Keeping local dialects alive.

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MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
Funnily enough strides is a term I’ve heard used round South Leeds for trousers, as well as kegs
When i was a kid in the 70s, 'slacks' was regularly used by older adult males for trousers... seemed to completely disappear by the early/mid 80s though.
Most Scots I have seen portrayed in TV programmes speak in an accent I have never heard anywhere else but on telly and fake accents written down really annoy me. I have been pretty well everywhere in Scotland so know how people really speak.
I think the first Scots accents I came across were in the Broons and Oor Wullie annuals me and my brother got each Xmas.... and The Krankies, of course :rolleyes:
 

sheddy

Legendary Member
Location
Suffolk
This weeks new word: Suffolkation


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZQz0rkNajo


https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/...is-ralph-fiennes-assistant-on-the-dig-7076670

Fiennes really tried to get inside his character and once cycled the 30mile journey Basil Brown would take every weekend to get home from Sutton Hoo dig.
 

Chris S

Legendary Member
Location
Birmingham
The BBC have been broadcasting a standard Southern English accent across the UK for nearly a 100 years. We've still got regional accents though.
 

Fnaar

Smutmaster General
Location
Thumberland
The BBC have been broadcasting a standard Southern English accent across the UK for nearly a 100 years. We've still got regional accents though.
That's not true, really, for many years now regional accents have been more than evident, not only in progs, but in news, weather, breakfast TV, the One show, etc. Art critic the late Brian Sewell used to complain that the BBC would no longer employ him because his accent was too posh.
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
That's not true, really, for many years now regional accents have been more than evident, not only in progs, but in news, weather, breakfast TV, the One show, etc. Art critic the late Brian Sewell used to complain that the BBC would no longer employ him because his accent was too posh.
Quite. And the old BBC English accent was never a standard Southern accent. It was the accent of the nationwide educated elite.

The Buckinghamshire accent is different from the Oxfordshire accent and each is different from Hampshire and Essex and Kent and East London.
 

PaulB

Legendary Member
Location
Colne
I was born and brought up in Toxteth, Liverpool which I'm proud of but my father got a good job at Michelin in Burnley when I was a kid so we had to move there so accents and dialect became a big thing with me. If I spoke my normal accent, no one could understand me so I had to modify it and still do so depending on the company I'm in. One phrase from east Lancashire though that to me defines the speaker as a real thicko is 'anaweragert', or, to break it down, "anne a-(sharp a) wuh ra gert" which means roughly "So I said to him/her" or, 'so my attitude to this situation was". They seem proud of using that phrase and do so throughout their normal conversation.

I am pretty good at understanding any English-speaking dialect except one - Doric. I used to go to Aberdeen quite a lot on business and was once sitting waiting for my appointment and heard two people speaking. I assumed they were conversing in Gaelic because I couldn't understand it but I heard the odd word I did fully understand and came to realise this was the legendary Doric. Even my Scottish colleagues of the time admitted they were lost on that particular accent.
 

graham56

Guru
Some people think the Geordie accent is difficult to understand, goodness knows how they would get on with the Northumbrian accent. Dad spoke this way, rolling his r’s, no not arse, r’s. ^_^
575382
 
Quite. And the old BBC English accent was never a standard Southern accent. It was the accent of the nationwide educated elite.

The Buckinghamshire accent is different from the Oxfordshire accent and each is different from Hampshire and Essex and Kent and East London.
And then there is "RP" - which I think was a sort of invented "standard English" accent which would (hopefully!) be understood by anybody. Hardly any of the upper classes actually speak like that - they have their own accent(s). It might be closer to RP than to Glaswegian, but they are different!
 

Fnaar

Smutmaster General
Location
Thumberland
And then there is "RP" - which I think was a sort of invented "standard English" accent which would (hopefully!) be understood by anybody. Hardly any of the upper classes actually speak like that - they have their own accent(s). It might be closer to RP than to Glaswegian, but they are different!
RP still exists, but in a modern form. I used to lecture on this stuff. I can bore for hours on it :smile:
 
RP still exists, but in a modern form. I used to lecture on this stuff. I can bore for hours on it :smile:
I'm sure you can ...

But seriously, feel free. Who would you say is using RP now - and did who did they pick it up from?

(are you a R4 listener? They recently have a new continuity announcer who speaks the most amazing "propa" English. Just occasionally he really mangles a word*, but generally has amazing diction that I could never match :notworthy:
*IMO, that )
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
RP still exists, but in a modern form. I used to lecture on this stuff. I can bore for hours on it :smile:


You might be interested in Simon Roper's youtube channel on linguistics, particularly old and middle English, and the phonology of the varied accents of English as spoken across the UK.

He is so relaxed in his delivery that I find watching his videos a mixture of education and meditation at the same time. Really interesting stuff!


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lXv3Tt4x20


In this video he examines the swear words fark, daffodil and shoot over the centuries.
(This is an academic analysis of the swear words but he does say them a lot so if you're of a delicate disposition don't watch it.)


View: https://youtu.be/ARgGguQlQ0w
 
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