Local Dialect

[Tsuyoiko]

Do you speak proper English like the Queen, or do you have a local dialect? My dialect is called 'Potteries', from Stoke-on-Trent in the NW Midlands of England. Here are some of its peculiarities:

• We call people 'duck' instead of 'love' or 'dear' or 'mate'.
  
  
• We miss out words - like we say "I'm going Hanley" instead of "to Hanley"
  
  
• We have words I haven't heard anywhere else:
  
  myther = be anxious
  
  sneeped = upset
  
  werrit = worry
  
  sen = self
  
  dunner = don't
  
  conner = can't
  
  blart = cry
  
  
• We have odd pronunciation - 'it' sounds like 'eet' and 'look' rhymes with 'luke' not with 'luck', for example. We always drop 'h's.

I don't speak in local dialect in formal situations, but with family and close friends I use all the strange words above - I might say something like "E sneeped me. Eets mythering me death duck, I conner stop werriting mesen about eet. I think I'm going blart" (translation, "He upset me. It's making me so anxious I might die dear. I can't stop myself worrying about it. I think I'm going to cry"). My grandad could only speak in dialect, and anyone from outside the area found it very difficult to understand him. It's difficult for 'outsiders' to work out where the accent comes from, but a Stokie can recognise the accent a mile off - the 'eet' for 'it' is a dead giveaway.

[Kinsao]

I'm a bit of a weird mixture. It really depends on the situation I'm in and who I'm talking to.

On my mother's side of the family, well, her parents both had really strong North Derbyshire accents. She also had such a strong accent as a child, but when she was 11 years old and attended at a posh Midlands grammer school, she was forced to lose the accent (other people could literally not understand her because the accent was so heavy), and ended up with something that isn't "standard English" (still uses the flat rather than the long vowel in words like "bath", "grass" etc.) but which isn't "proper Northern" either.

However, I was interested to notice that after the death of my father, who had a more "standard" accent (although still without the long vowels - I guess you'd call his accent "East Midlands", lol), her accent reverted noticeably more to a northern pronunciation. This is even more strong when she is with a friend who also has a northern accent (one of her best friends is from Yorkshire). I don't think she notices this, as to consciously change her accent would be totally out of her character, and it is only very subtle.

My father, on the other hand, had a mother with a foreign accent, and a father who was from London. The four kids, including my Dad, grew up with a fairly "standard" accent, biased slightly more to the south (i.e. using the long vowels), but with an unplaceable foreign intonation - a kind of "drawl", if you like, or softness that isn't usually found in the more southern English accents. Within my memory, my Dad used the short vowels, probably due to growing up and going to school in the East Midlands, where you get teased if you say "larst" or "grarse", lol. (He was the only one of the kids to be born in England.) However, he could do a great Cockney accent when called upon! XD.

Me, I've had all these different influences on my speech, which has turned out a bit variable (for want of a better word). It really does tend to depend on my mood and who I'm talking to. On stage, my "best" accents are Cockney or a sort of "generic northern", lol. I'm also fine with Scottish (actually my great-grandmother was Scottish although I have no idea if that has a bearing on anything!). I can't, however, do Irish or Welsh accents to save my life. >< Nor am I particularly West Country!

The East Midlands is a rather strange place to be brought up, accent-wise - we're caught between two fires. We tend to have the slightly harsher southern twang but without the long vowels. Leicester, where I live, has some of its own dialect words, and I've also picked up quite a lot of north Derbyshire local expressions that my Mum and maternal grandparents used. ("I've got more jewellery than soft Mick!" "It's black over Bill's mother's", etc. etc.) When I'm either really relaxed or really stressed I tend to veer more towards one accent or other - northern or southern. I also sound foreign when under stress and have been mistaken for French before. This is more noticeable if I've been speaking or reading/writing in French, or, strangely enough, after Japanese class - must be getting into a "non-English" mindset making my father's side of the family spring to the fore in my voice!

