| An Asum Joke | Jack: "Ast yerd bout ol' Arry?"
Lol: "No."
Jack: "They sez e'd juss'd garn owt t' pick sum byuns fer tay an dropp'd down dyud."
Lol: "Wot did iz missis do?"
Jack: "Wot cud 'er do, 'er 'ad t' open a tin a pays." |
Q: What first got you interested in Asum? A: Well, back when I was a lad everyone spoke that way in Badsey. Then, in the 60s a chap calling himself Ben Judd (though his real name was C.W.Clarke) wrote a series of articles in the Evesham Journal called ‘Asum Grammar’. They were really popular. So when people in the village started producing a Badsey website four years ago, I decided to reproduce some of his work and it started from there. Q: Do you hear much Asum being spoken these days? A: The blacksmith down in the village is a third-generation Badsey blacksmith. You get a few of the men from the village going down there for a chat, and it gets really broad at times. A lot of people would have trouble knowing what they’re on about. There’s a local poet called Mike Edwards who actually writes poems in dialect. We have long discussions about how to spell the different words and phrases in Asum Grammar, because basically it’s an oral language and there is no right and wrong way to spell it. Q: Do the younger ones speak Asum too? A: I don’t know ‘bout that – I don’ ‘ave much to do with ‘um. But the headmistress of the little first school in Badsey would be able to tell you more about that. She went to the school herself as a child. There’s an idea. We should put a list together of Asum words and ask her to show them to the littluns and see if they know what they mean. Q: How far afield do people talk Asum? A: Just in the Vale of Evesham. As you go further north towards Redditch, you get the Birmingham influence coming in. Round Chipping Camden they speak in a similar way, probably because they still have a lot of people working on the land. Q: Can you tell which village in the Vale people come from just by the way they talk? A: Oooh, I dunno about that. I’ve been here all me life, so if a bloke comes from Offenham, I’d know him already. Though I was talking to a lady from Yorkshire the other day who said that she can tell whether somebody comes from Chooksbry (Tewkesbury) or Broddy (Broadway) or Evesham. Q: Have you got a favourite expression in Asum? A: ‘Oi gutta ‘anover’ is a goodun. It’s an expression of surprise, and it means ‘I’ll go to Hanover’. Q: How can people find out more about Asum Grammar? A: There are several pages about it on the Badsey website: http://www.badsey.net/present/asum.htm(or click on the link under ‘See Also’ at the top right of this page). Ben Judd’s original Asum Grammar articles are stored in the Evesham Library. | 
