Accents and Dialect

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Gurney
Date: 02 Feb 09 - 10:11 PM

The funny thing about accents is... everyone has one. And everyone thinks that they haven't!

This from a Nuneatonian living in New Zealand. I worked for a firm called Chemspec. When I used the 'phone;
"Hello, Chemspec here."
"Sorry, who?"
"Chemspec."
"Who?"
"Kimspik!"
"Oh! Kimspik. Right."

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: sid
Date: 02 Feb 09 - 04:43 AM

Anyone interested in bringing these old English Dialects back to life and joining us at Fylde this year for our gathering of English dialect speakers? Contact [e-mail], (and please tell your friends - SID - Lancashire Language and Dialect Society)

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 04:42 AM

I am thick and skint but it's got nothing to do with my Geordie accent!

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Colin Randall
Date: 12 Jan 09 - 03:43 AM

"Theres nothing worse than the geordie accent,its bloody awful.It even makes successful people seem thick and skint, "


    Even though 16 or 17 months have elapsed since "Guest sinky" added the above contribution to this thread, I have not been able to get it out of my mind. My argument that accents enrich the language appeared, with due reference to Mudcat, in The National (Abu Dhabi) at the weekend. It is here:

http://thenational.ae/article/20090110/WEEKENDER/23260161/1310

and, with the mention of Mudcat fleshed out, here:

http://www.francesalut.com/2009/01/mark-my-words-with-an-accent-on-where-youre-

Incidentally, it was impossible to gain access to Mudcat from the UAE yesterday. Was there a general problem?

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Tootler
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 06:23 PM

Best thing abaht Lancashire is t'road aht.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 04:28 PM

Famous Lancashire saying -

Yer can all'us tell a yorkshurmon - But yer cornt tell 'im much.

:D

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Terry McDonald
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 12:44 PM

The Dorset dialect poet, William Barnes, when asked why he didn't write in the King's English replied that he did.....it was the English spoken when Alfred ruled from Winchester.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: folk1e
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 12:40 PM

Very Trollish GUEST,sinky
It was the prefered wisdom at the BBC,Oxbridge etc though!
Wen I wer at skewl there were at least four distinct accents from a catchment area of 2 miles! I still live in the same place but the accents have homoganised out of recognition.
BTW if a county is a shire when it has a principle town of the same name how about Manchesershire? or even Greater Manchestershire?
Maybe we could have a "three way" war of the roses at saddleworth (in the afforesaid shire)

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,sinky
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 12:14 PM

DaveS,is that a local solicitors bonny lad man woman girl.Sing us one of those good old fishy on a dishy songs man.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 12:10 PM

GUEST sinky - hadaway an shite.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,sinky
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 11:46 AM

Theres nothing worse than the geordie accent,its bloody awful.It even makes successful people seem thick and skint,

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 11:25 AM

the button - I lived in Hull for about 9 years. I could never even begin to mimic the way the locals pronounced 'no'. My attempts were also hampered by the fact that the girls didn't use the word very often!

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: the button
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 10:51 AM

I'm from the East Riding, and usually get on OK down here in That London. With the exception of ordering takeaways over the phone (or "phern," as all right-thinking people pronounce it).

I didn't realise I still had much of an accent until I recorded some internet radio shows. Blimey.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 10:44 AM

Two scouse ladies in conversation:

1 "My husband works fer Cunard"

2 "Well, my husband works f*ck'n 'ard too"

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Colin Randall
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 10:32 AM

My parents moved from Sussex to County Durham when I was about three months' old but it is to my eternal regret that they later insisted on sending me to elocution lessions to make sure I didn't grow up talking like my mates. For all my attempts to confound them, the ruse broadly succeeded.

I love it when people sing in their own accents - Kate Rusby, Bob Fox, Johnny Handle and of course countless others - and hate it when they deliberately don't. But then I always thought Cara Dillon affected a slightly mid-Atlantic accent in her singing, which she certainly doesn't have in conversation, only to be told by someone from her part of Ulster that it was perfectly natural. When I heard her version of There Were Roses, on which she sounded every bit as Ulster as Tommy Sands, I dropped all resistance.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 10:31 AM

Guest, Aw theawt ? Guest ? - Aw theawt Aw were a bonny fide Member o Mudceeott. eestow, Aw'm noan workin frum me eeawn set, but thet o Mether in Leaw, seestow. Appen yons raisun whey.

