English language in England

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The English language spoken and written in England encompasses a diverse range of accents and dialects. The language forms part of the broader British English, along with other varieties in the United Kingdom. Terms used to refer to the English language spoken and written in England include English English [1] [2] and Anglo-English. [3] [4]

Contents

The related term British English is ambiguous, so it can be used and interpreted in multiple ways, [5] but it is usually reserved to describe the features common to Anglo-English, Welsh English, and Scottish English.

England, Wales, and Scotland are the three traditional countries on the island of Great Britain. The main dialect of the fourth country of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, is Ulster English, which is generally considered a dialect of Hiberno-English.

General features

Many different accents and dialects are found throughout England, and people are often very proud of their local accent or dialect. However, accents and dialects also highlight social class differences, rivalries, or other associated prejudices, as illustrated by George Bernard Shaw's comment:

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. [6]

As well as pride in one's accent, there is also stigma placed on many traditional working-class dialects. In his work on the dialect of Bolton, Graham Shorrocks wrote:

I have personally known those who would avoid, or could never enjoy, a conversation with a stranger, because they were literally too ashamed to open their mouths. It has been drummed into people—often in school, and certainly in society at large—that dialect speech is incorrect, impure, vulgar, clumsy, ugly, careless, shoddy, ignorant, and altogether inferior. Furthermore, the particularly close link in recent English society between speech, especially accents, and social class and values has made local dialect a hindrance to upward social mobility." [7]

The three largest recognisable dialect groups in England are Southern English dialects, Midlands English dialects and Northern English dialects. The most prominent isogloss is the foot–strut split, which runs roughly from mid-Shropshire (on the Welsh border) to south of Birmingham and then to the Wash. South of the isogloss (the Midlands and Southern dialects), the Middle English phoneme /ʊ/ split into /ʌ/ (as in cut, strut) and /ʊ/ (put, foot); this change did not occur north of the isogloss.

Most native Anglo-English speakers can tell the general region in England that a speaker comes from, and experts or locals may be able to narrow this down to within a few miles. Historically, such differences could be a major impediment to understanding between people from different areas. There are also many cases where a large city has a very different accent from the rural area around it (e.g. Bristol and Avon, Hull and the East Riding, Liverpool and Lancashire). But modern communications and mass media have reduced these differences in some parts of the country. [8] [9] Speakers may also change their pronunciation and vocabulary, particularly towards Received Pronunciation and Standard English when in public.

British and Irish varieties of English, including Anglo-English, are discussed in John C. Wells (1982). Some of the features of Anglo-English are that:

Change over time

There has been academic interest in dialects since the late 19th century. The main works are On Early English Pronunciation by A.J. Ellis, English Dialect Grammar by Joseph Wright, and the English Dialect Dictionary also by Joseph Wright. The Dialect Test was developed by Joseph Wright so he could hear the differences in the vowel sounds of a dialect by listening to different people reading the same short text passage.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Survey of English Dialects was undertaken to preserve a record of the traditional spectrum of rural dialects that merged into each other. The traditional picture was that there would be a few changes in lexicon and pronunciation every couple of miles, but that there would be no sharp borders between completely different ways of speaking. Within a county, the accents of the different towns and villages would drift gradually so that residents of bordering areas sounded more similar to those in neighbouring counties.

Because of greater social mobility and the teaching of "Standard English" in secondary schools, this model is no longer very accurate. There are some English counties in which there is little change in accent/dialect, and people are more likely to categorise their accent by a region or county than by their town or village. As agriculture became less prominent, many rural dialects were lost. Some urban dialects have also declined; for example, the traditional dialect of Bradford is now quite rarely spoken in the city, and call centres have seen Bradford as a useful location for the very fact that potential employees there nowadays generally lack dialectal speech. [18] [19] Some local call centres have stated that they were attracted to Bradford because it has a regional accent that is relatively easy to understand. [20] [ better source needed ] Nevertheless, working in the opposite direction, concentrations of migration may cause a town or area to develop its own accent. The two most famous examples of this are Liverpool and Corby. Liverpool's dialect is influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh, and it sounds completely different from the surrounding areas of Lancashire. Corby's dialect is influenced heavily by Scots, and it sounds completely different from the rest of Northamptonshire. The Voices 2006 survey found that the various ethnic minorities that have settled in large populations in parts of Britain develop their own specific dialects. For example, Asian may have an Oriental influence on their accent so sometimes urban dialects are now just as easily identifiable as rural dialects, even if they are not from South Asia. In the traditional view, urban speech has just been seen as a watered-down version of that of the surrounding rural area. Historically, rural areas had much more stable demographics than urban areas, but there is now only a small difference between the two. It has probably never been true since the Industrial Revolution caused an enormous influx to cities from rural areas.

