Overview on dialect

Overview on dialect

Hackney London accent notes

“The pronunciation of <th> as a <f> sound in words like thing or as a <v> sound in words like brother is a characteristic feature of London speech spreading across much of South East England and beyond. Notice, however, that Freddie occasionally produces a more ‘standard’ pronunciation of <th> and that, like other speakers prone to TH-fronting, he uses a <d> sound here for ‘grammatical’ words, such as the, this, that, they, them, those and there. In the second set, Freddie substitutes a sound that is more like a vowel or a <w> sound for a syllable final <l>. This process — known as L-vocalisation — is a long-established feature of speech across much of the southern half of England and, to a lesser extent, occurs in the speech of East Anglia and parts of the East Midlands”*

The Geordie dialect

“The dialect of the City of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the surrounding area is arguably the most distinctive of all British English dialects. It still has a rich vocabulary that includes words here such as our lass, gan, bairn, wrang, naebody, dae and clarts, meaning respectively, ‘my wife’, ‘go’, ‘child’, ‘wrong’, ‘nobody’, ‘do’ and ‘sticky or claggy mud’.”

“Geordies also share a number of instantly recognisable accent features. Perhaps the most distinctive pronunciation feature is the tendency for speakers across the whole of North East England to use glottalised consonants for the sounds <p, t, k>. This is an extremely subtle phonetic process, and most noticeable when the consonant appears between vowels in the middle of a word or at a word boundary between two vowels. We can hear this feature frequently in Mark’s speech here, but it is perhaps best illustrated by the way he pronounces these consonants in the following words: lucky, happy, attitudes, better, automatic and sometimes.”*

The Belfast accent

“Paul speaks with an instantly recognisable Belfast accent. First of all, he is a rhotic speaker — that is he pronounces the <r> sound after a vowel. Listen to the way he pronounces the words whatever, sort of, personal, later, three percent blue card holders, lecturers, Bangor Tech., computer studies, computer operator, eleven years, working, government, Board Room, upstairs, worked, ever, covert, as regards, by and large, personally, first, sorted out, information, signers, simplified version, learning disability, visual impairments, wheelchair users and broader picture.”*

An accent can determine the origin of the speaker, a locational marker. It is a way that a language is pronounced as the examples above show, the language is English in each example but as the evolution of language has developed, so has the accent. Accent is the culmination of many factors, as Britain was ruled by kings and queens from numerous different countries, the dialect in the regions of the UK are different. For example, The north has similarities to Scandinavian dialect whereas in central London, the dialect has adapted from miners and factory workers of Britain.

Some traits that come with accent are pronunciation features. In the Geordie accent the letter ‘T’in words will commonly be replaced with the letter ‘r’ for example. Getting here =Gerring ‘ere. Another trait that comes with accents is the speed at which someone speaks, typically the speaking the faster the person speaks the more north westerly you head. One of my examples is from Belfast northern Ireland, their accent is quickly paced and is very easily misunderstood by those more southern. In the south west E.G somerset, the accent tends to be slower. A final trait of an accent is the vocabulary used. Majority of accents contain words that have been created and used in everyday speech.For example, the term "innit" is a fromof elision as it has made two words "isnt" and "it" and formed them into one.