Lancashire dialect and accent
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Lancashire dialect and accent refers to the vernacular speech in Lancashire, one of the counties of England. Simon Elmes' book Talking for Britain said that Lancashire dialect is now much less common than it once was, but it is not yet extinct. The terms sometimes includes or excludes the Liverpool area (also referred to as speaking Scouse), the Furness (now in Cumbria) and some areas that have been transferred between Lancashire and Yorkshire, such as Saddleworth. The Lancashire Dictionary (Crosby, 2000) stated that the Furness had always had more in common with Cumbrian dialect than with the rest of Lancashire, and so excluded it; with regards to Liverpool, it stated that the border between modern Scouse and traditional Lancashire was roughly between Bryn and Garswood, but many older residents in Merseyside still used Lancashire dialect.
As in all counties, there is a drift within local speech that shifts towards different borders. For example,
- In those parts of Lancashire that border with Yorkshire, similarities with the Yorkshire dialect and accent arise. Words are shortened such as with to wi, in to i, etc.
- In north Lancashire, speech sounds more similar to Cumbria. H-dropping is less frequent, and face, space words are said with an /eə/ rather than an /e:/.
- In south Lancashire, speech is generally more refined and dialect words are less common. There are also some Midland features that become apparent, such as a lack of Ng-coalescence (therefore, singer rhymes with finger).
This shift also occurs in other counties. Therefore, the western parts of Yorkshire have some Lancastrian features such as rhoticity. In Halifax words such as fur and fair will often be pronounced the same (see below) although the border with West Yorkshire marks the two distinctive 'oo' sounds in words like blue and shoe. In most of Lancashire ,this sound is pronounced /ʏ:/, a very rare sound in England (as in the German 'ü' or like the 'u' in the French tu); whereas West Yorkshire speech uses the rounder /ɪʊ:/ - the 'oo' as in the French 'vous'.
Perhaps the most famous Lancashire accent in popular culture is that of Peter Kay, who comes from Bolton. His comedy has parodied several features of Lancashire speech such as definite article reduction and the habit of using one's hands to illustrate what one means. The latter habit is said to originate from the Lancashire textile mills, where machinery was so loud that mill workers needed to use their hands to communicate. The folk singer/actor Bernard Wrigley is also from Bolton, and has a much more "rural" Bolton accent than Peter Kay's more modern urban Bolton accent. Films from the early part of the 20th century often contain Lancashire dialect: the film-makers George Formby, Gracie Fields and Frank Randle are notable examples. The 1990s sitcom Dinnerladies used Lancashire accents, and the actress Mina Anwar portrayed the Lancastrian police officer Habeeb in The Thin Blue Line. The two main characters in Rita, Sue and Bob Too had accents from the south-east of Lancashire; however, the film was actually set in Bradford, and the most of the cast spoke with Bradford accents.
The band the Lancashire Hotpots originate from St Helens[1], and popularise dialect in their humorous songs. The folk song "Poverty Knock[1]" is written to the tune of a Lancashire accent. It is one of the most famous dialect songs in Britain, and describes life in a textile mill. The song "On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at" is associated with Yorkshire, but, having been written by natives of Halifax, contains dialect that would be just as typical of Lancashire, including yet for "eat" and etten for "eaten".
Key features include:
- Definite article reduction. The is shortened to t or glottalled.
- Words such as face, place, space, etc. are usually said with an /e:/ sound. The wait-weight split exists in Lancashire.
- "Oh no", "don't know" sounds use /oː/
- Rhoticity is a key feature of a Lancashire accent, and is often more trilled than in the West Country. The closer that one gets to Manchester and Liverpool, rhoticity dies out.
- Vowel-lengthening is common, but generally less so than in Yorkshire. In some words with RP /əʊ/, a sound more like /[ɔɪ/] may be used, for example, "hole" is pronounced [hɔɪl], "hoil". "There" and "where" rhyme with "here" in some areas.
- The RP /ʌɪ/ in nice, time, price, etc. is rare in Lancashire. It is mostly replaced by /ai/ but there is a broader variant /ɑː/ in the south of the county.
- Words that end -ight often change so that they end /iː/. For example light, night, right, sight become leet, neet, reet, seet. Some areas pronounce fight and right with an /ei/ vowel - a split that is also found in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
- An oo in words such as book, look, hook can be pronounced with /ʉː/. This is a feature of Early Modern English, and is not unique to Lancashire dialect.
