Accents and dialects

[Dex Sawash]

Can anyone sign?

🖕

[touchingcloth]

We used to "know" how to say "why don't you fuck off?" in "sign language", but then we also used to "know" that Kel had died in a car crash.

[Herbert Ashe]

For instance Seaford is supposedly traditionally pronounced with the stress on both syllables, with the second syllable pronounced /fɔːrd/ like 'ford' as a standalone word. But I don't think I've ever heard that pronunciation in the wild, it's more common now for the 'ford' to be an unstressed /fəd/ like in Oxford.

I've met the odd advocate for the trad pronounciation (invariably in Lewes), I wonder if it was very local though as I inherited the common pronounciation from my dad (b.1940s) and he'd taken it from my grandad (tenant farming family, b.1890s, East Dean, so close enough to Seaford that I'd assume he'd pick it up).

[Ferris]

we also used to "know" that Kel had died in a car crash.

Did you hear about marilyn mansons ribs? mad stuff!

[FredNurke]

My dad is a grammar pedant and while I have learnt not to care when other people make mistakes the exception is when he says "He was sat" which has definitely become standard use rather than considered an error of grammar.

Colloquial but not formal, I would say, and likewise with 'stood' instead of 'standing'. I don't think either is used that much, if at all, outside the UK and (I assume) Ireland; maybe in Australia and New Zealand but I'd have to check. I don't think I've ever encountered them in US English.

[jamiefairlie]

I always assumed that 'messages' referred to the paper shopping list, that may have been written by someone else (yir maw, for instance) and is therefore a kind of message.

[touchingcloth]

Did you hear about marilyn mansons ribs? mad stuff!

Yeah, Richard Gere used it to beat Kel to death and then got arrested by Marc Almond.

[Mrgeebus]

The Glaswegian "how" for "why" is actually short for "how come" which was more common to hear when I was younger.

Something I used to hear all the time was "com'n wull" as in "com'n wull head up the toon"

Presumably either "come and we'll" or "come on, we'll" as either would make sense in those sentences

[Jockice]

Yeah, Richard Gere used it to beat Kel to death and then got arrested by Marc Almond.

Your blocked!

[touchingcloth]

Your blocked!

Like Richard Gere's ass!

[jamiefairlie]

Like Richard Gere's ass!

Yeah, by Marc Almond's stomach pump or something!

[touchingcloth]

"My dog's got no nose."

"How does he smell?"

"I'll let you know when he gets back, he's being looked after by Almond."

[Sebastian Cobb]

'How?' Instead of 'why?' is another

Think that's pretty common in Scotland anyway. Was common in Aberdeen too.

Had a pal who inverted the use of 'borrow' as in 'can you borrow me a fiver for a pint?'.

[canadagoose]

Think that's pretty common in Scotland anyway. Was common in Aberdeen too.

Had a pal who inverted the use of 'borrow' as in 'can you borrow me a fiver for a pint?'.

Yep, I say "how" in that way. Think it's restricted to Scotland and Ulster (the nine-county one). I still feel a pang of guilt when I say it from years of being told off for it, though!

[Kankurette]

In Chester, people say 'lend' for 'borrow', eg 'can I lend your calculator?' My best mate did it and it drove his English teacher nuts.

[Theoretical Dentist]

I don't understand the Hawick issue. The Haw is pronounced like Lord Haw Haw or the Scot's Haugh isn't it? Then the ick bit is straightforward. So there's no 'w' sounding like 'wick', it's haw-ick. Not sure where the confusion would be.

I kind of get where you're coming from but to me (and maybe it's an accent difference) those two sounds produce something that I'd perceive as distinct from how Hawick is pronounced. The /ɔɪ/ part between /h/ and /k/ is, to me, the same as in words like 'coin' and I'd mostly think of it as one vowel sound. Technically it's a diphthong, a combination of two vowel sounds, and as the IPA /ɔɪ/ indicates the two vowels are the ones in 'Haw' and 'ick' (although I think the vowel sound in 'Haw' would be written as /ɔɪ/ because it's longer). But I have to really concentrate on what my mouth is doing, and probably elongate the sound and exagerrate the separation, to tell that's what's happening and it's not just a different vowel sound. And the transition between the two vowels isn't what the letter W usually indicates – it's true that there's no /w/ sound in 'Haw' on its own, but when the letter W appears between two vowel letters as in Hawick, to me it strongly suggests there should be a /w/ sound which isn't in the actual pronunciation. Y would be a better rendering of how it sounds.

