6. South West England

The West Country dialects accents are generic terms applied to any of several 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, 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, 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.

a) Norfolk

The Norfolk dialect is spoken in the traditional county of Norfolk and areas of north Suffolk. Famous speakers include Lord Nelson and Keith Skipper. The group FOND (Friends of Norfolk Dialect) was formed to record the countys 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 /i:/ in FLEECE words.

b) Midlands

? As in the North, Midlands accents generally do not use a broad A, so that cast is pronounced [kast] rather than the [k??st] pronunciation of most southern accents. The northern limit of the [??] in many words crosses England from mid-Shropshire to The Wash, passing just south of Birmingham.

? Midlands speech also generally uses the northern short U, so putt is pronounced the same as put. The southern limit of this pronunciation also crosses from mid-Shropshire to the Wash, but dipping further south to the northern part of Oxfordshire.

? The West Midlands accent is often described as having a pronounced nasal quality, the East Midlands accent much less so.

? Old and cold may be pronounced as "owd" and "cowd" (rhyming with "loud" in the West Midlands and "ode" in the East Midlands), and in the northern Midlands home can become "wom".

? Whether Derbyshire should be classed as the West or East Midlands in terms of dialect is debatable. Stanley Ellis, a dialect expert, said in 1985 that it was more like the West Midlands, but it is often grouped with the East and is part of the region East Midlands.

? Cheshire, although part of the North-West region, is usually grouped the Midlands for the purpose of accent and dialect.

c) 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 rather than. Wells noted that there were no exceptions to this rule in Stoke-on-Trent, whereas there were for other areas with the pronunciation, such as Liverpool.

? Dialect verbs are used, for example am for are, ay for is not (related to aint), 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?" "Theym bay windas." "Well if they bay windas wot bin them?". There is also humour to be derived from the shop-owners sign of Mr. "E. A. Wright" (that is, "He ay [isnt] right," a phrase implying someone is saft [soft] in the jed [head]). Saft also may mean silly as in, "Stop bein so saft".

? The Birmingham and Coventry accents are quite distinct, even though the cities are only 19 miles/30 km apart. Coventry being slightly closer to an East Midlands accent.

? Around Stoke-on-Trent, the short i can sound rather like a short e, so milk and biscuit become something like "melk" and "bess-kit". Strong Potteries accents can even render the latter as "bess-keet". 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, and in some parts mixing with the Welsh accent, particularly when closer to the English/Welsh border.

d) 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.

? The PRICE vowel has a very far back starting-point, and can be realised as.

? Yod-dropping, as in East Anglia, can be found in some areas for example new as /nu/, sounding like "noo".

? The u vowel of words like strut is often , with no distinction between putt and put. In Lincolnshire, such sounds are 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.

? In north Nottinghamshire ee found in short words is pronounced as two syllables, for example feet being [fij?], sounding like "fee-yut" (and also in this case ending with a glottal stop).

? Lincolnshire also has a marked north-south split in terms of accent. The north shares many features with Yorkshire, such as the open a sound in "car" and "park" or the replacement of take andmake 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.

? 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 ruralOxfordshire.

? The town of Corby in northern Northamptonshire has an accent with some originally Scottish features, apparently due to immigration of Scottish steelworkers. It is common in Corby for the GOAT set of words to be pronounced with /o/. This pronunciation is used across Scotland and most of Northern England, but Corby is alone in the Midlands in using it.