Certain areas of the West Midlands are stereotyped as having stronger accents than others,
Dudley in the
Black Country being an example. There are some local phrases in the Black Country that are renowned. People do tend to substitute a reply of "arr" for "yes". Generally, most words are shortened, most commonly being "I haven't" to "I ay" (which can be argued as an even shorter form of "I ain't").[citation needed]
In the south of the West Midlands (southern
Warwickshire and
Worcestershire), the accent is more similar to the general
southern accent.
[in
Herefordshire and
Worcestershire] we have many different ways of speaking the English language, at least I think that's what we are speaking !!!
Go from
Kington in North Herefordshire with the Welsh-border lilt, to
Evesham in the south of Worcestershire where there's a very different sound.
From
Kidderminster and the North Worcestershire area were many, but not all, have a Brummigum twang, and then off down to
Ross where there's a hint of the rounded Gloucestershire tones.
West Midlands accents do not have the
trap–bath split, so cast is pronounced [kast] rather than the [kɑːst] pronunciation of most southern accents. The northern limit of the [ɑː] in many words crosses England from mid-
Shropshire to
The Wash, passing just south of
Birmingham.
There is no
foot–strut split in the West Midlands, except for
Herefordshire, with words containing [ʌ] like strut or but being pronounced with [ʊ], without any distinction between putt and put.
H-dropping is common, in which the [h] sound is usually omitted from most words.[2]
There is no
Ng-coalescence. Cases of the spelling -ing are pronounced as [ɪŋɡ] rather than [ɪŋ]. Wells noted that there were no exceptions to this rule in Stoke-on-Trent, whereas there were for other areas with the [ɪŋɡ] pronunciation, such as Liverpool.[3]
Dialect verbs are used, for example am for are, ay for is not (related to ain't), bay for are not, bin for am or, emphatically, for are. Hence the following joke dialogue about bay windows: "What sort of windas am them?" "They'm bay windas." "Well if they bay windas wot bin them?". There is also humour to be derived from the shop-owner's sign of Mr. "E. A. Wright" (that is, "He ay [isn't] right," a phrase implying someone is saft [soft] in the jed [head]). Saft also may mean silly as in, "Stop bein' so saft".
The
Birmingham and
Coventry accents are distinct, even though the cities are only 19 miles/30 km apart. Coventry being closer to an East Midlands accent. [citation needed]
Around
Stoke-on-Trent, the short i can sometimes sound rather like ee, as very obvious when hearing a local say it; however, this is not always the case as most other words such as "miss" or "tip" are still pronounced as normal. The
Potteries accent is perhaps the most distinctly 'northern' of the West Midlands accents, given that the urban area around Stoke-on-Trent is close to the
Cheshire border.
In
Warwickshire, the northern towns like
Nuneaton and
Bedworth have a similar accent to
Coventry whereas southern Warwickshire generally have a southern accent.
^Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2002). The Phonetics of Dutch and English (5 ed.).
Leiden/
Boston:
Brill Publishers. pp. 290–302.
^Wells in Trudgill ed., Language in the British Isles, page 58, Cambridge University Press, 1984
Further reading
Clark, Urszula (2004), "The English West Midlands: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 134–162,
ISBN3-11-017532-0
External links
BL staff.
"Sounds Familiar?". British Library. Retrieved 19 February 2012. – Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website