But the spoken form is slightly more taxing: The nominative is "Thee," the accusative is "Tha," the dative is "Thee" or "Thi, " the genitive "Thi" or "Thine." The only major difference from the Bible is the substitution of "Tha" for "Thou,." and the plural "Yo" instead of "Ye."
"Hast thou?" becomes "Hast?" or "Hasta?" while "Hast thou not?" becomes "Hastn't?" or "Hasta not?" "Wilt thou?" becomes "Wilt?" or "Wilta?" and any other combination is immediately recognisable.
There is one final area where the dialect differs markedly from standard English, and I'll describe this now.
There is a form of question not so prevalent today as 50 years ago and this can best be shown by examples of dialogue:
JOHNNY: "We didn't play football at school today." MOTHER: "Did you not?
MOTHER: "Dad's not home from work." MARY: "Is he not?
GRANNY: "It's not raining now." MOTHER: "Is it not?"
GRANNY: "Mary weren't well." JOHNNY: "Were she not?"
This form probably evolved from the "Thee" form. Consider "weren'ta," "hastna," and perhaps "did tha not go whom at dinner time?" (didn't you go home at lunchtime?).
I haven't so far mentioned the use of "were" in place of "was" in the singular. This usage comes, I imagine, from our Saxon heritage - certainly, North Country English is much nearer to Anglo-Saxon than that of the South.
In any event, the expression fits perfectly with the rest of the Lancashire dialect, where "was" would not.
I believe anyone who reads this little tract would not have much difficulty reading the many dialect books still available in Lancashire libraries.