[Tsuyoiko]

There is some similarity between the Staffordshire and Derbyshire accents, unsurprisingly since the counties share a border. We have those sayings of your mum's too!

[Mars Man]

Tsuyoiko chan...I'm sorry, I just can't understand you ......hee, hee...

Now, I was doing music with this girl from Liverpool, and she threw me off a few times too. (Of course I know nothing of dialects in the UK other than what you two sweet women have just taught me.) Once, she said that on the playback tape her voice sounded as though she had her head in a 'booket'. A 'booket'? "What in the world is a 'booket'?" I responded. And she said, "oh you know, one of those plastic things that you carry water in." as she was give some gestures. OH...a bucket !! I see....

When I went back to Alabama, where I had grown up, one person asked me if I were from France...? I don't what kind of accent I have.

Good information and read on those above two posts !!

[Tsuyoiko]

Now, I was doing music with this girl from Liverpool, and she threw me off a few times too. (Of course I know nothing of dialects in the UK other than what you two sweet women have just taught me.)

Imagine that Liverpool accent, but not so high-pitched, and you pretty much have the Stoke accent.

[misa.j]

"E sneeped me. Eets mythering me death duck, I conner stop werriting mesen about eet. I think I'm going blart" (translation, "He upset me. It's making me so anxious I might die dear. I can't stop myself worrying about it. I think I'm going to cry").

That's great! My husband and I just tried to say the sentence with an accent we've heard on British TV show.
It works great if you tried to speak like Lester from "Red Dwarf".

I love the British accent!

[Mycernius]

Doesn't Robbie Williams have a Stoke accent?
My local accent is quite odd in some ways. In Hinckley, about 5 miles away, they speak differently to Nuneaton. They have a tendency to turn the Y at the end of words to an 'eh' sound. So Hinckley is 'Hinckleh', Totty 'Totteh'.
In my town a bus is a 'Buzz' and awkward comes out as 'Ockard' and an Off license (Liquor store to you colonial types) as an 'outdoor'.
Over a wider area ie: Coventry and Birmingham, a roll or bap is called a batch, as in a Bacon and egg batch. There are two local towns which are Tamworth and Bedworth, known locally as Tamuth and Beduff.
I don't really have a local accent myself, as my father used to correct my bad English when I was growing up. I use the long a in words such as Bath and Castle and have been mistaken for a southerner. 'Shandy drinking southern poofters' as I have heard then refered to (more a northern saying)
I can easily slip into a brummie accent if I need to and find a scottish one easy to do as well.
When it comes to north american accents I will notice a difference between a Canadian and American one when two are together. This might be because I have Canadian relatives.

[nice gaijin]

I'm from California, so I fear I speak more like the media-english that you'd hear on television than anything else. We do have our dialect words I suppose, but it's mostly just west-coast slang that's probably recognized but not in popular use elsewhere. For the life of me I can't think of any examples right now. I do have an ability to mimic other accents, but it's difficult for me to keep up for long.

Quite boring, it is; but I suppose the grass is always greener on the other hill.

[Mars Man]

Imagine that Liverpool accent, but not so high-pitched, and you pretty much have the Stoke accent.

Thanks !! I got it !! (at least as far as my memory goes, that was 7 years ago.)

[Tsuyoiko]

It works great if you tried to speak like Lester from "Red Dwarf".

He's not a bad choice, since his accent isn't a million miles away from mine.

Doesn't Robbie Williams have a Stoke accent?

He does indeed, but I think he's starting to lose it since it's a while since he lived in Stoke. His accent is pretty close to mine, as we both come from the north of the city.

In my town a bus is a 'Buzz' and awkward comes out as 'Ockard'

Really? Here too! I though 'ockard' was just another Potteries dialect word!.

I use the long a in words such as Bath and Castle and have been mistaken for a southerner. 'Shandy drinking southern poofters' as I have heard then refered to

You shandy-swilling southern poofter! (yes, we say that here too!) I'm very proud of my short 'a's. The older generation around here even say 'father' with a short 'a'.