English Accents and Dialects Trudgill

22 Pages·2012·18.65 MB·English

ENGLISH
ACCENTS

& DIALECTS
Related titles :
World Englishes, Second Edition
Gunnel Melchers & Philip Shaw
978 1 444 13537 4
International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English,
Fifth Edition
Peter Trudgill & Jean Hannah
978 0 340 97161 1
ENGLISH
Fifth edition
ACCENTS

& DIALECTS
Arthur Hughes
Peter Trudgill
Dominic Watt
First published in Great Britain 1979
Second edition published in Great Britain 1987
Third edition published in Great Britain 1996
Fourth edition published in 2005 by Hodder Arnold
This edition published in 2012 by Hodder Education
Published 2013 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2012 Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
The advice and information in this book are believed to be true and
accurate at the date of going to press, but neither the authors nor the publisher
can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978 1 444 121 38 4 (pbk)
Typeset by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent
Contents
Preface ................................................................................................................................................ vii
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... ix
Wordlist .............................................................................................................................................. xi
List of online recordings ............................................................................................................ xii
IPA chart ............................................................................................................................................ xiii
1 Variation in English ......................................................................................................... 1
2 Dialect Variation ............................................................................................................... 19
3 Received Pronunciation ............................................................................................... 37
4 Regional Accent Variation .......................................................................................... 59
5 British Isles Accents and Dialects .......................................................................... 73
5.1 London (‘Cockney’) ............................................................................................ 75
5.2 London West Indian ........................................................................................... 80
5.3 Norwich ...................................................................................................................... 83
5.4 Bristol ............................................................................................................................ 86
5.5 Southampton .......................................................................................................... 89
5.6 South Wales (Pontypridd) .............................................................................. 94
5.7 West Midlands ........................................................................................................ 97
5.8 Leicester ...................................................................................................................... 101
5.9 Bradford ...................................................................................................................... 104
5.10 Hull ................................................................................................................................. 107
5.11 Liverpool ..................................................................................................................... 112
5.12 Manchester ............................................................................................................... 116
5.13 Middlesbrough ...................................................................................................... 119
5.14 Carlisle ......................................................................................................................... 123
5.15 Edinburgh .................................................................................................................. 127
5.16 Aberdeen ................................................................................................................... 131
5.17 Belfast ........................................................................................................................... 136
5.18 Dublin .......................................................................................................................... 141
5.19 Galway ......................................................................................................................... 144
5.20 Devon ........................................................................................................................... 147
5.21 Lancashire .................................................................................................................. 149
5.22 Northumberland .................................................................................................. 153
5.23 Lowland Scots ........................................................................................................ 158
5.24 Shetland Islands .................................................................................................... 162
Contents
Suggestions for using the book ............................................................................................ 169
Further reading .............................................................................................................................. 183
References ......................................................................................................................................... 187
Index .................................................................................................................................................... 197
vi
Preface
It is now over thirty years since the first edition of this book was published.
In its original, much slimmer form, it covered just 11 accents and dialects
of British Isles English. This set has more than doubled in size through
the four subsequent editions, with the present edition now describing the
characteristics of almost 30 varieties. This expansion of coverage, along with
an overall increase in the level of descriptive detail, is a reflection of the huge
surge in interest in documenting the diverse phonetic properties of English in
the UK and Ireland. Prodigious quantities of dialectological and sociolinguistic
research have been carried out in the decades between 1979 and the present
day, in many cases using a combination of sophisticated auditory, acoustic,
and statistical analysis techniques. Alongside these, large-scale dialect surveys,
such as the BBC Voices project, have made a wealth of digital recordings of
interviews and other forms of speech available to listen to by downloading
sound files from the internet. Our observations about the varieties described
in the book are therefore underpinned more strongly than ever before by a
substantial and growing body of systematically collected information about
the ways in which British and Irish English vary geographically and socially
at the levels of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.
Though a volume like  English Accents and Dialects  does not, and
cannot, aim to describe more than a subset of the major urban and
traditional rural varieties spoken in these islands, the fifth edition
addresses some of the more significant omissions from previous editions
(Manchester, Southampton, Hull, Middlesbrough). The entry on London
West Indian English gives a flavour of the differences between traditional
working-class London speech and the ‘multicultural’ London English that
has emerged in the metropolis since the 1980s, while the entries on central
Lancashire and the Shetland Islands add to the set illustrating some of the
pronunciation features that persist in areas further removed – in the case of
the Shetlands by hundreds of miles – from large and linguistically influential
centres of population.
The addition of these extra varieties, in combination with the fact that the
accompanying sound recordings are now available for download from
(cid:88)(cid:88)(cid:88)(cid:15)(cid:83)(cid:80)(cid:86)(cid:85)(cid:77)(cid:70)(cid:69)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:15)(cid:68)(cid:80)(cid:78)(cid:16)(cid:68)(cid:88)(cid:16)(cid:73)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:73)(cid:70)(cid:84)(cid:16), should significantly enhance the book’s
usefulness to members of the target readership. These range from school and
university students of English language and linguistics to forensic speech
analysts, via speech and language therapists, actors, teachers of English, and
general readers with an interest in how English varies. In our experience, it
is in fact extremely difficult to find anyone who is not interested in accent
and dialect differences. Asking ‘how do people speak round here?’ or ‘which
accents of English do you particularly like?’ is a reliable way of kick-starting
Preface
conversation in practically any company, and it often provokes people into
unselfconsciously sharing passionately held opinions about what is good or
bad, beautiful or ugly, or valid or invalid, in the spoken language they hear
around them. For some, interest in the topic may be spurred on by a belief
that the standard of spoken English in Britain and Ireland is declining, or that
urban dialects are ‘degenerate’ forms of the language which are undeserving
of academic attention or respect, or that the restoration of elocution lessons
in British schools is needed urgently. Conversely, many people will echo our
own view that dialect diversity in all its forms is something to be embraced
and celebrated, and that we are lucky to live at a time in which the study
of accents and dialects as an end in itself is seen as a worthwhile activity,
irrespective of the many ways in which the knowledge it generates can be
applied to ‘real-world’ problems. We hope that the fifth edition of this book
will prove both useful and interesting to those involved in these endeavours.

