English language in Northern England

This article is about the varieties of English spoken in the northern part of England, and focuses on accents and dialects. For varieties spoken in other regions of the United Kingdom and Ireland, see English language § Britain and Ireland.

Northern England English

Northern English
Region| Northern England

Language family

Indo-European

* Germanic
* West Germanic
* Ingvaeonic
* Anglo-Frisian
* Anglic
* Anglian
* North Anglic
* Northern English
* Northern England English

Writing system

| English alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3| –
Glottolog| `nort3299`  Northern English

How the vowel sound in sun varies across England. The thick lines are isoglosses. Northern English dialects have not undergone the FOOT–STRUT split, distinguishing them from Southern English and Scottish dialects.[1]

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The spoken English language in Northern England has been shaped by the region's history of settlement and migration, and today encompasses a group of related accents and dialects known as Northern England English or Northern English.[2][3]

The strongest influence on modern varieties of Northern English was the Northumbrian dialect of Middle English. Additional influences came from contact with Old Norse during the Viking Age; with Irish English following the Great Famine, particularly in Lancashire and the south of Yorkshire; and with Midlands dialects since the Industrial Revolution. All these produced new and distinctive styles of speech.[2]

Traditional dialects are associated with many of the historic counties of England, and include those of Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumbria, and Yorkshire. Following urbanisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, distinctive dialects arose in many urban centres in Northern England, with English spoken using a variety of distinctive pronunciations, terms, and expressions.[4]: 16–18  Northern English accents are often stigmatized,[5] and some native speakers modify their Northern speech characteristics in corporate and professional environments.[6][7]

There is some debate about how spoken varieties of English have impacted written English in Northern England;[8] furthermore, representing a dialect or accent in writing is not straightforward.[9]

## Definition

[edit]

The varieties of English spoken across modern Great Britain form an accent and dialect continuum, and there is no agreed definition of which varieties are Northern,[4]: 8–14  and no consensus about what constitutes "the North".[10]: 3–9

Wells uses a broad definition of the linguistic North, comprising all accents that have not undergone the TRAP–BATH and FOOT–STRUT splits. On that basis, the isogloss between North and South runs from the River Severn to The Wash, and covers the entire North of England (which Wells divides into "Far North" and "Middle North") and most of the Midlands, including the distinctive Brummie (Birmingham) and Black Country dialects.[11]: 349–351

In his seminal study of English dialects, Alexander J. Ellis defined the border between the North and the Midlands as that where the word house is pronounced with u: to the north.[12] For Ellis, "the North" occupied the area northwards of a line running from the Humber Estuary on the east coast to the River Lune on the west (more recently, some linguists refer to the River Ribble, slightly further south).[10]: 6

According to Wells, although well-suited to historical analysis, Ellis's line does not reflect everyday usage, which does not consider Manchester or Leeds, both located south of the line, as part of the Midlands.[11]: 349–350

An alternative approach is to define the linguistic North as equivalent to the cultural area of Northern England – approximately the seven historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, County Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire, or the three modern statistical regions of North East England, North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber.[4]: 1–8  This approach was taken by the Survey of English Dialects (SED), which used the historic counties (minus Cheshire) as a basis, and grouped Manx English with Northern dialects.[13]: 13  Under Wells' scheme, the SED's definition includes Far North and Middle North dialects but excludes those of the Midlands.[11]: 349–351

Scottish English is distinct from Northern English, although the two have interacted with and influenced each other.[4]: 2

## History

[edit]

Many historical northern dialects reflect the influence of Old Norse.[14][15] In addition to previous contact with Vikings, during the 9th and 10th centuries most of northern and eastern England was part of either the Danelaw or the Danish-controlled Kingdom of Northumbria (except for much of present-day Cumbria, which was part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde). Consequently, modern Yorkshire dialects, in particular, are considered to have been influenced heavily by Old West Norse (the ancestor of Norwegian) and Old East Norse (the ancestor of Swedish and Danish).[16]

In the 19th century, there was large-scale migration from Ireland to Northern England, particularly to Liverpool and its hinterland. Summarising the views of several scholars, Wales (2006) highlights some features of accents and dialects in the North West influenced by Hiberno-English, such as the dental articulation of dat ("that") and tree ("three"), and the usage of yous as the second-person plural pronoun.[13]: 119  § Pronouns