Still, looking at the internet, there's less about the pronunciation of Hawick than I'd expect, so maybe it's less remarkable to other people (particularly those with local accents) than it is to me. But there is some stuff out there that indicates the pronunciation is unusual – Hawick is in lists of tricky pronunciations like this, a Hawick website says visitors may have 'wrestled with its pronunciation' without saying how it should be pronounced, and some lottery winners from Hawick felt the need to make a video explaining how to pronounce it (the video doesn't work for me but I assume the pronunciation they use is similar to what I've heard elsewhere).

[Theoretical Dentist]

That's certainly how I would pronounce it, as would my parents. There's another, older pronunciation, more like "HAAeek" but it sounds really old-fashioned to my ears. I've noticed some people from Edinburgh pronouncing it "Haw-yuck", which makes me laugh because it sounds like they're gobbing.

It's a shame those pronunciations are dying out. There are quite a few "funny" pronunciations of places in Edinburgh too, like "RESS-əl-rig" for Restalrig, and text-to-speech always messes it up, so it might die out soon amongst non-natives.

Interesting to hear about other pronunciations, thanks. And it's a good point about text-to-speech – that's probably having quite a lot of influence on how people say place names now, particularly from satnavs. There are also the announcements on buses and trains, which I think are still usually real voice recordings, but don't always use traditional pronunciations and are probably often recorded by people with no local knowledge.

[Theoretical Dentist]

I've met the odd advocate for the trad pronounciation (invariably in Lewes), I wonder if it was very local though as I inherited the common pronounciation from my dad (b.1940s) and he'd taken it from my grandad (tenant farming family, b.1890s, East Dean, so close enough to Seaford that I'd assume he'd pick it up).

That's interesting to hear, since your grandad would have been around early enough to have some exposure to old-fashioned rural Sussex accents, if not to have one himself. Those accents would have been rhotic so saying Seaford in the traditional way would have sounded slightly different from most locals today even if they use the same stress. If the unstressed pronunciation existed at that time it may mean it's always existed in parallel with the traditional way, although dialect levelling would have started before your grandad was born.

I guess it's not surprising to find holdouts in Lewes. They wunt be druv!

[Brian Freeze]

Does how instead of why originate from "how come"?

Great thread, really interesting stuff.

[LurkMcGee]

I do find it funny that my old man born and bred Port Talbot says 'where to are you going?' or asks 'where to?' regularly. The old girl and my sis always find it really annoying because 'that's not the proper way to ask where are you going, mun' (they're born and bred Llanelli, so not far). I've never heard people other than friends in Swansea say it like that.

My friends often pick up on the 'Port 'albot' or the way 'lonely' is now 'loooonely'. I have a friend who 'lost' his accent when he'd go away regular and it did seem to be more of a conscious decision to be understood more. For me I mostly do play up on it when I'm away and talk faster, but that's mainly as I like to wind people up and just say 'fuck aye, butt' way too much.

Also, question for autistic people on here - do any of you pick up accents without realising it? I sound a bit Scouse when I'm in Liverpool and I don't even realise I'm doing it, and apparently it's an autistic thing, though I know non-autistic people do it sometimes as well.

I find myself doing this on nearly every trip away, it just happens within the first few days at that. My friend who's autistic was mimicking my accent when we went away and kept apologizing to me, but I found her take on the accent with the extra vowels and 'wot not quite entertaining.

[buzby]

In Chester, people say 'lend' for 'borrow', eg 'can I lend your calculator?' My best mate did it and it drove his English teacher nuts.

That's also a scouse thing - "Lend us" (or the even more extreme "Lennus") for "May I borrow". Using 'us' to refer to yourself instead of 'I' is another one, which when asking for something becomes "Give us a <x>", or it's ultimate form "Gizza <x>".

Another scouse-ism is referring to somewhere as a definite article - "I'm going to The Asda" or "Pick us up a loaf from The Homie*". I think this is also found elsewhere in the North too (where I imagine it would become 'T'Asda").

* - Home and Bargain, which is what Home Bargains was known as before 1995 when it started expanding outside Merseyside, but is still how it's referred to here.

[Kankurette]

One Scouse thing I've picked up is omitting 'to'. As in 'I'm going the pub' or 'I'm going the match'.

[Dex Sawash]

Least literates round here say "why come"

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Bristol and Bristol-adjacent people say "where to?" also

[FredNurke]

Which of course isn't that far removed from 'wherefore' (where the '-fore' is etymologically 'for').

[Head Gardener]

released in 1971