Dost know o ony Chesheer doinlict Society ? Aw'd be fain if theaw dost, er maught.

If dost theaw mought PM mi - thawst find me at 'Edmond', mi best Sunndey name.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Edmond
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 10:23 AM

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Aug 07 - 10:02 AM

. Bye, A'wm fur threaped.

As it stonds, Wafe and Aw 're baidin in Neawarthomptonsheer, summ godfergeeten owal seawth on Mecclesfeld. |If theaw gooz deawn M6 (an Gud a murrcy of theene seawl !)un turrns eawf at Junction 10 appen theawd fainde us.

Aw'd noan put bress on, seestow.

Thi cowal a jigger an jitty - dist ever heer loike ?

Aw twald um Aw'd feawd a whale in pole, local. Un Aw twald um Aw'd petched bugger - it wurr baout spokes seestow

Tek curr. Odmunt Bryn Pugh, i Chesheer Speaken.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Howard Jones
Date: 16 Aug 07 - 02:49 PM

Some years ago my next door neighbours had a small boy. He spent a lot of time with his grandfather and spoke with a very broad Cheshire accent, which you don't often hear nowadays. He sounded like an old man talking, but was only 3 or 4.

One day he looked over the fence and asked,

"Where's missus?"

"She's at work", I said

"Did yer put 'er t'work?" he asked

Another time, I was cleaning a camping stove on the back porch.

"What yer doin?"

I explained. He listened carefully, then turned round and shouted indoors, "Master next door's mendin' t'clock!"

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,The black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 16 Aug 07 - 07:43 AM

I have a book somewhere called "Glowing embers on a Somerset fire" that makes an interesting observation about Somerset words and phrases.
It advances the theory that the local people deliberately avoided the use of these new "Johnny come lately" Latin rooted words brought in by the Romans and mispronounced them where they were unavoidable.

Also it's interesting that the words for cooked meat such as "beef" and "mutton" are French derived, while the words for the animals themselves are not. It's the upper class French speakers who got to eat them while the surfs just looked after them! They were allowed to keep pigs though so we have "pork".

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Trevor
Date: 16 Aug 07 - 06:31 AM

Bah the way, wi cud ave sum baircon n eggs if wid got sum baircon.

Trubble is, we ay got no eggs.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Trevor
Date: 16 Aug 07 - 06:29 AM

Woss the diffrence between a buffalo an a bison?
Yow cor wash yer feet in a buffalo.

Aynoch an Ayli goo t'Orstralia fer they'r olidiz.
Aynoch sez t' Ayli "Wher'es e a'gooin wi that plonk on is showlder?"
"Tharay a plonk," sez Ayli, "its a sairf boord"
"Ooh tha sowends good dow it. Less watch 'im"
Anyroad, a shark jumps owt the water an ates the blowk an is board.
"Wot yow say that's called?" sez Aynoch.
"Sairf boordin" sez Ayli.
"Well it dow look very bloody sairf to me!"

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 15 Aug 07 - 04:21 PM

I know what you mean Linda. Doesn't take much to turn me back into an Essex girl!

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Captain Swing
Date: 15 Aug 07 - 11:52 AM

Q. What do you call a Chinese person who lives between Stourbridge and Halesowen?

A. Yow Min Lye

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 15 Aug 07 - 10:53 AM

or if you want it in Devonshire    O R Man

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 15 Aug 07 - 10:50 AM

Y I Man

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Aug 07 - 10:22 AM

Just remembered another

Geordie goes to his C.O.
"Them natives have started playin' the drums, Sir!"

C.O.
"Are they war drums"

Geordie
"Nae, I think they have got thur own..."

:D

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Mingulay at work
Date: 15 Aug 07 - 08:59 AM

"Om gooin dairn tairn t' get sum dug grub." That's how we talk where I was born in deepest Northamptonshire and after nearly 50 years away it still makes sense to me. So much more interesting than Estuary English.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Old Grizzly
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 06:01 PM

"have been in the midlands over the weekend and my accent, much hammered out by years in London and Yorkshire came flooding back! -I speak like The Villan now! "

Thay assner aif gorra bite a bit, burrif thee wossna born in th'pottries, thay cossna towk rate cost me duck?

