Pitmatic

Pitmatic
Pronunciation	/pIt'mretIk/
Region	Great Northern Coalfield
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Ingvaeonic Anglo-Frisian Anglic English British English Anglo-English Northern England English Northumbrian dialect Pitmatic
Early form	Early Modern English
Writing system	English alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	nort3300
Linguasphere	52-ABA-aba
Map of 19th-century coalfields in Great Britain showing, near top-right, the Great Northern Coalfield, the home of Pitmatic.[1]
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Pitmatic – originally 'pitmatical'^[2] – is a group of traditional Northern English dialects spoken in rural areas of the Great Northern Coalfield in England.

The feature distinguishing Pitmatic from other Northumbrian dialects, such as Geordie and Mackem, is its basis in the mining jargon used in local collieries. For example, in Tyneside and Northumberland, Cuddy is a nickname for St. Cuthbert, while in Alnwick Pitmatic, a cuddy is a pit pony.^[3] According to the British Library's lead curator of spoken English, writing in 2019, "Locals insist there are significant differences between Geordie and several other local dialects, such as Pitmatic and Mackem. Pitmatic is the dialect of the former mining areas in County Durham and around Ashington to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne, while Mackem is used locally to refer to the dialect of the city of Sunderland and the surrounding urban area of Wearside".^[4]

Traditionally, the dialect spoken in Northumberland in rural communities used the Northumbrian burr [ʁ]. This is now very rare.^[5]: 40 The variety spoken in Durham, while non-rhotic, is traditionally still subject to the Nurse-north merger in words like forst 'first' and bord 'bird', which came about as a result of burr modification.^{[citation needed]}