## Northern accent and dialect varieties

[edit]

Varieties include:

* Cheshire dialect
* Cumbrian dialect
* Geordie – spoken in Newcastle and Tyneside, which includes southern parts of Northumberland
* Lancashire dialect
* Mackem – in Sunderland and Wearside
* Mancunian – in Manchester, Salford, various other areas of Greater Manchester, and parts of Lancashire and eastern Cheshire
* Northumbrian dialect
* Pitmatic – two varieties: one in the former mining communities of County Durham, the other in Northumberland
* Scouse – in Liverpool and Merseyside, with varieties in western Cheshire and southern Lancashire
* Smoggie – in Teesside
* Yorkshire dialect.

A survey published in 2022 found that compared to the findings of the Survey of English Dialects carried out in the first half of the twentieth century, the edges of many dialect regions have shifted. Furthermore, there are transitional zones between dialects where towns, such as those between Manchester and Liverpool, may display considerable heterogeneity. The authors also found evidence of dialect regions crossing county boundaries.[17]: 50, 61, 62

General Northern English (GNE) refers to a newer "pan-regional standard accent" emerging from dialect leveling and the "reduction of accent variation" found in Northern England. GNE is associated with educated urbanites. A 2020 study sampling 105 accents from Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sheffield discovered a "considerable degree of leveling, especially between Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, although some differences persist."[6]: 1

## Phonological characteristics

[edit]

Red areas are where English dialects of the late 20th century were rhotic; in the North, only some of Lancashire is included. Pronunciation of [ŋg] in the word tongue throughout England; the major Northern counties with this trait are located where the North West and West Midlands meet.

### Speech features

[edit]

There are several speech features that unite most of the accents of Northern England and distinguish them from Southern England and Scottish accents.[11]: 349–351

#### Trap–bath split

[edit]

The accents of Northern England generally do not have the trap–bath split observed in Southern England English, so that the vowel in bath, ask and cast is the short TRAP vowel /a/: /baθ, ask, kast/, rather than /ɑː/ found in the south. There are a few words in the BATH set like can't, shan’t, half, calf, rather which are pronounced with /ɑː/ in most Northern English accents as opposed to /æ/ in Northern American accents. The /æ/ vowel of cat, trap is normally pronounced [a] rather than the [æ] found in traditional Received Pronunciation or General American, while /ɑː/, as in the words palm, cart, start, tomato, may not be differentiated from /æ/ by quality, but by length, being pronounced as a longer [aː].[11]: 353–356

#### Foot–strut split

[edit]

The foot–strut split is absent in Northern English, so that, for example, cut and put rhyme and are both pronounced with /ʊ/; words like love, up, tough, judge, etc. also use this vowel sound. This has led to Northern England being described "Oop North" /ʊp nɔːθ/ by some in the south of England. Some words with /ʊ/ in RP even have /uː/ – book is pronounced /buːk/ in some Northern accents (particularly in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and eastern parts of Merseyside where the Lancashire accent is still prevalent), while conservative accents also pronounce look and cook as /luːk/ and /kuːk/.[11]: 351–353

#### Other vowels

[edit]

The Received Pronunciation phonemes /eɪ/ (as in face) and /əʊ/ (as in goat) are often pronounced as monophthongs (such as [eː] and [oː]), or as older diphthongs (such as /ɪə/ and /ʊə/). However, the quality of these vowels varies considerably across the region, and this is considered a greater indicator of a speaker's social class than the less stigmatised aspects listed above.

In most areas, happy-tensing has not occurred; the unstressed vowel at the end of words such happy, coffee and taxi is pronounced [ɪ], like the i in bit, and not [i]. This was also the norm in RP until the late 20th century.[18] The tenser [i], similar to Southern England and Modern RP, is found throughout the North East from Teesside northwards, and in the Merseyside and Hull areas.[19]

The /ɒ/ vowel of LOT is a fully open [ɒ] rather than the open-mid [ɔ] of modern Received Pronunciation and Southern England English.[11]: 356

#### R sound

[edit]

The most common R sound, when pronounced in Northern England, is the typical English postalveolar approximantⓘ; however, an alveolar tapⓘ is also widespread, particularly following a consonant or between vowels.[11]: 368  This tap predominates most fully in the Scouse accent. The North, like most of the South, is largely (and increasingly) non-rhotic, meaning that R is pronounced only before a vowel or between vowels, but not after a vowel (for instance, in words like car, fear, and lurk). However, regions that are rhotic (pronouncing all R sounds) or somewhat rhotic are possible, particularly amongst older speakers:[11]: 368

* Lancashire and Greater Manchester areas north of the city of Manchester may residually be rhotic or pre-consonantally rhotic (pronouncing R before a consonant but not in word-final position), for example, in Accrington and Rochdale.