D

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Rasener
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 04:40 PM

Thats alroight loik then akid (Linda)

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 04:19 PM

have been in the midlands over the weekend and my accent, much hammered out by years in London and Yorkshire came flooding back! -I speak like The Villan now!

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Rasener
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 03:58 PM

:-)

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 14 Aug 07 - 03:50 PM

From a Dudley tailors shop in the 60's

Would sir like a Kipper Tie?

Yez, pleze. Milk and towe sugers...

Two Lancashire lads on holiday on the Wye

What's that old church?

Tintern Abbey

'tis an abbey!

Edinburgh cake shop

Is that a sponge cake or a meringue?

Aye, it is a sponge cake and yer nae wrang.

:D

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 13 Aug 07 - 06:57 PM

"Am that roight our Eynock?"

Yow am that, our Ayli.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 13 Aug 07 - 11:03 AM

I've always been something of a linguistic chameleon which can be a benefit or a disadvantage depending on circumstances. Last week I was mainly Welsh! Bore da.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Rasener
Date: 13 Aug 07 - 10:37 AM

Warwickshire - was that mentioned.

I beleive that the Black country dialect is the oldest in England.

Am that roight our Eynock?

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Aug 07 - 10:04 AM

speshully uz vrum Debm

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: artbrooks
Date: 13 Aug 07 - 09:59 AM

Yuns Brits tawk funny.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Trevor
Date: 13 Aug 07 - 09:21 AM

I live in Shropshire, and work in the county town of Shrop.... erm...

Ahm a yammer baa bairth tho.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Aug 07 - 07:23 PM

I have the misfortune to be summat of a dialect and accent sponge. Four weeks in any region with a strong local accent, and even my wife has difficulty understanding me.

I once had the Nawf Lunnon accent, but now after thirty years it's mostly somewhere between grammar school standard and Kentish.

I den't spend any time in Newcastle or Brum. Imagine it....halfway between Jimmy Nail and Jasper Carrott.

Don T.

P.S. At last I have found the thread this was intended for (senior moments, I suppose).

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Penny S.
Date: 12 Aug 07 - 03:53 PM

I've lived in Kent most of my life, and I've never heard a soul speak of its being a shire. Kelly or no Kelly. It's been Kent with suffixes such as ion and ium since before the Conquest - the Roman one, that is. Its regional capital took its name from the region, not the other way round. Durovernum Cantiacorum under the Romans, the fort by the alders belonging to the men of Kent. Cantwaraburg under the English, the fort of the men of Kent. It was not part of the re-organisation that set up the shires under the English kings.

Nor was Sussex. Or Northumberland, or Cumberland.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Aug 07 - 03:15 PM

No one's mentioned the Black Country accent/dialect, which also contains some extraordinary grammatical idiosyncracies and word usages, like "wench" for girl, which I found fascinating when I lived there.

Q: What do they call the Dudley branch of Toys R Us?

A: Toys Am We.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: bubblyrat
Date: 11 Aug 07 - 01:08 PM

Not much accent-wise to report or comment on from Henley-on -Thames, I"m afraid, although persons from nearby Reading have a readily discernible accent,typified by the excruciatingly awful way in which they pronounce words like "sprouts " ( as in Brussels Sprouts ), which they manage to make sound like the Dutch " ui " sound ( impossible to reproduce in written form ,but perfectly ghastly, I do assure you ). As one progresses further north into Oxfordshire, one encounters something much more akin to a "burr", as personified by the esteemed Pam Ayres----beyond that , it"s all Bandit Country to most of us, I fear, and quite beyond comprehension.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Murray on Saltspring
Date: 10 Aug 07 - 04:20 PM

A county is a shire; and I believe the "shire" should only be suffixed to the name of a [county] town. Fife, my own county, has been called Fifeshire in the past, but this is wrong since there's no town called Fife. But then we always call it a kingdom, of course.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,folkie
Date: 10 Aug 07 - 10:35 AM

Sorry, Guest.Dave Hunt, but Kent is a shire.
It is the ninth English shire in size as deifined in Kelly's 1902 directory.