Overview of regional accents

According to dialectologist Peter Trudgill, the major regional English accents of modern England can be divided on the basis on the following basic features; the word columns each represent the pronunciation of one italicised word in the sentence "Very few cars made it up the long hill". [21] Two additional distinguishing features—the absence or presence of a trap–bath split and the realisation of the GOAT vowel—are also represented under the "path" and "stone" columns (so that the sentence could be rendered "Very few cars made it up the path of the long stone hill"). [22]

Accent name Trudgill's accent regionStrongest centreveryfewcarsmadeuppathlongstonehill
Geordie NortheastNewcastle/Sunderland/i//juː/[ɒː][eː]/ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋ/[oː][hɪl]
Yorkshire Central and Lower NorthLeeds/Bradford/ɪ//juː/[äː][eː]/ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋ/[oː][ɪl]
Lancashire (traditional)Central LancashireRossendale/ɪ//juː/[aːɹ] [note 1] [eː]/ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋg/[oː][ɪl]
Scouse MerseysideLiverpool/i//juː/[äː][eɪ]/ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋg/[ou][ɪl]
Manchester NorthwestManchester/Salford/ɪ//juː/[äː][eɪ]/ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋg/[ɔʊ][ɪl]
Brummie West MidlandsBirmingham/i//juː/[ɑː][ʌɪ]/ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋg/[ʌʊ][ɪl]
East Midlands East, North, and South MidlandsLincoln/i/ [note 2] /juː/ [note 3] [ɑː][eɪ] [note 4] /ʊ//æ/ [a]/ŋ/[ʌʊ][ɪl] [note 5]
West Country SouthwestBristol/Plymouth/i//juː/[ɑːɹ][eɪ] [note 6] /ʌ//æ/ [æ]/ŋ/[ɔʊ][ɪl] [note 7]
East Anglian (traditional)East AngliaRural Norfolk/Suffolk/i//uː/[aː][æɪ] or [eː]/ʌ//æ/ [æ]/ŋ/[ʊu][(h)ɪl]
London/Estuary (also Multicultural London English)Home CountiesGreater London/i//juː/[ɑː][eɪ~æɪ]/ʌ//ɑː//ŋ/[ʌʊ], [oː] in MLE[ɪo]
RP (modern)/i//juː/[ɑː][eɪ]/ʌ//ɑː//ŋ/[əʊ][hɪl]

Southern England

In general, Southern English accents are distinguished from Northern English accents primarily by not using the short a in words such as "bath". In the south-east, the broad A is normally used before a /f/, /s/ or /θ/: words such as "cast" and "bath" are pronounced /kɑːst/,/bɑːθ/ rather than /kæst/,/bæθ/. This sometimes occurs before /nd/: it is used in "command" and "demand" but not in "brand" or "grand".

In the south-west, an /aː/ sound is used in these words but also in words that take /æ/ in RP; there is no trap–bath split but both are pronounced with an extended fronted vowel. [23] Bristol is an exception to the bath-broadening rule: it uses /a/ in the trap and bath sets, just as is the case in the North and the Midlands. [24]

Accents originally from the upper class speech of the LondonOxfordCambridge triangle are particularly notable as the basis for Received Pronunciation.

Southern English accents have three main historical influences:

Relatively recently, the first two have increasingly influenced southern accents outside London via social class mobility and the expansion of London. From some time during the 19th century, middle and upper middle classes began to adopt affectations, including the RP accent, associated with the upper class. In the late 20th and 21st century other social changes, such as middle class RP-speakers forming an increasing component of rural communities, have accentuated the spread of RP. The South East coast accents traditionally have several features in common with the West Country; for example, rhoticity and the a: sound in words such as bath, cast, etc. However, the younger generation in the area is more likely to be non-rhotic and use the London/East Anglian A: sound in bath.

