A yank who would appreciate some SUFC culture- and general football schooling

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Jennifer

Jennifer

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For the record, my name is Jennifer. I am from and live in the southeastern United States. Please don't hold that against me, lol.

I need some help, and according to someone posting in sheffieldforum.co.uk, this is the place I should come get it. I'll try to keep it brief: I am in the wee-small early stages of penning (what I hope will one of the liftetimes be) a novel. My secondary protagonist is a British ex-pat chef hailing from Sheffield (yes, a chef from Sheffield -- insert rimshot here!) who is a Blades fan.

Personally, I don't know much about football -- or, as we call it here, soccer. I don't know much about what we call football, either, although that feels like a misnomer and is certainly another story for another day. So I'll need some indoctrination in football as you guys know it and in Blades culture/fandom. Key events in Blades history, the like. The more condensed, yet still hitting the important points, the better.

If anyone could help, I would be indebted to you for . . . well, a ridiculously long time. Thanks!
 

Welcome to the forum.

You could start by watching this to get a feel of the club:-



But please don't make your Blades fan as negative as the main bloke in thst.
It's not all doom and gloom.
 
Sothall_Blade said:
Welcome to the forum.

You could start by watching this to get a feel of the club:-



But please don't make your Blades fan as negative as the main bloke in thst.
It's not all doom and gloom.
Click to expand...


Although... To a degree being a football fan and a Blade is in an example of this, one has to be fairly fatalistic.. expect the worse and when it does not happen (or even better, you vastly exceed expectations) then the joy is intense (if often short lived as the next challenge looms).

It's my belief that this then make a person more grounded and pragmatic in life. A key characteristic of my loved ones and friends from Yorkshire, the South bit especially.
 
Jennifer said:
For the record, my name is Jennifer. I am from and live in the southeastern United States. Please don't hold that against me, lol.

I need some help, and according to someone posting in sheffieldforum.co.uk, this is the place I should come get it. I'll try to keep it brief: I am in the wee-small early stages of penning (what I hope will one of the liftetimes be) a novel. My secondary protagonist is a British ex-pat chef hailing from Sheffield (yes, a chef from Sheffield -- insert rimshot here!) who is a Blades fan.

Personally, I don't know much about football -- or, as we call it here, soccer. I don't know much about what we call football, either, although that feels like a misnomer and is certainly another story for another day. So I'll need some indoctrination in football as you guys know it and in Blades culture/fandom. Key events in Blades history, the like. The more condensed, yet still hitting the important points, the better.

If anyone could help, I would be indebted to you for . . . well, a ridiculously long time. Thanks!
Click to expand...

The world has gone mad . What next.
 
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Jennifer said:
For the record, my name is Jennifer. I am from and live in the southeastern United States. Please don't hold that against me, lol.

I need some help, and according to someone posting in sheffieldforum.co.uk, this is the place I should come get it. I'll try to keep it brief: I am in the wee-small early stages of penning (what I hope will one of the liftetimes be) a novel. My secondary protagonist is a British ex-pat chef hailing from Sheffield (yes, a chef from Sheffield -- insert rimshot here!) who is a Blades fan.

Personally, I don't know much about football -- or, as we call it here, soccer. I don't know much about what we call football, either, although that feels like a misnomer and is certainly another story for another day. So I'll need some indoctrination in football as you guys know it and in Blades culture/fandom. Key events in Blades history, the like. The more condensed, yet still hitting the important points, the better.

If anyone could help, I would be indebted to you for . . . well, a ridiculously long time. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum.

I guess the first questions will be:

* how old your protagonist is going to be?

* and when your novel is set?

EDIT: And moved to General Blades Chat for a wider audience for you :)
 
This might help:


GUIDE TO THE SHEFFIELD DIALECT


The Old English words thee, tha and thy all appear in Noonan’s work but are, especially in his early writing, usually written and pronounced with a d rather than a th and sometimes shortened to di or dy. Similarly, other words which are normally spoken with a hard th, such as this or that are likely to be rendered as dis and dat. It is for this reason that Sheffield people are known as Dee Dahs.


T’ is almost always unpronounced and is simply a very short gap between two words in place of the. And is shortened to ‘n and of to a. The g at the end of words such as thinking is always silent and consequently does not appear in the dialect poems.


The diphthongs oa and ea are, on the other hand, lengthened and become two syllables. If words begin with an h this is not pronounced. Therefore, home becomes ooam and head is eead. Ow, as in now, becomes ah, as in nah.


O sounds are usually changed to aw and those ending in y or ie altered to eh. Hence postie becomes pawsteh as in Noonan’s sonnet of the same name.


The Sheffield oo sound is unique to the city. It is both flatter and longer than in the rest of the country and this is why Noonan distinguished English words like do and you by spelling them doo and yoo.


The word or is usually altered to else. Proper Dee Dahs never die; they dee. Want and what (spelled wat) rhyme with ant and bat.


As in some other parts of Northern England, but is not a simple conjunctive as in normal English but is a sentence all by itself. Whereas an English speaker might say “I don’t like beetroot but I like celery”, in Dee Dah dialect this would be “Ah dooant like beetroot. But. Ah doo like celereh”. While a reader might expect the word but to rhyme with soot this is surprisingly not the case; but is pronounced as a shorter version of Bert.


Work, wash, worse and worth become weck (or graft), wesh, wess and weth in Noonan’s poetry. Rather (than) is sooner and since, at the end a sentence, means ago. Till/until becomes while.


If there’s owt else tha dunt understand tha can weck it aht fah thissen.
 
Jennifer

Read this thread. A fellow countryman of yours, albeit a New Yorker, asked whether to support us or our local rivals.

