Keeping local dialects alive.

[BoldonLad]

A mate of mine is from County Durham.

I can recognise a couple of Durham accents - those from the coast speak very differently to those further inland.

But my mate can pick five or six Durham accents, and on a couple of occasions has correctly identified which former pit village a person is from.

I can well believe it. As I said above, I was born in South Shields. When I started work (at 16), my first job was in Sunderland (only about 8 miles away), everyone referred to "trousers" as "strides", which I had never heard before.

 

[Gixxerman]

I wonder if it is just a UK thing or does it happen in other countries? (it would seem so if Inglorious Basterds is anything but pure fiction)
If so, to the same degree with accents changing over such short distances?

 

[Ridgeway]

Re dialects we are probably the only country i know to have defined a dialect as a full language (very arguable if you ask any honest German person). It always makes me laugh when boarding a train in Zurich and hearing city bankers talking with what can only be described as a country bumpkin accent and using 50% of the words that are dialect derivations, some funky words in Swiss German, kitchen cupboard (Chuchichäschtli) is a well known tongue twister that will out any German pretending to be Swiss

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxGbZkQ2u0k


Dialects are quite alive and active here, you just need borders to create them

 

[Ridgeway]

I wonder if it is just a UK thing or does it happen in other countries? (it would seem so if Inglorious Basterds is anything but pure fiction)
If so, to the same degree with accents changing over such short distances?

Yes we have 4 within 50km here,

Vaudoise (French but we sound like farmers)
Genevois (French)
Bernois (Swiss German)
Valaisan (no idea what they are saying when ever i go there)

 

[Pale Rider]

I wonder if it is just a UK thing or does it happen in other countries? (it would seem so if Inglorious Basterds is anything but pure fiction)
If so, to the same degree with accents changing over such short distances?

To give just two examples, I think Australia is deemed to have two or maybe three accents, and I suspect most of us can differentiate between a southern USA drawl and someone from New York.

There may be lots of others, but one area in which the UK is reckoned to be all but unique is having accents ascribed to different classes and levels of education.

In other words, Bill Clinton's dustman in Little Rock, Arkansas, speaks with the same accent as he does.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Austria seems to have distinctions between local accents within a region. On holiday in the Tirol local people have said a couple of times that the accent varies slightly between different villages. I guess this is because many of the villages are high in the mountains and would be quite isolated for much of the winter.

It's often quoted that they didn't use Schwarzenegger for the German language dub of Terminator because he sounds like an Austrian farmer.

 

[MontyVeda]

I wonder if it is just a UK thing or does it happen in other countries? (it would seem so if Inglorious Basterds is anything but pure fiction)
If so, to the same degree with accents changing over such short distances?

I expect so.

I recall a friend years ago who was doing a French degree which meant spending a year in France. She ended up in Toulouse, where she said they spoke French like she'd never heard before, and it was like starting from scratch.

 

[Ian H]

A friend who lived most of his adult life in SE Wales never developed a Welsh accent, but you could hear the local cadence or lilt in his speech, particularly on the phone.

 

[PK99]

(Fulwood btw, @PK99 ).

Within sight of the Hallowed Turf?

 

[matiz]

I moved down south from the black country 17yrs ago, during the holiday season we can still tell if they come from Wolves, Dudley or Tipton ,and occasionally have to act as interpreters in the local shops.

 

[Dirk]

I moved down south from the black country 17yrs ago, during the holiday season we can still tell if they come from Wolves, Dudley or Tipton ,and occasionally have to act as interpreters in the local shops.

Same here. Moved to Devon from the Midlands 16 years ago.
We enjoy playing 'Spot the Brummie' during the holiday seasons.

 

[bitsandbobs]

I wonder if it is just a UK thing or does it happen in other countries? (it would seem so if Inglorious Basterds is anything but pure fiction)
If so, to the same degree with accents changing over such short distances?

I don't think it's a UK thing. I live between the Netherlands and Belgium and they seem to have a huge amount of variation in the way they speak Dutch for what are both small countries. I've worked with colleagues from the south of NL who are Limburgs speakers (a different language to Dutch) and they say they can tell which village people originate from based on the way they speak. I now work with colleagues who speak west flemish and that's not at all trivial for "standard dutch" speakers to follow.

Link to rude west flemish t-shirt...

https://westflemishforbehinners.be/collections/t-shirts/products/unisex-t-shirt-daffodil-means-i-can

 

[Dave 123]

I come from the Wirral - not a psh part of it - but kinda middle class

my wife's family are from a council estate north of Liverpool - proper Wooly back but only just

Her sister's daughter is quite broad accent wise and hangs around with people who swear all the time
if I swear when she is in the room she either screams or runs out with her hand over her ears - she cannot cope with her 'posh Uncle Mike' swearing - it is just far too weird for her!!!!


anyway - brief translation for any visitors

'our $name' - person called $name who is closely related - like 'our sarah'
The ASDA - ASDA - sometimes also The Tesco - Tesco
Home and Bargain - Home Bargains - it hasn;t been called that for about a million years but memory persists round here
Evertonion - minority group claiming to support a team that may or may not play football - currently being assessed as a mental condition
Soft Lad - person who can be a bit daft or silly - see Evertonian
Lolly Ice - correct name for an frozen sugary thing often bought from an icey
Icey - van that goes round selling Ice Cream - mostly - they also sell Lolly Ices and sometime "other things"
Ta'ra - good bye
Come 'ed - come on - if said aggressively from man to man be careful or leg it
Standing around like one of Lewis's - doing nothing


A full list can be found in the Liverpool Echo whenever the Manc based people they hire instead of journalists can't think of anything else to write - and they can find a Scouser to write it for them

Oh - and Manc - person from the Far East - or at least too far up the East Lancs



Other opinions are available

standing around like one of Lewis’s is a phrase my dad used to use.

crackin’ the flags= my word, it’s rather hot.
Offy= off licence
Ozzy= hospital

one that makes me laugh, ‘its rather nice’ can be translated into “my deceased employer” which less cryptically is ‘dead boss!’

 

[Dave 123]

Though Neston sits on the peninsula known as The Wirral Peninsula, it is not in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. So geographically it's on Wirral, but not in the political boundary sense 🤷‍♂️
The border of MB of Wirral is just south of Heswall on the A540, Neston is in Cheshire.

Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough council .
I grew up in Ellesmere Port, definitely a Liverpool overspill town. Neston was a bit more bumpkin like, with maybe a touch of 17th century.

 

[Dave 123]

Being a Deben boy I always like to watch these clips - a weather presenter who occasionally does a forecast in the local dialect!


View: https://www.facebook.com/bbcspotlight/videos/best-weather-forecast-by-a-country-mile-/1904374266294729/

View: https://youtu.be/uvZ43B73hm8


April and June. Loads more on YouTube.