English of Northumberland

Last updated
Northumbrian
Native toEngland
Region Northumberland and County Durham
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Glottolog None
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Location of the historic counties of Northumberland and Durham within England County Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (Northumbria).svg
Location of the historic counties of Northumberland and Durham within England

The Northumbrian dialect refers to any of several English language varieties spoken in the English county of Northumberland, the northern section of historic Northumbria (Bernicia) or present-day North East England. This may include such varieties as:

Northumberland County of England

Northumberland is a county in North East England. The northernmost county of England, it borders Cumbria to the west, County Durham and Tyne and Wear to the south and the Scottish Borders to the north. To the east is the North Sea coastline with a 64 miles (103 km) path. The county town is Alnwick, although the County council is based in Morpeth.

Bernicia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by Anglian settlers of the 6th century in what is now southeastern Scotland and North East England.

North East England region of England in United Kingdom

North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It covers Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and the area of the former county of Cleveland in North Yorkshire. The region is home to three large conurbations: Teesside, Wearside, and Tyneside, the last of which is the largest of the three and the eighth most populous conurbation in the United Kingdom. There are three cities in the region: Newcastle upon Tyne, the largest, with a population of just under 280,000; Sunderland, also in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear; and Durham. Other large towns include Darlington, Gateshead, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, South Shields, Stockton-on-Tees and Washington.

Contents

Northumbrian was a dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Together with Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English devised and employed by modern scholars.

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English.

Scots language Germanic language

Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster in Ireland. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language which was historically restricted to most of the Highlands, the Hebrides and Galloway after the 16th century. The Scots language developed during the Middle English period as a distinct entity.

This article focuses only on the final variety, most commonly known in academic literature as Northumbrian dialect or Northumbrian English; however, the Northumbrian Language Society regards the dialect as divergent enough to be a separate language from English. [1]

Phonology

Consonants

The Northumbrian burr is the distinctive uvular pronunciation of R in the traditional dialects of Northumberland, Tyneside ('Geordie'), and northern County Durham, but it is now prevalent only in the older residents of rural Northumberland.

LabialDentalAlveolarPostalveolarPalatalVelarUvularGlottal
Nasalmnŋ
Stopp bt dt͡ʃ d͡ʒk ɡ
Fricativef vθ ðs zʃ ʒxʁh
Approximantrjʍ w
Laterall

Vowels

Received Pronunciation (RP), commonly called BBC English in North America and Standard British pronunciation or Southern British pronunciation by North American scholars, is an accent of Standard English in the United Kingdom and is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as "the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England", although it can be heard from native speakers throughout England and Wales. Peter Trudgill estimated in 1974 that 3 per cent of people in Britain were RP speakers, but this rough estimate has been questioned by the phonetician J. Windsor Lewis. Clive Upton notes higher estimates of 5% and 10% but refers to all these as "guestimates" that are not based on robust research.

Monophthongs of Northumbrian (Tyneside)
FrontCentralBack
unroundedrounded
shortlongshortlong
Closeɪiːʊuː
Close-mideːøːəoː
Open-midɛɛːɔː
Openaaːɒɒː

Diphthongs

Diphthongs of Northumbrian (Tyneside)
Endpoint
FrontCentralBack
Start pointFrontaiiɐæu
Backoeuɐ

Subdialectal differences

The major Northumbrian dialects today are Geordie, Northern Northumbrian, Western Northumbrian, Pitmatic, Mackem, and arguably Smoggie, which is transitional between Northumbrian and Yorkshire English. To an outsider's ear the similarities between the dialects far outweigh the differences between the dialects.

Geordie is a nickname for a person from the Tyneside area of North East England, and the dialect used by its inhabitants. The term is also used to refer to anyone from North East England.

Mackem, Makem or Mak'em is the informal nickname for residents of and people from Sunderland, a city in North East England. It is also a name for the local accent ; and for a fan, whatever their origin, of Sunderland A.F.C. It has been used by the people of Sunderland to describe themselves since the 1980s, prior to which it was mainly used in Tyneside as a disparaging exonym. An alternative name for a Mackem is a Wearsider.

