The Way We Speak

[AnnB]

I expect a lot of you have already found this site, but for those who haven't (especially those from outside the U.K.) the British Library have collected together snippets of converstion illustrating the various accents found all over the British Isles. You'll find it at http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/

The rest of the site is pretty good too

Best wishes
Ann

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

Thanks for the link Ann ..... I just clicked on Holmbridge, Yorkshire and I had a bit of difficulty understanding what he said! I was born in Wakefield and so was my childhood friend. However, she married and went to live in Barnsley, I married and went to live at t'other (the other) side of the Pennines. I didn't meet her for ten years and when I finally did ...... we fell about laughing, because I kept saying 'pardon'! She'd taken on the 'really broad Yorksher accent' of the Barnsleyites!
I also spoke to Linda Canada on the phone a few months back. She is a Yorksher Lass who was born ten miles away from Wakefield, but emigrated to Canada when she was 21. She had difficulty understanding me with our first conversation ...... I told her that she had a Yorksher accent, with a Canadian twang!

[Linda]

I told her that she had a Yorksher accent, with a Canadian twang

I had to laugh about that because Canadians think I'm Scottish!

You know what they say...you live with 'em 'til you get like 'em...(hubby is Scottish )

Linda

[AnnB]

I think it is very sad how so many of the regional accents are disappearing, especially noticable, I think, in the West Country.

I always find it amazing how some people can move to a new area and take on that accent like a 'native' I used to know a girl who was born and bred in the East End, and had a fair Cockney accent. Her family moved to Scotland when she was about 14 and the next time I spoke to her I could hardly understand a word she said - and it was only about 2 years later

Best wishes
Ann

[mary elms]

Her family moved to Scotland when she was about 14 and the next time I spoke to her I could hardly understand a word she said - and it was only about 2 years later

I moved to Leeds at 14 - don't think I ever quite managed to acquire the accent but at that age it's conform or die!

I learnt English in the Scottish borders, honed it in East Anglia and added the finishing touches in Leeds - on top of which I picked up some of my father's London accent!

Now southerners think I'm from the north - never quite sure where - and northerners think I'm a posh southerner. And every now and then someone gets REALLY confused because they spot my lowland k - especially when combined with an r as in dark.

It's quite fun watching new aquaintances struggle - especially when they're proud of their ability to place you.

Mary.

[Terry]

Unfortunately the west country accents are getting diluted- its the result of so many people moving in to the area over a large number of years, and, also TV. At one time if you went seven miles up the road to Newton Abbot, especially on market day you would hear real west country accents and they varied depending on which town the speakers came from
I know my accent has been diluted, but its still there sometimes especially when I'm tired or excited.
We had Bristol football fans here the other day- now to me that is still a very recognisable accent, a little like my great gran from Gloucestershire, now there was an accent all the S sounds were Z you caught a Buz not a bus and a wasp was a wazp, and this wasn't a million miles from where Archive CD Books are based.

[Ladkyis]

Then you comes round the corner an' into sowff wales like, and you years what we talks like like round yer.

(a year is a length of time equal to 12 months, it is also one of the things attached to the side of your head with which you listen to other people's accents. the third meaning - in this area - is the place where you are now. "I'm by yer! carn you see me?)

Ann
who loves the idiosyncracies of the english/welsh/wenglish languages

[Sue Mackay]

Then you comes round the corner an' into sowff wales like, and you years what we talks like like round yer.

My son was born in Gwent and all the clinic nurses came from the Gwent valleys. I always remember them telling me he needed a 'hearing test' and I thought they said 'urine test'. I was just cursing that I hadn't brought a spare nappy when the nurse started waving a rattle behind him. I thought she was trying to produce quite another reaction!!

Somewhere we've got a long poem written down which Ann probably knows. I can only remember the beginning and the end:

I'm a citizen of Mummershire
I'm as English as the Queen
And I 'ate those rotten Welshies
Wot paints the signposts green.
I've always lived in Mummershire,
Now they wunts to call it Gwent
But I caan't pronounce that 'ard foreign word,
It makes my teeth all bent.

....

Just 'aark at 'em jabberin'
Like monkeys in a zoo!
Talk English tidy we goroo in'it?
Like wot you and me do do!

[Ladkyis]

That's a new one on me Sue, I have never heard it before - prapps it wuz wrote by somone frum Caardiff makin a mockery like

Ann

[GeoffD]

There's the apocryphal story from the trenches in WW1.

War Weary Officer to Fresh Reinforcement from Queensland: My good man, did you come here to die?

Fresh Reinforcement from Queensland: Nah mate! Got in yesterday!