* Lincolnshire may weakly retain word-final (but not pre-consonantal) rhoticity.

* Uvular rhoticity, in which the same R sound as in French and German is used, has been described as the traditional "burr" of rural, northern Northumberland – possible as well, though also rare, in County Durham.

#### Other features

[edit]

The North does not have the clear distinction between the "clear L"ⓘ and "dark L"ⓘ common to most other accents in England; most Northern accents pronounce all L sounds with a moderate amount of velarization. Exceptions to this are in Tyneside, Wearside and Northumberland, where L is clear,[20]: 42  and in Lancashire and Manchester, where L is dark.[21]: 130 [a] [22]

Some northern English speakers have noticeable rises in their intonation: to other speakers of English, they may sound "perpetually surprised or sarcastic."[23]

### Distinctive sounds

[edit]

Major distinctive sounds of Northern English[24][25][26][21][27][28][29][30][31] English
diaphoneme | Example words  | Manchester
(Mancunian) | Lancashire | Yorkshire | Cumbria | Northumberland
(Pitmatic) | Merseyside
(Scouse) | Tyneside
(Geordie)

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

/æ/ | bath, dance, trap  | [a~ä] listenⓘ
/ɑː/ | bra, calm, father  | [aː~äː] listenⓘ | [äː~ɑː]  | [ɑː~ɒː] listenⓘ
/aɪ/ | fight, ride, try |

[aɪ~äɪ] listenⓘ

Geordie and Northumberland, when not final or before a voiced fricative: [ɛɪ~əɪ] listenⓘ

/aʊ/ | brown, mouth  | [aʊ]  | [æʊ]  | [aʊ~æʊ]  | [ɐʊ]  | [æʊ]  | [ɐʊ~u:] listenⓘ
/eɪ/ | lame, rein, stain  | [ɛɪ~e̞ɪ] listenⓘ |

[e̞ː] listenⓘ

Lancashire, Cumbria, and Yorkshire, when before ght as in weight: [eɪ~ɛɪ]

| [eɪ] listenⓘ | [ɪə~eː]
/ɛ/ | bed, egg, bread  | [ɛ]
/ɛər/ | fair, hare, there | [ɛː]  |

[ɜː(ɹ)~ɛː(ɹ)]

South Lancashire: [ɜː(ɹ)]
North Lancashire: [ɛː(ɹ)]

[ɛː]

some places by the Scottish border: [ɛːɹ]

| [eː] listenⓘ
(square–nurse merger) | [ɛː]
/ɜːr/ | fur, her, stir |

[ɜː] listenⓘ

rhotic Lancashire: [ɜːɹ]

[ɜː~ɛː]

East Riding of Yorkshire: [ɛː~ɜː]
rest of Yorkshire: [ɜː]

[ɜː] listenⓘ

some places by the Scottish border: [ɜːɹ]

| [øː~ʊː] listenⓘ
/ər/ | doctor, martyr, smaller |

[ə~ɜ~ɛ] listenⓘ

rhotic Lancashire and some places by the Scottish border: [əɹ~ɜɹ]; also, Geordie: [ɛ~ɐ]

/iː/ | beam, marine, fleece  | [ɪi]  | [i] listenⓘ | [iː~ɨ̞i]  | [iː~ei]
/i/ | city, honey, parties  | [ɪ~e] listenⓘ |

[ɪ~e~i]

Hull and northern North Yorkshire: [i]
rest of Yorkshire: [ɪ~e]

| [ɪi~i]  | [i]
/ɪər/ | beer, fear, here |

[ɪə̯~iː.ə]

rhotic Lancashire and some places by the Scottish border: [ɪə̯ɹ~iː.əɹ]

| [iɛ̯]  | [iɐ̯]
/ɔː/ | all, bought, saw | [ɒː~ɔː]  | [ɒː~ɔː]  | [o̞:] listenⓘ
/ɔːr/ | horse, north, war |

