Mackem

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A Mackem is someone native to the City of Sunderland in north-east England. Alternative spellings include "Makem", "Maccam", and "Mak'em". The term came into common use in the 1990s, stemming from the football rivalry between Sunderland A.F.C. and Newcastle United.

The origins of the term are somewhat obscure. A common belief is that it was an insult coined by shipyard workers in the 19th century in Newcastle (see Geordie), to describe their Wearside counterparts. The Geordies would "take" the ship to be fitted out that the Mackems "made", hence "mackem and tackem" ("make them" and "take them"). Alternatively, this phrase may refer to the making and tacking into place of rivets in shipbuilding, the main method of assembling ships until the mid-twentieth century.

Another similar theory is that the coal miners in Newcastle were provided with "Geordie" safety lamps designed by George Stephenson in 1815, while the coal miners in Wearside would make them (mack'em) themselves.

However, these theories are possibly both nothing more than folk etymology. The Oxford English Dictionary has been unable to locate the term in print before 1988 [link], although "we still tak 'em and mak 'em" was found in a sporting context in 1973, implying that the phrase was older, but with nothing to suggest that "mak 'em" had come to be applied to people from Sunderland.

Not all Sunderland residents accept the adoption of the term, pointing out its supposed roots as an insult, and its use as a derisory term by Geordies. The two cities have a history of rivalry beyond the football pitch, dating back to the early stages of the English Civil War (see Tyne-Wear Rivalry).

Accent

As with 'Geordie', 'Mackem' means both the people of Sunderland and their accent. The Mackem dialect is very similar to that of the Geordie dialect, and to people from outside of the North-East, they are almost indistinguishable. There are, however, slight variations in pronunciation, which are noticeable to most people from within the area.

Pronunciation differences include:

Words ending in -ook - (Geordie: elongated oo as in 'room'. Cook would rhyme with Spook.), (Mackem: oo is sharpened into an uh sound as in 'stuck' and 'puck'. Cook would rhyme with Muck). Note: Although not in the majority of Mackem speakers, in some areas, this variation is extended to other oo words, such as Food, i.e. Fud.
Words ending in -own - (Geordie: elongated oo (as above). Town becomes Toon, Down becomes Doon.), (Mackem: similar to standard English, Town rhymes with Frown and Gown).
Make, Take - (Geordie: rhymes with cake, bake), (Mackem: becomes Mack and Tack - i.e. this prononciation variation is the supposed reason why Newcastle shipyard workers coined the insult 'Mackem'.)
School - (Geordie: rhymes with Cool and Rule), (Mackem: split into two syllables, and a short e sound (as in wet) is added after the oo sound to emphasise the L, i.e. skoo-ell). Note: This is also the case for words ending in -eul such as a 'Cruel' and 'fuel' which are turned into croo-el and few-el, although 'vowel-adding' in this way is also a component of Geordie ('school' becoming 'sch-yew-l', &c).
Words ending -re/-er, such as culture and father. The end syllable as pronounced by Geordies is a short 'a', such as in 'fat' and 'back', producing 'cultcha' and 'fatha'. Natives of Sunderland pronounce the syllable much more closely to the standard English.

A common jibe by Newcastle United supporters during Tyne-Wear derby games is to shake their keys at the Sunderland fans and chant: weese keys are these keys? ("Whose keys are these keys?") with obvious exaggeration of the ee sound in each word. This is in reference to a supposed difference in the prononucation of the words between Mackem and Geordie. This is disputed by many Mackems, who claim that the Geordie prononciation is no different.

Some vocabulary variations:

People in Sunderland often replace the word "me" with uz or is, so one would say "give uz it" instead of "give me it". However, in Sunderland, the standard "you" is usually preferred to the ye that is popular in Newcastle (e.g. How ye to mean "Hey you").
Geordies also use a w at the end of sentences such as "are you coming with w'?" meaning "are you coming with us?". This is not often used by Mackems. The w is short for wor - Geordies sometimes use the term wor to mean "our", and the term can be used as a predicate to the name of a close person, e.g. a family member (famous Newcastle footballer Jackie Milburn was often called Wor Jackie). Mackems don't use the term wor, but usually prefer "our" in the same context.

External links

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