14 Facts About Harold Orton

Harold Orton was a British dialectologist and professor of English language and Medieval Literature at the University of Leeds.

Harold Orton left university in 1917 to enrol in the Durham Light Infantry in which he was commissioned as a lieutenant.

Harold Orton was wounded severely in 1918, never regaining full use of his right arm, and was invalided out of the army in 1919.

Harold Orton insisted to army surgeons that his arm not be amputated.

Harold Orton then spent several years on the staff of Uppsala University in Sweden until 1928, when he was appointed to a lectureship at King's College, Newcastle.

Harold Orton became head of the Department of English Language at the University of Sheffield in 1939 but secondment to the British Council interrupted that work until the end of World War II.

Harold Orton was a visiting professor at the Universities of Kansas, Iowa and Tennessee and at Belmont University, Nashville.

In contrast to the flexible questionnaire of the Dictionary of American Regional English, Harold Orton worked with Nathalia Wright on a fixed questionnaire for all American dialects, but this was not successful.

Harold Orton is best remembered as co-founder of the Survey of English Dialects.

Harold Orton developed the questionnaire for the survey together with Eugen Dieth.

Harold Orton lived to see the publication of the Basic Material from the SED, but died before the publications of The Word Geography of England and The Linguistic Atlas of England.

Many who met Harold Orton said that he had a driving passion for his subject.

Harold Orton died in Leeds on 7 March 1975 following a stroke.

An overview of Harold Orton's career was published by Craig Fees in 1991 as the first part in a series on dialect and folk studies.