Arthur Hughes
Peter Trudgill
Dominic Watt
York, 2012
viii
Acknowledgements
Previous editions
A very large number of people have helped us with this book, and we can
acknowledge only some of them here. Over the years we have profited
enormously from discussions on varieties of English with Gerry Knowles
and John Wells, and we are also very grateful to Peter Bedells, Viv Edwards,
Sandra Foldvik, Erik Fudge, Vicky Hughes, Sandy Hutcheson, Elspeth Jones,
Robin McClelland, Suzanne McClelland, James Milroy, Lesley Milroy, K.M.
Petyt, and David Sutcliffe, who have provided us with information on specific
points (sometimes without realizing it) and have corrected some of our worst
misapprehensions. We would also like to thank all those people, many of whom
went to a very great deal of trouble on our behalf, and some of whom prefer
to remain anonymous, who helped us with the tape recordings. We would
particularly like to acknowledge the assistance in this respect of Margaret
Ainsbury, Tony Beard, Gillian Brown, Ray Brown, Brendan Cassidy, Edwin
Cannon, Joy Cannon, Chris Connor, Roseanne Cook, Karen Currie, Fergus
Daly, Sally Davies, Michael Deans, Geoffrey Dearson, Angela Edmondson,
Bronwen Evans, Kirsty Evans, Fidelma Farley, Anne Fenwick, Stanley Fletcher,
Milton Greenwood, Isabel Holmes, David Holmes, Kathy Holmes, Carl James,
Daisy James, Toni Johnson, Wilf Jones, Paul Kerswill, Gillian Lane-Plescia,
Chris Lawrence, Carmen Llamas, Catherine Lovell, Gillian Lovell, Caroline
Macafee, Bridie McBride, Helen Mattacott, Jackie Mountford, Grahame
Newell, Mary O’Malley-Madec, Kristyan Spelman Miller, Shane Murphy, Julie
Robertson, Pam Thomson, Enid Warnes, the late George Watson, Victoria
Watt, Gwyn Williams and, especially, Euan Reid. We are very grateful indeed
to R.W.P. Brasington, Jack Chambers, Paul Fletcher, Michael Garman, Hanne
Svane Nielsen, and F.R. Palmer, who read earlier versions of the book and
made many valuable suggestions for improvement. For the fourth edition,
special thanks are also due to Craig Lee for his assistance in the preparation
of the maps and other illustrations, and to staff at Hodder Arnold (Deborah
Clegg, Susan Dunsmore, Eva Martinez and Lucy Schiavone) for their support
and guidance.
Fifth edition
The preparation of this new edition was greatly assisted by Nathan Atkinson,
Shaun Austin, Will Barras, Jaine Beswick, Viv Church, Liz Cook, Mercedes
Durham, Damien Hall, Sandra Jansen, Kerry Karam, Paul Kerswill, Bianca
Knights, Carmen Llamas, Vanessa Mar-Molinero, Caroline McPherson,
Lavinia Porter, Jim Scobbie, Mark Swan, Danielle Turton, Kevin Watson,
Sarah White and Lucy Winder.