Surprising but unrefutable.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 10 Aug 07 - 09:06 AM

My grandfather used to be a very broad Devonshire speaker..such wonderful answers to my questions .....ie....to...... "Ware be gwain gfanf'r"?...he would reply something like "Gwain down therawd drayin''ood buyy".......I also remember several people in our village talking about lectrizical lightin'

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Cath
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 05:20 PM

Thank you Ay Up.
I was sent this some time back in an email and it didn't work on my Mac. It were grand.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Ay Up
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 03:34 PM

Yorkshire Airlines

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Arnie
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 03:01 PM

If you want to see and hear some classic Yorkshire dialect and humour, have a look at the Lycos Yorkshire Airlines video clip - easy to find through any search engine. It fair creased me up tha' knows!

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 01:16 PM

That's great thanks Dave.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Dave Hunt
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 12:24 PM

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 12:07 PM

Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, Cambridgeshire.....many shires in England but not all regularly called by their full titles.....
Best wishes, Mike.
PS Cornwall is definitely not a shire.....nor I believe now is
Cumbria.
-----------------------------
Neither are Suffolk. Norfolk, Essex, Kent,Middlesex
Dave

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Snuffy
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 12:08 PM

Queen Elizabeth I was going to make him Duke of Derbyshire, but the scribe who wrote out the parchment got it wrong, so they've stayed Dukes of Devonshire for over 400 years.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 12:07 PM

Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, Cambridgeshire.....many shires in England but not all regularly called by their full titles.....
Best wishes, Mike.
PS Cornwall is definitely not a shire.....nor I believe now is Cumbria.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Teri
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 11:00 AM

Please excuse a poor boy's ignorance, but is it Devon or Devonshire??

I know there was a randy old goat called himself the Duke of Devonshire but he was from Yorkshire or Derbyshire, hundreds of miles from Devon.

So, is Devon a place and Devonshire a dirty old man?

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 09:14 AM

Round our way 'Broad' (local) and 'Bang' (general) dialects were switched at the drop of a hat! If you were talking to someone you knew was local you 'talked broad'. If you addressed a stranger it was courtesy to speak 'Bang'.

Didn't the BBC do a regional version of Doctor Who?

"I am a dialect. Exterminate the buggers..."

:D

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 08:54 AM

My Glaswegian friend during my schooldays spoke with a 'BBC' English accent when she spoke to everybody except her parents. When she spoke to them it was in broad Glesga. She claimed (and I've no reason to doubt her) that she did it automatically, almost without realising it.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: jacqui.c
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 08:28 AM

Up to the time I started school I am told that I spoke 'very nicely' - Queen's English and all that.

Going to school in North London soon knocked that out of me - to my parents' dismay the accent was soon no different from those of the other kids in the area.

Since coming to the USA I have had many compliments on my accent - it seems that any British accent is seen as exotic over here.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: GUEST,Squeaky at work
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 08:22 AM

Georgian - I had the same sort of schooling - my rural accent was literally beaten out of me. Singing in the church choir helped to dampen it down, enunciating properly for the (mostly deaf!) congregation. I still have moments though when it pops out, usually when I've been visiting relatives in Dorset or spoken to one of the South-West offices on the phone.

I'm pathetic at working out accents though... I have to have the subtitles on for any TV show produced north of Shrewsbury.

LTS

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 07:27 AM

I grew up in the Devonshire dialect until I went to one of those schools where "One is expected to converse in Queens English boy".
I quickly lost the use of dialect but even now I still have some of the Devonshire accent. I can still speak in the Devonshire dialect and used to read stories to groups of people in my native tongue, many years ago.
Thanks for the post s&r.....good one!
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 06:48 AM

Daft owd bugger, a ment Lincolnsheer.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 06:47 AM

Them on uz what's from t'Backwoods o'Lincolnsheer dunt ev any trubble wi' it mai-aster. An' them on uz what's from t'border o' Licolnsheer an' Nottinumsheer dunt ev no trubble wi' t'way them daft lummoxes ower theer talks neether.

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Sooz
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 06:23 AM

I came from Nottingham and it took me ages to get my ear tuned into Lincolnshire!

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: s&r
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 06:10 AM

Fair takes me back - I came from the East Midlands; Titch's accent is close to the sounds I remember locally (Nottingham)

Subject: RE: Accents and Dialect
From: Sooz
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 06:04 AM

Our mate Titch Rivett is featured on that site.

She is an expert on our Lincolnshire dialect and has some brilliant stories to tell.

Subject: Accents and Dialect
From: s&r
Date: 09 Aug 07 - 04:13 AM

Other threads have discussed this topic, and that led to my finding this fascinating site

Well worth a look

Stu