After the Second World War, about one million Londoners were relocated to new and expanded towns throughout the south east, bringing with them their distinctive London accent.

During the 19th century distinct dialects of English were recorded in Sussex, Surrey and Kent. These dialects are now extinct or nearly extinct due to improved communications and population movements.

South West England

The West Country dialects and accents are the English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country.

This region encompasses Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, while Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Wiltshire are usually also included, although the northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define and sometimes even wider areas are encompassed. The West Country accent is said to reflect the pronunciation of the Anglo-Saxons far better than other modern English Dialects.

In the nearby counties of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it was possible to encounter comparable accents and, indeed, distinct local dialects until perhaps the 1960s. There is now limited use of such dialects amongst older people in local areas. Although natives of such locations, especially in western parts, can still have West Country influences in their speech, the increased mobility and urbanisation of the population have meant that local Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight dialects (as opposed to accents) are today essentially extinct.

Academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectal forms. The Survey of English Dialects captured manners of speech across the West Country that were just as different from Standard English as anything from the far North. Close proximity has completely different languages such as Cornish, which is a Celtic language related to Welsh, and more closely to Breton. The Cornish dialect of English spoken in Cornwall by Cornish people is to some extent influenced by Cornish grammar, and often includes words derived from the language.

Norfolk

The Norfolk dialect is spoken in the traditional county of Norfolk and areas of north Suffolk. Famous speakers include Keith Skipper. The group FOND (Friends of Norfolk Dialect) was formed to record the county's dialect and to provide advice for TV companies using the dialect in productions.

East Anglian dialect is also spoken in areas of Cambridgeshire. It is characterised by the use of [ei] for /iː/ in FLEECE words. [25]

Midlands

West Midlands

  • The best-known accents in the West Midlands area are the Birmingham accents (see "Brummie") and the Black Country accent (Yam Yam).
  • There is no Ng-coalescence. Cases of the spelling -ing are pronounced as [ɪŋɡ] rather than [ɪŋ]. Wells noted that there were no exceptions to this rule in Stoke-on-Trent, whereas there were for other areas with the [ɪŋɡ] pronunciation, such as Liverpool. [26]
  • Dialect verbs are used, for example am for are, ay for is not (related to ain't), bay for are not, bin for am or, emphatically, for are. Hence the following joke dialogue about bay windows: "What sort of windas am them?" "They'm bay windas." "Well if they bay windas wot bin them?". There is also humour to be derived from the shop-owner's sign of Mr. "E. A. Wright" (that is, "He ay [isn't] right," a phrase implying someone is saft [soft] in the jed [head]). Saft also may mean silly as in, "Stop bein' so saft". [ citation needed ]
  • The Birmingham and Coventry accents are distinct, even though the cities are only 19 miles/30 km apart. Coventry being closer to an East Midlands accent. [ citation needed ]
  • Around Stoke-on-Trent, the short i can sometimes sound rather like ee, as very obvious when hearing a local say it, however this is not always the case as most other words such as "miss" or "tip" are still pronounced as normal. The Potteries accent is perhaps the most distinctly 'northern' of the West Midlands accents, given that the urban area around Stoke-on-Trent is close to the Cheshire border.
  • Herefordshire and parts of Worcestershire and Shropshire have a rhotic accent, somewhat like the West Country,[ citation needed ] and in some parts of these counties, the local accent mixes features with the Welsh accent, particularly in places closer to the English–Welsh border.

