West Midlands English

Dialect spoken in the United Kingdom, spoken in the western area of the English Midlands

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West Midlands English

Native to| England
Region| West Midlands
Ethnicity| English

Language family

Indo-European

* Germanic
* West Germanic
* Ingvaeonic
* Anglo-Frisian
* Anglic
* English
* British English
* West Midlands English

Early forms

Old English

* Middle English
* Early Modern English

Dialects| West Midlands English
Language codes
ISO 639-3| –

Location of The West Midlands within England

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.

West Midlands English is a group of dialects of the English language native to the English West Midlands.

## County accents[edit]

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.

Dave Bradley, a presenter on BBC Hereford and Worcester said in 2005 that:

> [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.

> — Dave Bradley[1]

## Phonology[edit]

* 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.
* Herefordshire and parts of Worcestershire and Shropshire have a rhotic accent, somewhat like the West Country,[citation needed] and in some parts of these counties, the local accent mixes features with the Welsh accent, particularly in places closer to the English–Welsh border.
* In Warwickshire, the northern towns like Nuneaton and Bedworth have a similar accent to Coventry whereas southern Warwickshire generally have a southern accent.

## Varieties of West Midlands English[edit]

* Black Country
* Brummie (spoken in Birmingham)
* Coventry
* Herefordshire (West Country accent)
* Cannock / Norton Canes / Brownhills (South Staffordshire)
* Potteries (North Staffordshire)
* Salopian (Shropshire)
* Warwickshire
* Worcestershire

## References[edit]

1. ^ Bradley, Dave (19 August 2005). "You knows 'im don't ya? BBC Hereford and Worcester presenter Dave Bradley tells us his thoughts on accents and dialects". BBC Hereford and Worcester. Archived from the original on 19 February 2011.
2. ^ Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2002). The Phonetics of Dutch and English (5 ed.). Leiden/Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 290–302.
3. ^ Wells in Trudgill ed., Language in the British Isles, page 58, Cambridge University Press, 1984

## Further reading[edit]

* 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, ISBN 3-11-017532-0

## External links[edit]

* 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
* BBC staff (November 2008). "Voices 2005:Hereford and Worcester". BBC Hereford and Worcester. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
* Lovell, Martyn (22 August 2005). "The voice of a Herefordshire farrier". BBC Hereford and Worcester. Retrieved 19 February 2012.

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Dialects and accents of Modern English by continent

Europe|

| Great
Britain|

| England|

| North|

* Cheshire
* Cumbria
* Barrow
* Lancashire
* Liverpool
* Manchester
* Northumbria
* Pitmatic
* Sunderland
* Tyneside
* 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

Americas|

| North
America|

| Canada|

* Aboriginal
* Atlantic
* Lunenburg
* Newfoundland
* Central and West
* Ottawa Valley
* Quebec

|

United
States|

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

Social and
ethno-cultural|

* African-American
* vernacular
* American Indian
* Cajun
* Chicano
* General American
* Miami Latino
* New York Latino
* Pennsylvania Dutch

Caribbean|

* 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
* Nepal
* Pakistan
* Sri Lanka

|

Southeast Asia|

* Brunei
* Malaysia
* Myanmar
* Philippines
* Singapore

|

Related|

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

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