[ɒː~ɔː]

rhotic Lancashire and some places by the Scottish border: [ɒːɹ~ɔːɹ]

hoarse, force, wore |

[ɔː]

(possible horse-hoarse distinction)

/oʊ/ | goal, shown, toe | [ɔʊ~ɔo]  |

[oː~ɔː~ɵː] listenⓘ

West Yorkshire, more commonly: [ɔː]
Hull, especially female: [ɵː]

| [ɔu~ɜu~ɛʉ]  | [ʊə~oː]
/ʌ/ | bus, flood, put  |

[ʊ] listenⓘ (no foot–strut split)

Northumberland, less rounded: [ʌ̈]; in Scouse, Manchester, South Yorkshire and (to an extent) Teesside the word one is uniquely pronounced with the vowel [ɒ], and this is also possible for once, among(st), none, tongue, and nothing

/ʊ/
/ʊər/ | poor, sure, tour |

[ʊə̯~uː.ə]

rhotic Lancashire and some places by the Scottish border: [ʊə̯ɹ~uː.əɹ]

| [o̞:]  | [uɐ]
/uː/ | food, glue, lose  | [ʏː] listenⓘ |

[ʊu]

North Yorkshire: [ʉ:]

| [ʉː] listenⓘ | [yː]  | [ʉː] listenⓘ | [ʉu~ʊu~ɵʊ]
/ɒ/ | lot, wasp, cough  | [ɒ]
intervocalic & postvocalic /k/ | racquet, joker, luck | [k] or [k~x]  | [k] listenⓘ | [k~x] listenⓘ or
[k~ç] listenⓘ | [k~kˀ]
initial /h/ | hand, head, home  | [∅] or [h]  | [h]
/l/ | lie, mill, salad  |

[l~ɫ]

/l/ is often somewhat "dark" (meaning velarised) [ɫ] listenⓘ throughout northern England, but it is particularly dark in Manchester and Lancashire.

| [l] listenⓘ
stressed-syllable /ŋ/ | bang, singer, wrong |

[ŋg~ŋ]

[ŋ] predominates in the northern half of historical Lancashire

[ŋ]

[ŋg] predominates only in South Yorkshire's Sheffield

| [ŋg~ŋ]  | [ŋ]
post-consonantal & intervocalic /r/ | current, three, pray  |

[ɹ] or, conservatively, [ɹ~ɾ]

[ʁ] in Lindisfarne and traditional, rural, northern Northumberland

| [ɾ]  | [ɹ~ɾ]
intervocalic, final
& pre-consonantal /t/ | attic, bat, fitness  | [ʔ] or [t(ʰ)]  | [θ̠] listenⓘ or [ʔ]

## Grammar and syntax

[edit]

In general, the grammatical patterns of Northern English are similar to those of British English. However, Northern English has several unique characteristics.[32]

### Northern Subject Rule

[edit]

Under the Northern Subject Rule, the suffix "-s", which in Standard English grammar only appears in the third-person singular present, is attached to verbs in many present- and past-tense forms (leading to, for example, "the birds sings"). More generally, third-person singular forms of irregular verbs, such as to be, may be used with plurals and other grammatical persons; for instance "the lambs is out". In modern dialects, the most obvious manifestation is a levelling of the past-tense verb-forms was and were. Either may dominate depending on the region and individual speech patterns (so some Northern speakers may say "I was" and "You was", while others prefer "I were" and "You were"). Furthermore, in many dialects, especially in the far North, weren't is treated as the negation of was.[33]

### Epistemic mustn't

[edit]

The "epistemic mustn't", where mustn't is used to mark deductions such as "This mustn't be true", is largely restricted within the British Isles to Northern England, although it is more widely accepted in American English, and is likely inherited from Scottish English. A few other Scottish traits are also found in far Northern dialects, such as double modal verbs (might could instead of might be able to), but these are restricted in their distribution and are mostly dying out.[34]: 26, 38

### Pronouns

[edit]

While standard English now only has a single second-person pronoun, you, many Northern dialects have additional pronouns either retained from earlier forms or introduced from other variants of English.