- In days gone by "open" would have become "oppen", "spoken" becomes "spokken", "broken" becomes "brokken", etc but these are now uncommon amongst younger generations. They are still fairly common in West Yorkshire.
- Traditionally, a /t/ was replaced with an /r/; for example, "I'm gerring berrer", "a lorra laughs". This is now confined to the more rural parts of Lancashire. Around Manchester and Salford, a glottal stop is much more common for /t/.
- Words such as chair, fair, stair are pronounced with a /ɪər/ sound. This means that fair sounds very similar to fur, and stair sounds very similar to stir. Door, tour, etc. have a slightly different vowel, /ə:r/.
- Rather than a mixed use of was and were such as occurs in Standard English, Lancashire dialects tend to only use one of the words and employ it in all cases. The west coast of Lancashire always uses was whilst the rest of the county always uses were.
- Use of a "z" sound for an "s" as in "bus" pronounced "buzz" for example in Darwen or even as far south as Oldham and Wigan.
- Words such as mouth, down, about, etc usually have an /ɛu/ sound: they are pronounced as meawth, deawn, abeawt.
- The word "self" is reduced to "sen" or "sel", depending on the part of Lancashire.
- Make and take normally become mek and tek. In older dialect, parts of north and east Lancashire used mak and tak.
- A marker of a traditional Lancashire accent is the frequent replacement of /a/ with /o/. For example, land became lond and man became mon. This is now considered to be old-fashioned.
Several dialect words are also used. Traditional Lancashire dialect often related to the traditional industries of the area, and these words became redundant when those industries disappeared. There are still words that relate to everyday life that are in common use however. See the list of Yorkshireisms, which are similar, for examples. Words that are popularly associated with Lancashire include "gradely" for excellent and "harping" for talking in a mindless manner. The word "lunch", now in worldwide usage, actually originates from Lancashire. The term "moggy" a popular colloquial term for a cat in many parts of the country, means a mouse or insect in many parts of Lancashire, notably in the regions surrounding Wigan and Ormskirk. If older dialect speaking residents of these areas are asked what a 'moggy' is, they will say 'owt smo' an' wick ', i.e. anything small and alive. In the same districts, cheese is often referred to as 'moggy meyght' i.e. 'moggy meat', or in other words, food for mice. Many etymological authorities believe that cats were originally referred to as 'moggy catchers' and the term was abbreviated over time. The word 'maiden' for 'clothes horse', is now used even by people who consider themselves too proper for dialect.
[edit] Poetry
Several poems exist in the dialect, and the Lancashire Dialect Society prints such poems regularly. One example of very old-fashioned dialect is the poem Jone o Grinfilt, which was written during the Napoleonic Wars. Another is "The Oldham Weaver", which is dated at around 1815:
- Oi'm a poor cotton-weyver, as mony a one knoowas*,
- Oi've nout for t'year, an' oi've word eawt my clooas,
- Yo'ad hardly gi' tuppence for aw as oi've on,
- My clogs are both brosten, an stuckings oi've none,
- Yu'd think it wur hard,
- To be browt into th' warld,
- To be clemmed, an' do th' best as yo' con.
(taken from Kirkpatrick Sale, "Rebels Against the Future", p.45)
- The word knoowas may have just been used to force a rhyme with clooas. The Oldham area has traditionally pronounced the words knows as knaws.
Samuel Laycock (1826–1893) was a dialect poet who recorded in verse the vernacular of the Lancashire cotton workers.
[edit] Survey of English Dialect sites
The Survey of English Dialects took recordings from fourteen sites in Lancashire:
- Bickerstaffe, west Lancashire
- Cartmel, modern south Cumbria,
- Coniston, modern south Cumbria
- Dolphinholme, near Lancaster
- Eccleston. There are two villages in south Lancashire named "Eccleston", which are very close to each other. The one in the survey was slightly further north and closer to Chorley.
- Fleetwood
- Halewood, near Liverpool. Would usually be classified as Scouse rather than Lancastrian.
- Harwood, near Bolton
- Marshside, north of Liverpool
- Pilling, Fylde coast
- Read, near Burnley
- Ribchester, between Blackburn and Preston
- Thistleton, on The Fylde near Blackpool
- Yealand, near Chorley
[edit] References
- "Lancashire English", Fred Holcroft
- "Talking for Britain", Simon Elmes
- Survey of English Dialects. Recording online at http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects
