"Dileck"

Mr. Casson's word for the speech of Loamshire. "They're cur'ous talkers i' this country, sir; the gentry's hard work to hunderstand 'em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir, an' got the turn o' their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you think the folks here says for 'hevn't you?'—the gentry, you know, says, 'hevn't you'—well, the people about here says 'hanna yey'. It's what they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That's what I've heard Squire Donnithorne say many a time; it's the dileck, says he." George Eliot's use of dialect is both accurate and artistic. While all dialect words and phrases used are scrupulously correct, they are introduced only in so far as is needed to give the right local colour, and not in such numbers as to affect the intelligibility for the ordinary reader. The dialects used in the various novels are: Adam Bede, the dialect of North Staffordshire and the neighbouring part of Derbyshire; Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner, and, in general, the other provincial novels, the dialect of North Warwickshrie. The above dialects do not differ greatly from the Leicestershire dialect and practically all of George Eliot's dialect words are given in Evans' Leicestershire words. (See Axon, Dialect in George Eliot; Letter from George Eliot to W. W. Skeat printed in English Dialect Society, Bibliographical lists, No. 1, p. viii; Cross, George Eliot's Life, vol. iii, p. 304.)

<em>Adam Bede</em>

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