The pronouns thou and thee have survived in many rural Northern dialects. In some case, these allow the distinction between formality and familiarity to be maintained, while in others thou is a generic second-person singular, and you (or ye) is restricted to the plural. Even when thou has died out, second-person plural pronouns are common. In the more rural dialects and those of the far North, this is typically ye, while in cities and areas of the North West with historical Irish communities, this is more likely to be yous.[35]: 85–86

Conversely, the process of "pronoun exchange" means that many first-person pronouns can be replaced by the first-person objective plural us (or more rarely we or wor) in standard constructions. These include me (so "give me" becomes "give us"), we (so "we Geordies" becomes "us Geordies") and our (so "our cars" becomes "us cars"). The latter especially is a distinctively Northern trait.[35]: 84–85

Almost all British vernaculars have regularised reflexive pronouns, but the resulting form of the pronouns varies from region to region. In Yorkshire and the North East, hisself and theirselves are preferred to himself and themselves. Other areas of the North have regularised the pronouns in the opposite direction, with meself used instead of myself. This appears to be a trait inherited from Irish English, and like Irish speakers, many Northern speakers use reflexive pronouns in non-reflexive situations for emphasis. Depending on the region, reflexive pronouns can be pronounced (and often written) as if they ended -sen, -sel or -self (even in plural pronouns) or ignoring the suffix entirely.[35]: 85–86

## Vocabulary

[edit]

Very few terms from Brittonic languages have survived, with the exception of place-name elements (especially in Cumbria) and, by some accounts, the Yan Tan Tethera counting system, traditionally used in counting stitches in knitting, counting-out games, nursery rhymes, and, reputedly, counting sheep.[36] However, the most likely source for this is Wales in the post-medieval period.[36][37]

In some Northern English dialects, the forms yan and yen used to mean one, as in someyan ("someone") or that yan ("that one"): Griffiths (2004) notes that "OE án (with long vowel) remained 'an' in the North, with the 'a' breaking to 'ia', 'ie', etc."[38]

A corpus study of Late Modern English texts from or set in Northern England found lad ("boy" or "young man") and lass ("girl" or "young woman") were the most widespread "pan-Northern" dialect terms. Other terms in the top ten included a set of three indefinite pronouns owt ("anything"), nowt ("naught" or "nothing") and summat ("something"), the Anglo-Scottish bairn, bonny and gang, and sel/sen ("self") and mun ("must"). Regional dialects within Northern England also had many unique terms, and canny ("clever") and nobbut ("nothing but") were both common in the corpus, despite being limited to the North East and to the North West and Yorkshire respectively.[8]: 144–146

## See also

[edit]

* English language in Southern England
* Northern Subject Rule – Distinctive feature of Northern English and Scots
* Scottish English – Variety of English spoken in Scotland

