English dialects

A DIALECT refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular region or a group of speakers. There are many dialects in Britain which make it very hard for foreigners to understand. In America, differences are not that huge so a non-native speaker has much bigger chance to understand Americans across the U.S. than the British of various regions. The term comes from the Greek word dialektos meaning discourse (dia = through, lego = I speak).  A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and intonation. However, where the pronunciation only is involved, we speak of an ACCENT.

We can distinguish various types of dialects:

Geographical dialects = connected to particular regional areas (London's Cockey, Liverpool's Scouse)

Generation dialects = use of language through generations. Older people would not say fuck in other meaning that having sex, however, youngsters use it very frequently as a swear word whose meaning became blank. Foreigners should be twice as careful when using generation-typical words in order to avoid being weird as these words can be already obsolete with the particular generation.

Sociolect = a dialect associated with a particular social class.

Idiolect/Lingo = a particular speech patterns used by an individual.

Jargon = a professional dialect mainly differentiating in its lexicon (vocabulary). A person working in a certain work environment (doctors, builders…) is expected to be able to communicate with these special words.

Slang = the use of informal and often taboo words.

Cant = a secret language devised to mislead people not involved in the group (thief’s guild slang).

Standard language = in fact just another variety of language which is standardized for public performances and written purposes.

Received Pronunciation (RP)

In fact, it is also just another dialect but concerning only pronunciation because it has neither specific vocabulary, nor grammar. It is a matter of ten home counties near London but RP speakers mainly acquire it in boarding schools (they enter it when they turn eleven) for rich children like Eton, Rugby and Harrow which are situated south-west of London.

Can RP be considered standardized English? If so, it could not be a dialect because the upper class does not want to be associated with working class which IS considered talking in dialects, perceived as something inferior. RP was traditionally spoken by educated people – nobility, officers, state clerks and university professors. It was Peter Trudgill with his book Dialects of England who firstly came with a statement that RP is just another dialect and his theory was not accepted for a long time.

A great achievement of Daniel Jones was his codification of RP for teaching purposes. However, Jones was born in 1881 so Jonesian RP is unquestionably obsolete. If we are to continue to prescribe RP as the model for EFL, we clearly have to reflect the changes. In former times the label educated people might have been used to identify RP-speakers but demographic changes show that it is no longer the case that all educated people speak RP as traditionally described. Nowadays 70% of teenagers go to university, whereas it was only 7% fifty  years ago. Naturally, those 70% come from various social and regional backgrounds and do not adopt RP anymore.

      R intrusion - adding an /r/-sound even where there is no letter r in the spelling to make pronouncing easier when there are two vowels (put a comma in /ˈpʊt ə ˈkɒmər ɪn/, idea of /aɪˈdɪər əv/ )

Northern dialects

Geordie

Geordie is a dialect of the area in North East England with the main city Newcastle. It retains many old Scandinavian and Celtic words.

      -er > /æ/      father > /fædhæ/

      /ou/ > o:

      talk > /ta:lk/

      work > /work/

      book > /bu:k/

      my > me, our > wor

      your plural > youse

Cumbrian

Cumbria is a county in north-west England on the border with Scotland. It is famous for the Lake District and Hadrian's Wall. It is interesting that Cumbrian has its own original sheep counting numerals.

      use of /a/ instead of normal /æ/ so "bad" is pronounced /bad/

      / ʊ/ instead of /ʌ/ so "bud" is pronounced /bud/, not /bʌd/

      <g> and <k> have a tendency to be dropped at the end of the word

      <h> is realised in various ways throughout the county

      <l> in the word final position may be dropped or realised as [w]: wool [wəw]

      <y> may be consonantal [j] as in yam [ˈjam]

      Special vocabulary: kecks - trousers, push iron - bicycle, mebby - maybe

Yorkshire

Yorkshire /ˈjɔːkʃə/ in is the largest county and considered to be among the greenest in England due to the vast stretches of unspoiled countryside. The dialect is known for its sing-song quality and special numerals for sheep counting. The famous people from this region are Brontë sisters, Ted Hughes and Sean Bean.

      ing is pronounced as -in' (walkin', talkin')

      the use of the short <a> in words like bath and dance

      the dropping of word-initial <h> ('appy, 'orrible)

      glottal stop

      they still use thou/thee

      definite article reduction  (- t` car , t` house) is probably the most recognisable aspect

