“Hamster” and the Geordie accent

No – obviously, hamsters don’t have a Geordie accent.  It just made a good headline.

But seeing as Time Traveling With  A Hamster (note the absent extra “L”) was released in the US last week, I thought it would be helpful for the American readers to get an idea of how they speak in the book.

Don’t worry: it’s not written in dialect.  It’s perfectly comprehensible as it is, with only a few hints at the accent in the text.  But if you do know what the Geordie accent sounds like, you might enjoy the book even more!

Only one Geordie word was changed for the US edition, and that was “ha’way”.  Ha’way, or “howay” is heard everywhere in the northeast of England, and means simply “come on”.  All the ha’ways in the US book were replaced with “come on”.

It’s a very distinctive accent, and – among Brits at least – famously difficult to imitate.  Poor attempts at Geordie accents usually end up as a cross between a Welsh accent and Anglo-Pakistani: there’s an -up-and-down quality to it that is shared by the others.

Non-Brits often have trouble understanding Geordie.  It’s said that the singer Cheryl Cole was dropped from the US edition of The X-Factor because audiences had trouble with her accent.

Turns out there are loads of guides to speaking Geordie on YouTube.  Here is one of the better ones. (Check out her part two as well: it starts with a perfect rendition of the “eee” favoured by Al’s mum in the book!)

(And why “Geordie”?  It’s a regional nickname for people called “George”, in a similar way that Scots can be called “Jocks” or Irish “Paddies”.)