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ Note that the source incorrectly transcribes the dark L with the symbol ⟨ɬ⟩, i.e. as if it were the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Upton, Clive; Widdowson, John David Allison (2006). An Atlas of English Dialects. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-869274-4.
2. ^ a b Robinson, Jonnie (1 April 2007). "Regional voices: the north-south divide". British Library. Archived from the original on 21 October 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
3. ^ Filppula, Markku; Klemola, Juhani (27 August 2020). "External Influences in the History of English". External Influences in the History of English. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.284. ISBN 978-0-199-38465-5. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
4. ^ a b c d Hickey, Raymond (2015). "The North of England and Northern English". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Researching Northern English. Varieties of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 1–24\. doi:10.1075/veaw.g55. ISBN 978-9-027-24915-9. LCCN 2015033286. OCLC 1020144729.
5. ^ "New research reveals prejudice against people with Northern English accents". Northumbria University. 15 June 2022. Archived from the original on 12 November 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
6. ^ a b Strycharczuk, Patrycja; López-Ibáñez, Manuel; Brown, Georgina; Leemann, Adrian (15 July 2020). "General Northern English. Exploring Regional Variation in the North of England With Machine Learning". Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. 3 (48): 48. doi:10.3389/frai.2020.00048. ISSN 2624-8212. PMC 7861339. PMID 33733165. p. 16: "Our interest was in evaluating the hypothesis that dialect leveling in middle-class Northern English speakers has led to convergence toward a pan-regional General Northern English. We do find some evidence of such convergence, although some accents cluster in this respect (Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield), whereas others remain more distinct (Liverpool, Newcastle)."
7. ^ "Accents in Britain: General Northern English (GNE)". Accent Bias Britain. Queen Mary University of London. Archived from the original on 9 November 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024. "General Northern English (GNE) functions as a 'regional standard' accent in the North of England, and is used there mainly by middle-class speakers. While it is still recognisably northern, speakers of GNE can be very hard to locate geographically more precisely than this."
8. ^ a b Ruano-García, Javier; Sánchez-García, Pilar; F. García-Bermejo Giner, María (2015). "Northern English: Historical lexis and spelling". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Researching Northern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 131–157\. doi:10.1075/veaw.g55.06rua. ISBN 978-9-027-24915-9. LCCN 2015033286. OCLC 1020144729.
9. ^ Honeybone, Patrick; Maguire, Warren (2020). "Chapter 1: Introduction". In Honeybone, Patrick; Maguire, Warren (eds.). Dialect Writing and the North of England. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474442565.003.0001. ISBN 978-1-474-44256-5. OCLC 1117545825. p. 6: "The issues of the 'accuracy' and 'authenticity' of the representation of a dialect in dialect writing are complicated ones to negotiate, and need to be seen in the light of what a writer intends for a text."
10. ^ a b Montgomery, Chris (2015). "Borders and boundaries in the North of England" (PDF). In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Researching Northern English. Varieties of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 345–368 in book; pp. 1–24 in repository: repository pagination used in citations. doi:10.1075/veaw.g55.15mon. ISBN 978-9-027-24915-9. LCCN 2015033286. OCLC 1020144729. Retrieved 23 October 2024. – via White Rose Research Repository.
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English vol. 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511611759. ISBN 978-0-521-24224-0. OCLC 874021123. Retrieved 1 January 2025 – via Internet Archive.
12. ^ Ellis, Alexander J. (1889). "The Ten Transverse Lines". On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Reference to Shakspere and Chaucer : Part V, Existing Dialectical as Compared to West Saxon Pronunciation. London: Trübner for the Philological Society, the Early English Text Society, and the Chaucer Society. See p. 19 [1451], section "LINE 6". Retrieved 22 October 2024 – via Google Books. "LINE 6.–The s. hoos line, or s. limit of the pron. of the word house as hoos (huus), which is also the n. limit of the pron. of house as any variety of (ha'us) [...]."
13. ^ a b Wales, Katie (2006). Northern English: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511487071. ISBN 978-0-521-86107-6. OCLC 64313095.
14. ^ Jesch, Judith (2017). "Old Norse in England". In Rouse, Robert; Echard, Siân; Fulton, Helen; Rector, Geoff; Fay, Jacqueline A. (eds.). O ld N orse in E ngland. The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain. Hoboken: Wiley. pp. 1–2\. doi:10.1002/9781118396957.wbemlb516. ISBN 978-1-118-39695-7. OCLC 992436496. "Old Norse [has] left its mark on a substantial range of English vocabulary as well as a number of form words, not only in some regional dialects but also in the modern standard language."
15. ^ Dance, Richard (2017). "Chapter 11: English Contact: Norse". In Brinton, Laurel J.; Bergs, Alexander (eds.). The History of English. Volume 2: Old English. Mouton Reader. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 202–219\. doi:10.1515/9783110525304-011. ISBN 978-3-110-52273-0. OCLC 1004877872. p. 214: "The quantity and type of Norse-derived words attested in the dialects of the North and East Midlands are particularly impressive, especially in the Middle English period."
16. ^ Rhodes, Barrie Markham (21 June 2015). "Yorkshire Dialect Words of Old Norse Origin". The Viking Network. Archived from the original on 29 July 2023. Retrieved 3 February 2025. "The word list definitions draw heavily on the work of Dr. Arnold Kellett of The Yorkshire Dialect Society, in particular his The Yorkshire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore (1994)." (OCLC 30028946).