One of the main differences between Northern Northumbrian and the Geordie dialect of Newcastle is the more frequent elongating of vowels in Northern Northumbrian than in Geordie, the seaside town of Amble is most famous for this occurrence. Therefore, words like "mam" (mother) are pronounced as "mairm" and can and tab become "cairn" and "tairb" etc. Sometimes, however, this vowel change is shorter, and becomes in effect like the letter "e" as in "to have a wesh" for "to have a wash". In addition, this is true with "o", words like doorknob and no become doorknerb and ner thus adopting an "err" sound.

Comparison with Scots language

Northumbrian has a very close relationship with the Scots language [4] and both are sometimes considered as the same Anglic language or as distinct but close relatives, [1] with the two being essentially the same language, albeit with minor differences. This is not commonly or formally recognised, however, due to sensitivities on both side of the border. [5]

However, both Scots and Northumbrian are not universally regarded as a separate languages from English, but as groups of dialects. [6]

Grammar

Northumbrian includes some strong plurals such as ee/een (eye/eyes), hoose/hoosen (house/houses), pee/pesen (pea/peas), coo/kye (cow/cows) and shough/shoon (shoe/shoes) that survived from Old English into Northumbrian but have become weak plurals in Standard Modern English [7] – ox/oxen and child/children being exceptions

Northumbrian uses the singular second-person pronouns thoo and thee. This is a T form in the T–V distinction.

Vocabulary

Some Northumbrian words include: [8] [9]

Northumbrian Language Society

The Northumbrian Language Society, founded in 1983, exists to research, preserve and promote the Northumbrian language.

The Society considers Northumbrian to be a distinct Anglic language and encourages bilingualism amongst Northumbrians. [10]

Related Research Articles

Loch Scottish Gaelic, Indian and Irish word for a lake or a sea inlet

Loch is the Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Scots word for a lake or for a sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch.

Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. This article provides an overview of the numerous identifiable variations in pronunciation; such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations.

A diphthong, also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most dialects of English, the phrase no highway cowboys has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.

Canadian raising Allophonic rule of vowels prominent in Canada, also found throughout N. American English dialects

Canadian raising is an allophonic rule of phonology in many dialects of North American English that changes the pronunciation of diphthongs with open-vowel starting points. Most commonly, the shift affects or, or both, when they are pronounced before voiceless consonants. In North American English, and usually begin in an open vowel [~], but through raising they shift to (listen), (listen) or (listen). Canadian English often has raising in words with both and, while a number of U.S. English dialects have this feature in but not.

Doric, the popular name for Mid Northern Scots or Northeast Scots, refers to the Scots language as spoken in the northeast of Scotland. There is an extensive body of literature, mostly poetry, ballads, and songs.

Pitmatic, also colloquially known as "yakka", is a dialect of English used in the counties of Northumberland and Durham in England. It developed as a separate dialect from other Northumbrian dialects such as Geordie partly due to the specialised terms used by mineworkers in the local coal pits. For example, in Northumberland and Tyne and Wear the word Cuddy is an abbreviation of the name Cuthbert but in Durham Pitmatic cuddy denotes a horse, specifically a pit pony. In Lowland Scots, cuddie usually refers to a donkey or ass but may also denote a short, thick, strong horse.

Scouse accent and dialect of English found primarily in the metropolitan county of Merseyside

Scouse is an accent and dialect of English found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool. The accent often extends through neighbouring areas and across the Liverpool City Region, including Birkenhead and the wider Wirral Peninsula, as well as Ellesmere Port, Runcorn and Widnes in Cheshire and Skelmersdale in Lancashire.

English language in Northern England collection of accents and dialects

The English language in Northern England has been shaped by the region's history of settlement and migration, and today encompasses a group of related dialects known as Northern England English. Historically, the strongest influence on the varieties of the English language spoken in Northern England was the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, but contact with Old Norse during the Viking Age and with Irish English following the Great Famine have produced new and distinctive styles of speech. Some "Northern" traits can be found further south than others: only conservative Northumbrian dialects retain the pre-Great Vowel Shift pronunciation of words such as town, but all northern accents lack the FOOT–STRUT split, and this trait extends a significant distance into the Midlands.