East Midlands

  • East Midlands accents are generally non-rhotic, instead drawing out their vowels, resulting in the Midlands Drawl, which can to non-natives be mistaken for dry sarcasm. [ citation needed ]
  • The PRICE vowel has a very far back starting-point, and can be realised as [ɑɪ]. [27]
  • Yod-dropping, as in East Anglia, can be found in some areas[ where? ], for example new as /nuː/, sounding like "noo".
  • In Lincolnshire, sounds like the u vowel of words like strut being realised as [ʊ] may be even shorter than in the North.
  • In Leicester, words with short vowels such as up and last have a northern pronunciation, whereas words with vowels such as down and road sound rather more like a south-eastern accent. The vowel sound at the end of words like border (and the name of the city) is also a distinctive feature. [28]
  • Lincolnshire also has a marked north–south split in terms of accent. The north (around Grimsby and Scunthorpe) shares many features with Yorkshire, such as the open a sound in "car" and "park" or the replacement of take and make with tek and mek. The south of Lincolnshire is close to Received Pronunciation, although it still has a short Northern a in words such as bath. Accents in the north of the county are often classified as a form of Yorkshire, influenced by Hull, Doncaster and Sheffield. [29]
  • Mixing of the words was and were when the other is used in Standard English.
  • In Northamptonshire, crossed by the north–south isogloss, residents of the north of the county have an accent similar to that of Leicestershire and those in the south an accent similar to rural Oxfordshire.
  • The town of Corby in northern Northamptonshire has an accent with some originally Scottish features, apparently due to immigration of Scottish steelworkers. [30] It is common in Corby for the GOAT set of words to be pronounced with /oː/. This pronunciation is used across Scotland and most of Northern England, but Corby is alone in the Midlands in using it. [31]

Northern England

There are several features that are common to most of the accents of northern England: [17]

Some dialect words used across the North are listed in extended editions of the Oxford Dictionary with a marker "North England": for example, the words ginnell and snicket for specific types of alleyway, the word fettle for to organise, or the use of while to mean until. The best-known Northern words are nowt, owt and summat, which are included in most dictionaries. For more localised features, see the following sections.

The "present historical" is named after the speech of the region, but it is often used in many working class dialects in the south of England too. Instead of saying "I said to him", users of the rule would say, "I says to him". Instead of saying, "I went up there", they would say, "I goes up there."

In the far north of England, the local speech is indistinguishable from Scots. Wells said that northernmost Northumberland "though politically English is linguistically Scottish". [32]

Liverpool (Scouse)

The Liverpool accent, known as Scouse colloquially, is quite different from the accent of surrounding Lancashire. This is because Liverpool has had many immigrants in recent centuries, particularly Irish people. Irish influences on Scouse speech include the pronunciation of unstressed 'my' as 'me' and the pronunciation of 'th' sounds like 't' or 'd' (although they remain distinct as dental /t̪//d̪/). Other features of Scouse include the pronunciation of non-initial /k/ as [x] and the pronunciation of 'r' as a tap /ɾ/.

Yorkshire

Wuthering Heights is one of the few classic works of English literature to contain a substantial amount of dialect, specifically Yorkshire dialect. Set in Haworth, the servant Joseph speaks in the traditional dialect of the area, which many modern readers struggle to understand. This dialect was still spoken around Haworth until the late 1970s, but now only a minority of the dialect's features are still in everyday use. [33] The old dialect is now mainly encountered in Skipton, Otley, Settle and other similar places where older farmers from deep in the dales live. Examples of differences from RP in Yorkshire pronunciation include, but are not limited to:

  • H-dropping
  • /t/, /d/ and /k/ are often replaced with a glottal stop, [ʔ]
  • The [ŋ] in hearing and eating is often changed to [n], though [ŋɡ] can be heard in Sheffield

Teesside

The accents of Teesside, usually known as Smoggy, are sometimes grouped with Yorkshire and sometimes grouped with the North-East of England, for they share characteristics with both accent regions. As this urban area grew in the early 20th century, there are fewer dialect words that date back to older forms of English; Teesside speak is the sort of modern dialect that Peter Trudgill identified in his "The Dialects of England". There is a Lower Tees Dialect group. [34] A recent study found that most people from Middlesbrough do not consider their accent to be "Yorkshire", but that they are less hostile to being grouped with Yorkshire than to being grouped with the Geordie accent. [35] Intriguingly, speakers from Middlesbrough are occasionally mistaken for speakers from Liverpool [36] as they share many of the same characteristics. It is thought the occasional similarities between the Middlesbrough and Liverpool accent may be due to the high number of Irish migrants to both areas during the late 1900s in fact the 1871 census showed Middlesbrough had the second-highest proportion of people from Ireland after Liverpool. Some examples of traits that are shared with [most parts of] Yorkshire include:

  • H-dropping.
  • An /aː/ sound in words such as start, car, park, etc.
  • In common with the east coast of Yorkshire, words such as bird, first, nurse, etc. have an [ɛː] sound. It can be written as, baird, fairst, nairse. [This vowel sound also occurs in Liverpool and Birkenhead].