17. ^ Laurel, MacKenzie; Bailey, George; Turton, Danielle (2022). "Towards an updated dialect atlas of British English" (PDF). Journal of Linguistic Geography. 10 (1): 46–66\. doi:10.1017/jlg.2022.2. ISSN 2049-7547.
18. ^ Windsor Lewis, Jack. "Changes in British English pronunciation during the twentieth century"". Archived from the original on 30 November 2024. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
19. ^ Beal, Joan (2004). Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W. (eds.). A Handbook of Varieties of English Volume 1: Phonology. De Gruyter. p. 126\. ISBN 3-11-017532-0.
20. ^ Beal, Joan C.; Burbano-Elizondo, Lourdes; Llamas, Carmen (2012). Urban North-Eastern English: Tyneside to Teesside. Dialects of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-748-64152-9. OCLC 793582295.
21. ^ a b Beal, Joan C. (2004). "English dialects in the North of England: phonology". In Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd [in German]; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 113–133\. doi:10.1515/9783110197181-011. ISBN 978-3-110-17532-5. OCLC 1046309982.
22. ^ Hughes, Arthur; Trudgill, Peter; Watt, Dominic (2013). English Accents & Dialects : an Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles (5th ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-444-12138-4. OCLC 900418443. p. 116: "[Manchester] /l/ is dark [ɫ] in both onset and coda positions, and in the latter context may be vocalised (e.g. meal, l. 2). In some cases the /l/ is extremely dark in initial position, and may be practically vocalised, e.g. Lake (l. 19), in which /l/ resembles [w]."
23. ^ Cruttenden, Alan (March 1981). "Falls and Rises: Meanings and Universals". Journal of Linguistics. 17 (1): 77–91\. doi:10.1017/S0022226700006782. ISSN 0022-2267. p. 83: "[T]he rises of Belfast and some northern English cities may sound perpetually surprised or sarcastic to southern Englishmen (the precise attitude imputed will depend on other factors like pitch height and the exact type of rise)..."
24. ^ Heggarty, Paul; et al., eds. (2013). "Accents of English from Around the World". University of Edinburgh.
25. ^ Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003). The Phonetics of English and Dutch (Fifth Revised ed.). E.J. Brill. ISBN 9004103406.
26. ^ Hughes, Arthur; Trudgill, Peter; Watt, Dominic James Landon (2012). English Accents & Dialects. Routledge. ISBN 9781444121384.
27. ^ Watson, Kevin (2007), "Liverpool English" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (3): 351–360, doi:10.1017/s0025100307003180, S2CID 232345844
28. ^ Watt, Dominic; Allen, William (2003), "Tyneside English", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 267–271, doi:10.1017/s0025100303001397
29. ^ Honeybone, Patrick; Watson, Kevin. "Phonemes, graphemes and phonics for Liverpool English" (PDF). Retrieved 16 January 2024.
30. ^ Williams, Ann; Kerswill, Paul (1999). Section '8.2.1.3 Hull' (pp. 146–147) in "Dialect levelling: change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull" (PDF). In Foulkes, Paul; Docherty, Gerard (eds.). Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. pp. 141–162. ISBN 978-0-340-70608-4. OCLC 43558503. Archived from author repository (PDF) on 16 September 2012. Note: see pp. 5–7 in repository copy, which differs slightly from equivalent in book. Retrieved 13 February 2025 – via Internet Archive.
31. ^ Raymond, Hickey, ed. (2015), Researching Northern English, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, ISBN 978-90-272-6767-2
32. ^ Robinson, Jonnie (24 April 2019). "Grammatical variation across the UK". British Library. Archived from the original on 20 September 2020. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
33. ^ Pietsch, Lukas (2005). ""Some do and some doesn't": Verbal concord variation in the north of the British Isles" (PDF). In Kortmann, Bernd [in German]; Herrmann, Tanja; Pietsch, Lukas; Wagner, Susanne [in German] (eds.). A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects: Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 125–209\. doi:10.1515/9783110197518. ISBN 978-3-11-018299-6. OCLC 469918353. p. 126: "This intriguing system has been among the chief grammatical characteristics of the dialects of northern Britain, including Scots, since the Middle English period."
34. ^ Beal, Joan C. (2010). Introduction to Regional Englishes : Dialect Variation in England. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2116-3. OCLC 646397147. Retrieved 14 February 2025. p. 38: "Unlike double modals, epistemic mustn't shows no signs of receding in the North of England."
35. ^ a b c Buchstaller, Isabelle [in German]; Corrigan, Karen P. (2015). "Morphosyntactic features of Northern English". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Researching Northern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 71–98\. doi:10.1075/veaw.g55.04buc. ISBN 978-9-027-24915-9. LCCN 2015033286. OCLC 1020144729.
36. ^ a b Roud, Steve; Simpson, Jacqueline, eds. (2003). "shepherds' score". A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-198-60766-3. OCLC 931715587. "There is no doubt that the numerals are traditional and are prized as a genuine part of local dialect [...] but their origin is neither as simple, nor as antique as is often supposed."
37. ^ "The Celtic Linguistic Influence". Yorkshire Dialect Society. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
38. ^ Griffiths, Bill (2004). "yan, ane". A Dictionary of North East Dialect (1st ed.). Newcastle: Northumbria University Press. p. 178 col 2. ISBN 978-190-479406-6. OCLC 61424579. Retrieved 4 February 2025 – via Internet Archive.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Laurel, MacKenzie; Bailey, George; Turton, Danielle (2022). "Towards an updated dialect atlas of British English" (PDF). Journal of Linguistic Geography. 10 (1): 46–66\. ISSN 2049-7547. Presents the results of a large-scale dialect survey and hence the status of regional dialect variation, and draws comparisons with the findings of the Survey of English Dialects carried out in the first half of the twentieth century.

