz
)
connor
food (
khana
)
dah
machete (Burmese)
dekko
look see
Denton Holme
a district of Carlisle
dersi
tailor
dhobi
laundryman
dhoti
loincloth
dood
milk
doolally
mad (from Deolali, Indian transit camp famous for sunstroke)
durwan
porter, doorkeeper
duser
other
ek
one (numeral)
glasshouse
military prison (from the glass roof at Aldershot)
gongs
war medals
goolie
ball (
gola
)
ham
I (personal pronoun)
havildar
sergeant
housewife
hold-all for needle, thread, etc.
idderao!
come here!
indaba
affair, concern (Swahili, council)
isker
thing (Arabic)
jao
go
jawan
soldier
jildi
quickly
khud
jungle hill
klifty
steal
kukri
Gurkha short sword
lathi
policeman's staff
maidan
plain, exercise ground
mallum
understand
marra
(lit. “marrow”), comrade, pal
mera
my
naik
corporal
nappy-wallah
barber
nullah
gully, dry watercourse
pani
water
pialla
enamelled mug
punji
poisoned stake, booby-trap
sarf karo
to clean (up), hence, to kill
shabash!
bravo!
stag
guard, sentry-go
sub-cheese
everything, the lot (also “sub-muckin”)
tairo
wait, hold on
tum
thou
tik hai
all right, good
About the Author

George MacDonald Fraser served in the Border Regiment in Burma during the Second World War, and in the Gordon Highlanders. He has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada, and has written many bestselling novels in addition to the eleven volumes of the Flashman Papers. Thousands of readers around the world have been delighted by the three volumes of stories about Private McAuslan, thoughtfully described as ‘the biggest walking disaster to hit the British Army since Ancient Pistol’. He has also written numerous films, most notably
The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers
and the James Bond film,
Octopussy
.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise

“George MacDonald Fraser, creator of Flashman, is one of the finest fiction entertainers of the day. But the success of the Flashman books is also founded upon the author's wonderful instinct for the British soldier, and for the reality of war…His book should be read by all those who cannot understand why so many of those who endure and survive war retain a gratitude for the experience of comradeship, for the memory of love between companions in terrible experience, to the end of their days”

MAX HASTINGS
,
Daily Telegraph

“As a re-creation of old-fashioned warfare, illustrating what it really means to be one of the forward element engaged in winkling out and mopping up, this book is a crackling performance, livened by fierce comedy and enriched by anger”

E. S. TURNER
,
London Review of Books

“He is still the best and funniest storyteller we have…What sets it apart is the brutal honesty and sparkle of the writing”

MICHAEL FATHERS
,
Independent

Also by George MacDonald Fraser

THE FLASHMAN PAPERS
(in chronological order)

FLASHMAN

(Britain, India, and Afghanistan, 1839–42)

ROYAL FLASH

(England 1842–43, Germany 1847–48)

FLASHMAN'S LADY

(England, Borneo, and Madagascar, 1842–45)

FLASHMAN AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT

(Indian Punjab 1845–46)

FLASH FOR FREEDOM!

(England, West Africa, U.S.A. 1848–49)

FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS

(U.S.A. 1849–50 and 1875–76)

FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE

(England, Crimea, and Central Asia, 1854–55)

FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME

(Scotland, India, 1856–58)

FLASHMAN AND THE ANGEL OF THE LORD

(India, South Africa, U.S.A., 1858–59)

FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON

(China, 1860)

FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER
Mr American
The Pyrates
The Candlemass Road
Black Ajax

SHORT STORIES
HISTORY
The General Danced at Dawn
The Steel Bonnets:
McAuslan in the Rough
The Story of the Anglo-Scottish
The Sheikh and the Dustbin
Border Reivers

The Hollywood History of the World

Copyright

HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.fireandwater.com

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

First published in Great Britain by Harvill 1993

Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1993

George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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EPub Edition © 1993 ISBN: 9780007325764

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