Examples of traits shared with the North-East include:

The vowel in "goat" is an /oː/ sound, as is found in both Durham and rural North Yorkshire. In common with this area of the country, Middlesbrough is a non-rhotic accent.

The vowel in "face" is pronounced as /eː/, as is commonplace in the North-East of England.

Lancashire

Cumbria

  • People from the Furness peninsula in south Cumbria tend to have a more Lancashire-orientated accent, whilst the dialect of Barrow-in-Furness itself is a result of migration from the likes of Strathclyde and Tyneside. Barrow grew on the shipbuilding industry during the 19th and 20th centuries, and many families moved from these already well-established shipbuilding towns to seek employment in Barrow.

North East England

  • Dialects in this region are often known as Geordie (for speakers from the Newcastle upon Tyne area) or Mackem (for speakers from the Sunderland area). The dialects across the region are broadly similar however some differences do exist. For example, with words ending -re/-er, such as culture and father, the end syllable is pronounced by a Newcastle native as a short 'a', such as in 'fat' and 'back', therefore producing "cultcha" and "fatha" for "culture" and "father" respectively. The Sunderland area would pronounce the syllable much more closely to that of other accents. Similarly, Geordies pronounce "make" and "take" in line with the standard English pronunciation. However, a Mackem would pronounce these words as "mack" or "tack" (hence the origin of the term "Mackem"). For other differences, see the respective articles. For an explanation of the traditional dialects of the mining areas of County Durham and Northumberland see Pitmatic.
  • Glottal reinforcement for /k/, /p/ and /t/. This feature is usually transcribed as [p͡ʔ], [t͡ʔ] and [k͡ʔ] or [ʔ͡p], [ʔ͡t] and [ʔ͡k]. [37]
  • A feature of the North East accent, shared with Scots and Irish English, is the pronunciation of the consonant cluster -lm in coda position. As an example, "film" is pronounced as "fillum". Another of these features which are shared with Scots is the use of the word 'Aye', pronounced like 'I', its meaning is yes.
  • Also similar to Scots, the modals 'can', and less commonly 'will', have contracted forms "cannet" and "winnet". Additionally, distinct negative forms of 'do' exist. In Tyneside and Northumberland, the local form is "divvent", whereas "dinnet" is prevalent in Sunderland and Durham. [38]

Examples of accents used by public figures

Regional English accents in the media

The Archers has had characters with a variety of different West Country accents (see Mummerset).

The shows of Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement have often included a variety of regional accents, the most notable being Auf Wiedersehen Pet about Geordie men in Germany. Porridge featured London and Cumberland accents, and The Likely Lads featured north east England.

The programmes of Carla Lane such as The Liver Birds and Bread featured Scouse accents.

In the 2005 version of the science fiction programme Doctor Who , various Londoners wonder why the Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston), an alien, sounds as if he comes from the North. Eccleston used his own Salford accent in the role; the Doctor's usual response is "Lots of planets have a North!" Other accents in the same series include Cockney (used by actress Billie Piper) and Estuary (used by actress Catherine Tate and David Tennant's Tenth Doctor)

A television reality programme Rock School was set in Suffolk in its second series, providing lots of examples of the Suffolk dialect.

See also

Notes

  1. The traditional feature of rhoticity in Lancashire is increasingly giving way to non-rhoticity: Beal, Joan (2004). "English dialects in the North of England: phonology". A Handbook of Varieties of English (pp. 113–133). Berlin, Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 127.
  2. [ɪ] defines the Central Midlands (centred on Nottingham and Derby).
  3. [uː] defines the East Midlands (centred on Leicester and Rutland) and partly defines the South Midlands (centred on Northampton and Bedford).
  4. [eː] defines South Humberside or North Lincolnshire (centred on Scunthorpe).
  5. [ɪo] defines the South Midlands (centred on Northampton and Bedford).
  6. [eː] defines the Lower Southwest (Cornwall and Devon).
  7. [ɪo] defines the Central Southwest.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scouse</span> Accent and dialect of English in the Liverpool City Region

