Keeping local dialects alive.

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gbb

Legendary Member
Location
Peterborough
Being a RAF kid I moved about a bit so got exposed to a lot of accents. While I’m gash at foreign languages I’ve an ear for regional variations.

Both my parents are from Manchester, but Pa B was from the south of the city and Ma B from the north, so their accents are quite different.

I did a chunk of growing up in the London suburbs where I was ‘a bit norvan’. The City kit didn’t help to be sure. When I was 13 we moved to Northumberland, where they regarded anyone from south of Durham as a ‘cockney’, so I was far more conspicuous than any 13 year old boy wants to be at a new school.

A few months on and I could pretty much pass for an Alnwick local if it was going to avoid a kicking. On top of fear, it’s where I really learned to really listen out for accents. The most fascinating aspect of the local accents was that there was a split by profession as much as geography. The old-boy fishermen around Boulmer and Craster had a very different delivery (faster, harder on the ‘r’s) than the local farmers. An outsider would probably be able to follow a farmer’s chat, but the fishermen would need subtitles if you weren’t used to it.

After leaving the RAF Ma and Pa B moved to a village near Lincoln and my mum in particular has picked up a lot of the dialect over the years. I‘ve certainly heard her use a few of the words in @Gixxerman ’s OP.

My daughter is born and bred Winchester and pretty much sounds like an elocution coach.

Amazing, from now almost identical background, I inexplicably found myself very accent aware but perhaps its natural, the nomadic life service families live exposes you to that.
Mum was Boulmer and Alnwich born and bred and her uncle Jonny (Boulmer) , I can hear his voice now, very similar to how you describe, guttural perhaps, loud, fast delivery, formed it seemed to me in the throat whereas I always thought a Notts (where I spent my formative years) the accent is quite nasal.
 
I was in Tesco yesterday and two young men (i.e. early 20s) were shopping
They were at opposite ends of the biscuit aisle and one asked the other is he wanted any Jaffa Cakes

If I hadn;t lived round here for several years , and taught kids from the council estate, I would have just just heard "noise noise noise Jaffa noise"
 

byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
I was born in Middlesbrough* in the very early 1950s. I could tell a Stockton accent from Thornaby or my Middlesbrough one. Total distance from furthest boundaries less than 10 miles. British West Hartlepudlian is different again.

These days accents are less pronounced I find and less specific. However broad Geordie is virtually a foreign language to anyone not from Tyneside. Having worked on Tyneside some 50 years ago I can speak and understand it, also Pitmatic which comes from the former Durham coal field, they are similar.


* I know, but somebody had to be born there and in my defence I left in 1969!
 
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Fnaar

Smutmaster General
Location
Thumberland
@Fnaar

The reason I looked up this thread is that I was having a trawl around the internet but came up with nowt.

I was listening to Radio 5 the other week, they were talking about government cuts, they did vox pops in Warrington.

“I‘M worried about menkal health, I work in menkal health “

Not only did it make me chuckle, it got me thinking about - gardin, peggles, chimbleys etc.

This was fairly common in 70’s/80’s Ellesmere Port. Is this just regional, and does it have an official name other than lazy & uneducated?
Not sure if the 'menkal' thing has a name, but in terms of articulation, it would be described as replacing an alveolar plosive /t/ with a velar plosive /k/. I would think it's regionalised (the area you described, but I've also heard it in London/South East) and also to a large degree a question of personal or familial/friendship group habit. It's almost impossible in the UK to separate accent from the ingrained response we have of making judgements about social class/education, but one of the advantages of phonetic description is that you can describe articulation whilst not putting your foot in it 😁
Your examples also made me think of 'skellington', 'Westminister' and so on. 🙂
 

T4tomo

Guru
I was born in Middlesbrough* in the very early 1950s. I could tell a Stockton accent from Thornaby or my Middlesbrough one. Total distance from furthest boundaries less than 10 miles. British West Hartlepudlian is different again.

These days accents are less pronounced I find and less specific. However broad Geordie is virtually a foreign language to anyone not from Tyneside. Having worked on Tyneside some 50 years ago I can speak and understand it, also Pitmatic which comes from the former Durham coal field, they are similar.


* I know, but somebody had to be born there and in my defence I left in 1969!

Yer jokin' aren't ya?:laugh:

Similarly coming south from there, the accents in the NY moors on the inland side of the A171 where i was born are very different from those on the coast side i.e. staithes Hinderwell (or "Lowsiders" and my dad used to call them). farmers vs fishermen vs heavy industry
 

Dave 123

Legendary Member
Not sure if the 'menkal' thing has a name, but in terms of articulation, it would be described as replacing an alveolar plosive /t/ with a velar plosive /k/. I would think it's regionalised (the area you described, but I've also heard it in London/South East) and also to a large degree a question of personal or familial/friendship group habit. It's almost impossible in the UK to separate accent from the ingrained response we have of making judgements about social class/education, but one of the advantages of phonetic description is that you can describe articulation whilst not putting your foot in it 😁
Your examples also made me think of 'skellington', 'Westminister' and so on. 🙂

I wish you were more pacific.
 
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