Dialect
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden: Dialect 1 key example

Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Speaking Yorkshire:

Like several other writers of her period, Burnett presents a good deal of the dialogue in The Secret Garden as "Yorkshire English"—or just "Yorkshire," as her characters refer to it. The narrator and the characters born into privilege all speak in "standard" and uninflected English. The natives of the region into which Mary Lennox is brought have their dialogue represented in a very different way, however. This starts early, as can be seen in Chapter 4, when Mary meets her maidservant Martha and astonishes her with her uselessness in looking after herself:

Martha sat up on her heels again and stared. She spoke in broad Yorkshire in her amazement. “Canna’ tha’ dress thysen!” she said. “What do you mean? I don’t understand your language,” said Mary. “Eh! I forgot,” Martha said. “Mrs. Medlock told me I’d have to be careful or you wouldn’t know what I was sayin’. I mean can’t you put on your own clothes?”