      ‘Nut’ is the equivalent of ‘not’

      plural forms are not normally used when referring to periods of time or to quantities - six pund, two week old

Lancashire

Lancashire is a dialect is spoken north and east of Liverpool. The main city is Lancaster.

      dropping r’s

      /æ/  > /u/           luck > /luk/  

      /ou/ > /oi/         hole /hoil/  

Scouse

Scouse is /ˈskaʊs/ is a dialect of Merseyside but closely associated with Liverpool. Inhabitants of Liverpool are familiarly called Liverpudlians but are also named Scousers. The word scouse is a shortened form of lobscouse, a word for a meat stew commonly eaten by sailors. In the 19th century, poorer people of Liverpool ate "scouse" as it was a cheap dish so they received the same name. it is a birthplace of The Beatles who started new beat rock tradition called Mersey sound. Probably the most famous contemporary Scouse actor is Craig Charles from a sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf.

      The Scouse accent is highly distinctive from other English dialects as it uses rising intonation even in non-question statements.

      characteristic <ts> sound for the letter <t> in words like celebrated, security, start, street, hat

      final T becomes R before vowels (as what if, get off, lot of, shut up)

      double negation - ungrammatical but extremely widespread in a number of English dialects worldwide (We don't need no education.)

  

Midlands dialects

Brummie

Brummie is a colloquial term for the inhabitants and a West Midlands dialect of Birmingham, locally called Brum. Birmingham is located in West Midlands and with the population over a million it is the second most populated city in Britain. Even though it is called a "workshop of the world," its dialect is ranked as the least intelligent and Brummie speakers were often stereotypised as criminals. The famous people from Birmingham include Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Red Zeppelin and Judas Priest.

      /ai/ -> /oi/ (five -> foiv)

      final unstressed /ə/ -> /a/ ('swimmer' -> 'swimma')

      /ŋ/ -> /ŋg/ in stressed syllables ('singer' -> 'sing-ga')

      /ŋ/ -> /n/ in -ing suffix ('doing' -> 'doin')

      specific vocabulary: bawl - to weep (She started to bawl.), booza - pub, wamul - dog

East Midlands

This dialect is a mixture of English and Scandinavian with some vocabulary inherited from the Norse because it used to be a Viking territory. Significant cities are a cathedral city Lincoln and Nottingham, famous for Robin Hood. From famous people, D.H. Lawrence wrote in Nottinghamshire dialect.

      R often omitted so "mardy" sounds like "mah-deh"

      U is more like oo so "duck" is "dook"

      yourn - yours, ourn - ours, theirn - theirs

      replacement of self with sen (mesen - myself)

      my yard - my house

      croaker - doctor

      old cock - friend

      mardy - sulky

Black Country

It is an area of West Midlands north. During Industrial Revolution, it became of the most industrialised parts of Britain with coal mines an high level air pollution.

  

Southern dialects

Common characteristics of Southern dialects:

      r-dropping = R is not pronounced after vowels, unless followed by another vowel so far is pronounced /fa:/

      regular use of “broad a“ /a:/ as in bat /bɑːθ/

      “long o” is pronounced /’u/

      final unstressed i is pronounced /i/ as in happy /hæpi/

      t between vowels retained as /t/ (or glottal stop in its variants)

Cockney

To be a Cockney, you have to be born within hearing distance of the church bells of St. Mary Le Bow in the City of London. 150 years ago, Cockey could be heard in quite a wide area but nowadays only in a small area in the City with road and aircraft noise pollution. Originally, Cockney was a 14th century term that rural people applied to native Londoners who did not work manually but later on it began to mean the working class. Famous Cockey people include Phil Collins (musician), David Beckham (footballer), Charlie Chaplin (Hollywood film star), Amy Winehouse (singer) and David Bowie (singer).

      heavy use of glottal stop instead of the letter T (water - wa'er; Scotland - Sco'land)

      dropping of H at the beginning of words (house - ‘ouse)

      the letter l can often sound like W as in "milk - miwk"

      the R sound becomes more like a W (free - fwee)

      use of me instead of my (At´s me book you got ´ere.)

      use of ain´t

      use of double negatives

      use of rhyming slang which are phrases derived from taking an expression which rhymes and then using that expression instead of the word, originated in the East End of London. Examples: Daily Mail for ´tale´ (I don´t believe a word of his daily.), army and navy – gravy, cat and mouse – house.

      the voice quality of Cockney has been described as typically involving “chest tone“ rather than “head tone“

 

Estuary English

Estuary English is a way of speaking which has features of Standard English and English that is typical of London which is used by many people in the South Est of England (the river Thames and its estuary where it flows into the sea + Essex, Sussex, Kent). It is basically just a new name coined in 1980s by David Rosewarne because of the need to distinguish a different form of English. There were even attempts to call it Post-Modern English.

