Mackem Totally Explained

Everything about Mackem totally explained

Mackem is a term that refers to the accent, dialect and people of the Wearside area, or more specifically Sunderland, a city in North East England. Alternative spellings include "Makem", "Maccam" or "Mak'em".

Theories of origin

The term may stem from either ship building or the football rivalry between Sunderland A.F.C. and Newcastle United. Often, people from around the outer city areas are also known as mackems; such as people from Houghton-le-Spring and Washington. In many cases, residents of the pit villages of the former Durham coalfield, such as Seaham and Peterlee, which lie on the outskirts of Sunderland and have strong social ties to the city, also feel able to call themselves Mackems, perhaps more because of the district's support of the football team.
   The origins of the term are obscure and divided. One belief is that it was a term used by shipyard workers in the 19th century on the Tyne (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"). The term Mackem could come from the Local Brewers VAUX who for centuries brewed a bottled beer called "Double Maxim." people who drank the beer would ask for a Mackem pronouncing the X differently. So a person would be called a Mackem who drank the local beer. The term could also be a reference to volume of ships built during wartime on the River Wear, e.g "We mackem and they sink em". Alternatively, this phrase may refer to the making and tacking into place of rivets in shipbuilding, which was the main method of assembling ships until the mid-twentieth century.
   The earliest known recorded use of the term as applied to people from Sunderland, found by the Oxford English Dictionary occurred in 1988, although "we still tak 'em and mak 'em" was found in a sporting context in 1973. This implies that the phrase was older, but there's 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 and Geordies, when using the term is almost always as a term of abuse. Another possible origin being the tynesiders using the term to deride the way people from Sunderland speak, very similar to outsiders but a source of insults in the tightly knit North East. The two cities have a history of rivalry beyond the football pitch, dating back to the early stages of the English Civil War, following on industrial disputes of the 19th Century and more recently political rivalries with the creation of the Tyne Wear authority, covering both cities.

Accent

As with 'Geordie', 'Mackem' refers to both the people of Sunderland and their accent.
To people from outside the region the differences between Mackem and Geordie accents often seem marginal, this is especially the case between the younger generations of North East England, however there are many notable differences.
Some pronunciation differences:

In Newcastle, Howay is spelled and pronounced like that (or perhaps Hauway). In Sunderland, it's Ha'Way. The local newspapers in each region use these spellings. (Ha'way or Howay means "Come on")

The word ending -own is pronounced [-ʌun] (cf. Geordie: [-uːn]).

Make and Take are pronounced [mak] and [tak] (cf. Geordie: [meːk,teːk]). This pronunciation variation is the supposed reason why Tyneside shipyard workers coined the insult 'Mackem'.)

School is split into two syllables, and a short [ə] sound is added after the oo sound to emphasise the L, for example [skʉəl]). Note: This is also the case for words ending in -uel such as 'cruel' and 'fuel' which are turned into [krʉəl] and [fjʉəl], although 'vowel-adding' in this way is also a component of Geordie ('school' becoming [skjʉːl], &c). This 'extra syllable' occurs in other words spoken in a Mackem dialect, ie. Film becomes [fɪləm] and poorly becomes [pʉəli]. (However, this is also prevalent within the Geordie dialect.)

The word ending -re/-er is pronounced [-ə] as in Standard English (cf. Geordie [-æ]).

Notable Mackems

Kate Adie

Joseph Swan

Bryan Ferry

Terry Deary

Denise Robertson

Callum Keith Rennie (actor, Due South and eXistenZ - born in Sunderland)

David Quinn

Gina McKee

Baz Warne

James Bolam

Mark Brydon (one half of pop band Moloko)

Gordon BradleyFurther Information

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