Older Southern American English former set of dialects

Older Southern American English was a set of American English dialects of the Southern United States, primarily spoken by white Southerners up until the American Civil War, moving towards a state of decline by the turn of the nineteenth century, further accelerated after World War II and again, finally, by the Civil Rights Movement. These dialects have since largely given way, on a larger regional level, to a more unified and younger Southern American English, notably recognized today by a unique vowel shift and certain other vocabulary and accent characteristics. Some features unique to older Southern U.S. English persist today, though typically in only very localized dialects or speakers.

Modern Scots varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland, and parts of Ulster

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The Pitman's Courtship is a famous Geordie folk song written in the 19th century by William Mitford, in a style deriving from music hall. This piece takes a humorous look at the courtship of a Pitman and his lass where the discussion forms the proposal of marriage and the couple's plans for a life together. This song was generally considered to be one of the region's finest 'traditional' songs, one of only a handful of Tyneside songs to be appreciated outside the region in its day.

(John) Roland Bibby (1917–1997) was a Northumbrian-born scholar, poet, writer, historian, and antiquarian.

Rhymes of Northern Bards is a book of North East England traditional and popular song consisting of approximately 200 song lyrics on over 300 pages, published in 1812. It was reprinted in 1971 by Frank Graham, Newcastle upon Tyne with an introduction by David Harker.

Richard Oliver Heslop (1842–1916) was a Newcastle born businessman, author, historian, lexicologist, lexicographer, songwriter and poet. His most famous work is the two-volume "Northumberland Words".

Robert Allen was a Northumberland born farmer, poet.

Canny Bit Verse is a book, written and published by poet Robert Allen from Northumberland, England, in 1994. It contained a variety of poems, which between them praise the valley of the North Tyne, talk about local village cricket, or tell of sad occurrences as in the "whee's deid" (obituary) column, and according to the sales details "and for those who don't know their cushat from their shavie (chaffinch), there's a glossary of dialect words".

Standard Canadian English dialect of English

Standard Canadian English is the greatly homogeneous variety of Canadian English spoken particularly all across central and western Canada, as well as throughout Canada among urban middle-class speakers from English-speaking families, excluding the regional dialects of Atlantic Canadian English. English mostly has a uniform phonology and very little diversity of dialects in Canada compared with the neighbouring English of the United States. The Standard Canadian English dialect region is defined by the cot–caught merger to [ɒ](listen) and an accompanying chain shift of vowel sounds, called the Canadian Shift. A subset of this dialect geographically at its central core, excluding British Columbia to the west and everything east of Montreal, has been called Inland Canadian English, and is further defined by both of the phenomena known as "Canadian raising", the production of and with back starting points in the mouth, and the production of with a front starting point and very little glide.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "The Northumbrian Language Society". Northumbriana.org.uk. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
  2. ↑ "North East dialect origins and the meaning of 'Geordie'". Northeastengland.talktalk.net. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
  3. ↑ Riley. Geordie and Northumbria Dialect: Resource Book for North East English Dialect. CreateSpace. p. 9.
  4. ↑ "Newcastle English (Geordie)". Hawaii.edu. 2000-05-06. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
  5. ↑ Riley. Geordie and Northumbria Dialect: Resource Book for North East English Dialect. CreateSpace. p. 10.
  6. ↑ "Can Scots be English? - BadLinguistics". Badlinguistics.posterous.com. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
  7. ↑ Ridley, Brendan (2016). Geordie and Northumbria Dialect: Resource book for North East English dialect. p. 81.
  8. ↑ "Northumbrian Language Dictionary". geordiedictionary.tripod.com.
  9. ↑ MorpethNet. "Northumbrian Language Society". www.northumbriana.org.uk.
  10. ↑ "Peter Arnold speaks up for the Northumbrian dialect".

Further reading

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