Estuary English combines elements of RP and Cockney and its evolution was possible thanks to disruption of English class system. Middle class people tended to abandon the RP pronunciation because it was too poshy so it is basically comprise traditional RP and Cockney. Still, by some people it is taken as something pejorative. Its grammar is RP but with phonological differences. Estuary English is well described in the popular book Do you speak Estuary? The New Standard English by Paul Coggle.

      in its use of glottal stop it is very similar to Cockney

      Use of intrusive R - the same as in RP.

      L vocalization - dark allophone [ɫ]  is now undergoing a process of vocalization (becoming a vowel): ɫ → o. Thus in a word such as milk, traditionally [mɪɫk] ->[mɪok]. shelf [ʃeof], tables [ˈteɪboz].

      Yod coalescence - this makes Tuesday /ˈtjuːz-/ -> /ˈtʃuːz-/,. Tune and duke become /tʃuːn, dʒuːk/ and reduce has a second syllable identical with juice. EE accepts it, RP does not.

      frequent use of gap fillers "basically, like"

      use of question tags =  I said I was going, didn't I.

West Country

The West Country is a term for the area of south western England, counties belonging here are Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. The West Country has a rural image as farming is widespread in this region. One of the large cities is Bristol which was once Britain´s most important port after London.  Interesting places include Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument built on Salisbury Plain between 3050 and 2300 BC.

      all R in a word are pronounced, in contrast to RP where R is only pronounced before vowels (park, herd, card)

      initial S often becomes Z (singer - zinger)

      the second person pronoun is "ye"

      initial F often becomes V (finger - vinger)

      past tense of to be is always "was" (you was, we was, they was)

      a slower rhythm, caused by the lengthening of vowel  sounds

East Anglia

East Anglia region consists of counties Norfolk and Suffolk. Its dialect is  very similar to the general Southern.

      T between vowels usually becomes a glottal stop

      /ai/ becomes /oi/  (time - /toim/)

      RP yu becomes U after d, t, n   

Wales and Scotland

Scots

Scots is not an English dialect but considered a separate language. It must not be confused with Scottish Gaelic of Highlands as the Scots of Lowlands has many dialects of its own. Famous people who speak this language are Sean Connery, Ewan McGregor and Robert Burns (author of a patriotic song Scots Wha Hae).

      The short 'o' sound in "book" or "could," shifts to the long 'oo'

      All  R sounds are rolled which is the hardest sound to learn

      The 'tl' sound becomes very carefully articulated as in "bottle."

      Scots tend to say "nae" for "not." and "cannot - cannae," "do not - dinnae"

      Instead of the word "understand" Scots use the word "ken." This word is also occasionally used to substitute for "know," as in "I dinnae ken where the fellow be."

      instead of "lad" or "lass," a Scot use the diminutive "laddie" or "lassie"

      use of "ye" instead of "you."

      the word "wee" for "little/small"

Welsh English

Wales – Cymru [ ˈkəm.rɨ ] is regarded as one of the modern Celtic nations as Welsh national identity emerged among the Celtic Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, Welsh was no longer widely spoken as a mother tongue as by educational policy schools taught almost exclusively English. However, Welsh survived remarkably well in rural areas as a community language. A more enlightened policy in recent years, notably the compulsory teaching of Welsh in schools, and a renewed sense of cultural pride has led to a steady increase in the number of Welsh speakers. Many speakers were and are bilingual in English and Welsh. The capital city is Cardiff [ˈkɑːdɪf] but in Welsh English pronounced as [ˈkæːdɪf].

      the characteristic fall-rise “sing-song” intonation pattern

      lightly rolled R

      words that derive from Welsh are bard, dad, flannel

      the use of the tag question isn't it? regardless of the form of the preceding statement

      the placement of the subject and the verb after the predicate for emphasis (Fed up, I am. , Running on Friday, he is.)

      tendency to use a 3rd person singular verb when referring to the 1st or 2nd person singular or plural. (I lives in Cardiff.)