The replies are (mainly) helpful and educational and also help to explain the 'rivalry' with the scum on the other side of the city.

https://www.s24su.com/forum/index.php?threads/united-or-wednesday.53173/

Come back here with any questions.
 
Jennifer said:
For the record, my name is Jennifer. I am from and live in the southeastern United States. Please don't hold that against me, lol.

I need some help, and according to someone posting in sheffieldforum.co.uk, this is the place I should come get it. I'll try to keep it brief: I am in the wee-small early stages of penning (what I hope will one of the liftetimes be) a novel. My secondary protagonist is a British ex-pat chef hailing from Sheffield (yes, a chef from Sheffield -- insert rimshot here!) who is a Blades fan.

Personally, I don't know much about football -- or, as we call it here, soccer. I don't know much about what we call football, either, although that feels like a misnomer and is certainly another story for another day. So I'll need some indoctrination in football as you guys know it and in Blades culture/fandom. Key events in Blades history, the like. The more condensed, yet still hitting the important points, the better.

If anyone could help, I would be indebted to you for . . . well, a ridiculously long time. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Your chef will be a no nonsense down to earth type who doesn't ponce his dishes up and rip of his punters with 50 grams of food presented in the middle of a 2ft diameter plate.
His cutlery will, of course, be of the finest Sheffield steel, pride of place being 2 crossed scimitars mounted on the wall and only ever used for his signature dish, roast owl.
A sub plot to your main novel could be an underlying taste to all his savoury dishes which many try to imitate but never quite succeed. On the last page, as you pan away from his selection of finest Yorkshire ales, will be a small bottle filled with a black liquid, an orange label revealing the word 'Hendersons'.

If you want my advice you'll get yourself over for a fortnight, take in a match and contact SUFC. I'm sure someone at the club would arrange something for you, and if you drop a note on here in advance you'll find plenty of people willing to buy you a pint pre and post match and take you through the finer points of our great club and city. All the best!
 

Where in the South East of the USA are you,i know there was a couple of Blades who lived in Atlanta,also one in a small town Montevallo just south of Birmingham
 
Jennifer,

The key points of being a Blade are

1: We are a 2 club city, it makes a big difference because at school and at work the conversation centres on fortunes and results of both Sheffield clubs. So you often get the mentality of "Sheff Utd might lose 1-0 but this is kind of forgotten if Sheff Wed lose 4-0 on the same day". The problem many fans have said is that "success" is defined as being better than the other Sheffield team.

2: Sheff Utd have a fantastic history BUT our best ever team and era of winning trophies was from about 1895 to 1905. So no one is alive anymore that can remember United being a giant in English football.

3: Sheff Utd spent almost all their first 50 years of their history in the top flight. We are traditionally a big club but since the 2nd world war we've severely underperformed and most Blades have a latent anger about our history of the last 50 years because we've seen little clubs with hardly any support or tradition win trophys etc whilst we've generally been mediocre. HOWEVER as we are so success starved then we don't have many glory hunters, most Blades are really passionate and support their club like it's a religion but a large portion of fans are known to be negative and due to past events we tend to fear the worse.

4: Our history over the last 60 years is filled with hard luck stories. Nearly winning this, nearly winning that but conceding last minute goals etc or having really bad luck in the big matches. These events are now part of our DNA and when we ever have big matches a common theme amongst supporters is "we won't win because we never do when there's a chance of glory". We are currently well clear we the top of the league but many Blades are still nervous and worried that we might hit a bad run right at the end of the season.

5: On the bad luck theme there are loads of stories. When I was a kid in the 70's the pensioners used to say to me "ah Sheffield United...always the bridesmaid...never the bride".
Another funny hard luck story was in 1939 we won the 2nd division and had a really good team with arguably our best ever player (Jimmy Hagan) playing a big part. Excitement was high as we were now promoted to the top division (division 1). We started the league really well and after a few games it looked like we were genuine contenders to be champions of England.......then Hitler intervened..... world war 2 broke our and the league was suspend for 6 years....just as we had our best team for decades.
 
Last edited:
TBW57 said:
T’ is almost always unpronounced and is simply a very short gap between two words in place of the. And is shortened to ‘n and of to a. The g at the end of words such as thinking is always silent and consequently does not appear in the dialect poems.
Click to expand...
heh.. the 't'.. that one confuses the crap out of my European friends.. so much so that i now tend to explain it to new people before the conversation starts :)
 
Chief_Froley said:
When the book becomes a film and you need to cast the chef I have two words for you:

Sean Bean.

Edit: make sure the chef says bastard a lot. It will help flesh the character out.

Click to expand...

And watch the film "When Saturday Comes" and imagine Sean Bean is a chef at some point.
 
All yer need to no is we got promoted in the 2016/17 season and to the pig faced 'bastards' (thanks Sean) we're coming for you.
 
You did ask! Read this forum, and you will begin to understand quite a bit. The history is important, along with the tradition, the camaraderie, and self-deprecating humour in the face of repeated failure. Is your chef a committed fan? Or a part-timer? How important are United in his life? If he is committed, read the threads after matches - win and everyone is on a high, lose and it is the end of the world. Football determines mood very strongly.
Football has traditionally been tribal. We hate Wednesday because they think they are Sheffield. We hate Leeds, because they think they are Yorkshire. We hate ManU because they think they are England. Because we are a friendly, local club, we hate all these others. I can't get my head round that contradiction, but isn't that what novelists do?
You will have problems with language. Write it in Sheffield football speak, and American readers will struggle. Write it in American English, and you will get lots of stick here. By all means make your chef look and sound like Sean Bean, but come up with a better plot than When Saturday Comes.
Keep asking questions. We never tire of talking about our favourite subject.
 

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