Norfolk – UK Accents, Dialects and Mentalities Series



Norfolk – introduction

In this video, I take a look at Norfolk.

It looks at various things, such as:

  • the geography, especially the coastline
  • a few well-known people from the region
  • the NFN scandal
  • Norfolk dumplings (not the recipe)


Video Transcript:

Here is an extract of the transcript for you to read:

Famous Norfolk People

Nelson as in Lord Nelson, Battle of Trafalgar Nelson. He’s from Norfolk and you are reminded of this as soon as you enter the county.

norfolk - nelson's county

The sign says Norfolk, Nelson’s County and they they push it all the time.

Unfortunately there’s not really anyone else apart from possibly Stephen Fry who’s from Norwich. You don’t really associate him being from Norfolk because he’s awfully educated and well-spoken and he’s a bit of a national treasure at the moment.

The other possibly famous person who might have heard about from Norfolk is Bernhard Matthews. This is only because he had a farm and some dreadful adverts in the 70s where he spend all his time there saying “Booootiful”.

Geography

Because it’s flat there there’s lots of agricultural land and Airport bases because this area is so close to Europe.

There’s also a fairly well-known Agricultural College in Wymondham (pronounced Wyndham).

The so called champagne coast goes from the the whole of the north coast of Norfolk down to about Hemsby.

norfolk - champagne coast

It doesn’t go as far as Great Yarmouth cuz that’s a horrible place. I don’t know why Great Yarmouth this so popular it’s just loud and in-your-face and hectic and there’s no possible way to get any peace and quiet there at all.

However, when you go further around the coast up to the north side there are some spectacular beautiful properties there and for some of them you sort of need to win the lottery twice to be able to afford one.

NFN

One of my favourite stories about Norfolk is the so called NFN scandal.

Around about the year 2000, the Freedom of Information Act was passed and this enabled normal people to inquire to anyone, such as government agencies, what information do you have about me.

A lot of people from Norfolk they were applying for their medical records and they noticed that in the top corner there were the letters NFN and a few people asked what this meant and they never really got a very good answer at first.

Because they never got a good answer they thought they were hiding something so the calls became louder and louder and more frequent.

Eventually someone told them what NFN meant stands for Normal For Norfolk which means that the people a bit slow and a bit dopey, but this is normal for Norfolk.

At first they were really offended about this and up in arms and it was a big scandal but today, to their great credit, they owned it and took it on as part of their identity and they’re very proud now of being normal from Norfolk.

Norfolk Dumplings

The last thing we have to mention is probably best left to last and that’s a word or an expression that is used to describe a certain type of female that you will often see around Norfolk, especially Norwich.

These are the ones who are not skinny though – they’re quite portly quite quite chubby but they walk around in belly-free tops and miniskirts with horrible legs sticking out and these are affectionately referred to as Norfolk Dumplings.

So if you hear anyone talking about Norfolk dumplings you know what to expect.

Holiday Destination

If you want to go on holiday there are some lovely coastlines and lovely countryside and the people are very friendly.

But they are just so mind-numbingly slow so be prepared for that and have a nice time.


If you watch this on YouTube, please remember to like, comment and subscribe – it means a lot.

Also, if you liked this video, you might be interested in other videos in this series.

Did I miss anything out? Or have you been to that part of the world and agree (or disagree) with anything in the video?

If so, please let me know in the comments below.

4 thoughts on “Norfolk – UK Accents, Dialects and Mentalities Series”

    1. Hi,
      If I recall, I said the people were friendly and that Norfolk was a great place for a holiday. Did you get to that bit, or just stop as soon as you saw something that you didn’t like?
      About the only thing that could come across as a negative is the slow way that people speak there which, based on my experience, is accurate – the NFN story shows this, but in a positive light.

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