* Wales, Katie (2006). Northern English: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86107-6. OCLC 64313095. An account of Northern English that surveys its history, culture, and diversity.

## External links

[edit]

* Edwin Waugh Dialect Society – Lancashire dialect
* Northumbrian Language Society – Northumbrian dialect
* Yorkshire Dialect Society – Yorkshire dialect

* v
* t
* e

Dialects and accents of Modern English by continent

Europe|

| Great
Britain|

| England|

| North|

* Cheshire
* Cumbria
* Barrow
* Lancashire
* Liverpool/Scouse
* Manchester
* Northumbria
* Pitmatic
* Sunderland
* Tyneside/Geordie
* Teesside
* Yorkshire

|

Midlands|

* East Midlands
* West Midlands
* Birmingham
* Black Country
* Stoke-on-Trent

South|

* East Anglia
* London & Thames Estuary
* Cockney
* Multicultural
* Received Pronunciation
* West Country
* Cornwall
* Dorset

Scotland|

* Glasgow
* Highlands

Wales|

* Abercraf
* Cardiff
* Gower
* Port Talbot

Ireland|

* Dublin
* South-West
* Ulster

* Channel Islands
* Gibraltar
* Isle of Man
* Malta

Americas|

| North
America|

| Canada|

* Aboriginal
* Atlantic
* Lunenburg
* Newfoundland
* Multicultural Toronto
* Ottawa Valley
* Quebec
* Standard Canadian

|

United
States|

* Midland
* New England
* Boston
* East
* Maine
* West
* New York City
* accent
* North
* Inland North
* North-Central
* Philadelphia
* Baltimore
* South
* accent
* Appalachia
* Chesapeake/Outer Banks
* New Orleans
* Older South
* Texas
* West
* California
* Pacific Northwest
* Western Pennsylvania

Social and
ethno-cultural|

* African-American
* Vernacular
* American Indian
* Cajun
* Chicano
* General American
* Good American Speech
* Miami Latino
* New York Latino
* Northeastern elite
* Pennsylvania Dutch

Caribbean|

* Antigua and Barbuda
* The Bahamas
* Barbados
* Bequia
* Cayman Islands
* Bay Islands
* Jamaica
* Saba
* Samaná
* Trinidad and Tobago

* Bermuda
* Falkland Islands

Oceania|

| Australia|

* variation
* accent
* Aboriginal
* South
* Torres Strait
* West

|

* Fiji
* New Zealand
* accent
* Palau
* Solomon Islands

Africa|

* Cameroon
* The Gambia
* Ghana
* Kenya
* Liberia
* Malawi
* Namibia
* Nigeria
* Sierra Leone
* South Africa
* accent
* Cape Flats
* South Atlantic
* Uganda
* Zimbabwe

Asia|

| East Asia|

* Hong Kong

|

South Asia|

* Bangladesh
* India
* regional and occupational
* Maldives
* Nepal
* Pakistan
* Sri Lanka

Southeast Asia|

* Brunei
* Cambodia
* Malaysia
* Myanmar
* Philippines
* Singapore
* Thailand

Antarctica|

* Antarctica

Related|

* English language
* Basic
* Broad and general accents
* Commonwealth
* Comparison of American and British English
* E-Prime
* Engrish
* English as a lingua franca
* English-based creole languages
* Englishisation
* Globish
* Gogate
* Nerrière
* International
* Jewish English (Yeshiva English)
* Learning
* Linguistic purism in English
* List of English-based pidgins
* Non-native pronunciations of English
* Plain
* Standard

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