Scouse, officially known as Liverpool English or Merseyside English, is an accent and dialect of English associated with the city of Liverpool and the surrounding Liverpool City Region. The Scouse accent is highly distinctive as it was influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh immigrants who arrived via the Liverpool docks, as well as Scandinavian sailors who also used the docks, and thus has very little in common with the accents found throughout the rest of England. Natives of Liverpool are officially known as Liverpudlians, but are usually called Scousers; the name comes from scouse, a stew originating from Scandinavian lobscouse eaten by sailors and locals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yorkshire dialect</span> Dialects of English spoken in Yorkshire

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Anglian English</span> Dialect of English spoken in East Anglia

East Anglian English is a dialect of English spoken in East Anglia, primarily in or before the mid-20th century. East Anglian English has had a very considerable input into modern Estuary English. However, it has received little attention from the media and is not easily recognised by people from other parts of the United Kingdom. East Anglia is not easily defined and its boundaries are not uniformly agreed upon.

Linking R and intrusive R are sandhi phenomena where the rhotic consonant is pronounced as sound between two consecutive vowels with the purpose of avoiding a hiatus, that would otherwise occur in the expressions, such as tuner amp, although in isolation tuner is pronounced the same as tuna. These phenomena occur in many non-rhotic varieties of English, such as those in most of England and Wales, parts of the United States, and all of the Anglophone societies of the southern hemisphere, with the exception of South Africa. In these varieties, the sound is pronounced only when it is immediately followed by a vowel.

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The TRAPBATH split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in Southern England English, Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English, South African English and to a lesser extent in some Welsh English as well as older Northeastern New England English by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long of PALM. In that context, the lengthened vowel in words such as bath, laugh, grass and chance in accents affected by the split is referred to as a broad A. Phonetically, the vowel is in Received Pronunciation (RP), Cockney and Estuary English; in some other accents, including Australian and New Zealand accents, it is a more fronted vowel and tends to be a rounded and shortened in Broad South African English. A trapbath split also occurs in the accents of the Middle Atlantic United States, but it results in very different vowel qualities to the aforementioned British-type split. To avoid confusion, the Middle Atlantic American split is usually referred to in American linguistics as a 'short-a split'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English language in Northern England</span> Collection of accents and dialects

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">English language in Southern England</span> Varieties of English language in Southern England

English in Southern England is the collective set of different dialects and accents of Modern English spoken in Southern England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potteries dialect</span> English dialect of the North Midlands of England

Potteries is an English dialect of the West Midlands of England, almost exclusively in and around Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Midlands English</span> Dialect of English

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Midlands English</span> Dialect spoken in the United Kingdom, spoken in the western area of the English Midlands

West Midlands English is a group of dialects of the English language native to the English West Midlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lancashire dialect</span> Northern English vernacular native to Lancashire

The Lancashire dialect refers to the Northern English vernacular speech of the English county of Lancashire. The region is notable for its tradition of poetry written in the dialect.

Older Southern American English is a diverse set of American English dialects of the Southern United States spoken most widely up until the American Civil War of the 1860s, before gradually transforming among its White speakers, first, by the turn of the 20th century, and, again, following the Great Depression, World War II, and, finally, the Civil Rights Movement. By the mid-20th century, among White Southerners, these local dialects had largely consolidated into, or been replaced by, a more regionally unified Southern American English. Meanwhile, among Black Southerners, these dialects transformed into a fairly stable African-American Vernacular English, now spoken nationwide among Black people. Certain features unique to older Southern U.S. English persist today, like non-rhoticity, though typically only among Black speakers or among very localized White speakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Welsh English</span> Dialect of the English language

Welsh English comprises the dialects of English spoken by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the distinctive words and grammar, a variety of accents are found across Wales, including those of North Wales, the Cardiff dialect, the South Wales Valleys and West Wales.

The distinction between rhoticity and non-rhoticity is one of the most prominent ways in which varieties of the English language are classified. In rhotic accents, the sound of the historical English rhotic consonant,, is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic accents, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments: when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, but a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound and pronounces them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/. When an r is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "better apples," most non-rhotic speakers will pronounce the in that position since it is followed by a vowel in this case.

The Black Country dialect is spoken by many people in the Black Country, a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The traditional dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English and may be unintelligible for outsiders. This dialect is distinct from and maintains more traditional characteristics than the dialect of Birmingham, which has been more influenced by standard English due to having been urban for a longer time. It has also influenced the accents of the towns and villages in the counties to the north, south and west of the region.

References

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Further reading