Talk:Lancashire dialect

(Query) This article seems to use the terms dialect and accent interchangeably. They are not. Dialect (basically distinct regional vocabulary and sometimes also distinct grammar and syntax) is of historical interest now mainly because it barely exists beyond the odd word or two. Most northerners speak standard English now but they do so with an non RP accent. Use of dialect and accent as interchangeable terms is misleading and needs to be discouraged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.14.200.86 (talk) 12:30, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

[Query]

This seems to be mostly about accent. I was looking for a description of the non-standard usage of 'while' (as in "I'll be there ten while six tomorrow"), which I've heard from people in Bolton, Accrington and older Mancunians. I'd also like further elaboration on the "our Dave/our Susan/our kid" usage. I'm just not confident in describing grammatical terms to insert these myself.

Must admit I had never thought of the use of "while" being non-standard. Its use certainly extends as far south as Stockport, which was formerly part of Cheshire. Skinsmoke (talk) 23:53, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

[Query]

I am curious to know why some of the words I heard used by older Lancastrians when i was a child are similar to German words. for example, peoploe would say "How bist?" meaning how are you- Also the word skriking_ (how it was pronounced) was used to describe crying- German word is almost the same. Any responses?

Attempt

Most dialects are earlier forms of English. If you go back far enough, English and German were one language. There are remnants of this link in the old dialects. The thou bist forms that you mentioned are also quite similar to the Dutch and Frisian equivalents.

Even today, some features of Scottish speech are very similar to modern German. For example, the word ken for to know. Find is pronounced the same way in German and in Scots. The Scots light is pronounced the same way as the German equivalent licht. Scots sometimes refer to shoes the same way Germans would do: shuehen (normally spelled "shoon" in dialectal writings).

Hope that helps. Epa101 (talk) 18:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I didnt know about 'bist' being used in Lancashire but I know 'bist' and 'ich' were used until very recently by old people in certain parts of the West Country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.223.173 (talk) 12:48, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if you might be overstating the German influence here. The dialects in Lancashire (and Yorkshire and parts of Cheshire) tend to be much more influenced by Nordic grammatical elements (and also vocabulary) than further south, as in This here chair, That there table, See thee here, Sit thee down and I'm goin' for to get... Skinsmoke (talk) 00:01, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Widnes & St Helens

Although people from St Helens and Widnes originally spoke with a Lancashire accent eg. Johnny Vegas, these days younger generations can be found with a Scouse accent but some older generations still have the Lancashire accent

I don't think this is true at all. Of course, it's a well known fact about the small influx of Liverpudlians settling in these towns, but it doesn't necessarily infer the younger generations of native Widnesians and St Heleners speak with a scouse accent. An index of metals (talk) 09:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The sentence here had been altered; I have rewritten it with the aid of "the Lancashire Dictionary". The author, Alan Crosby, says that Scouse is expanding amongst younger people in Merseyside. He estimates the border as between Garswood (Scouse) and Bryn (Lancashire).

I am actually from Yorkshire. I have to say that the Widnes Vikings fans sound more Scouse than Lancastrian to me, but my ears may be too Yorkshire-focused. Epa101 (talk) 19:14, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers for that. I wouldn't deny the expanding of the scouse accent via lineage of scouse parents through sort of, domestic diaspora, but to claim it was an overwhelming young generation 'flick of a switch' transition is a bit of a stretch. An index of metals (talk) 20:11, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I have to take issue with Alan Crosby. I re-wrote for clarification. The border is further down the trainline between St Helens and Rainhill. Anyone local knows that Scousers start properly at Rainhill although more and more are moving to St Helens. I don't know about Widnes. 555JERK (talk) 12:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Where does this stuff come from?

"In south Lancashire, speech is generally more refined, although Wigan and Leigh are possibly the last bastions of the traditional dialect" Speech is more refined - what does that mean? What is you definition of a "refined" accent? This is blatantly POV and needs changing.

"There are also some Midlands features that become apparent, such as a lack of ng coalescence (therefore, singer rhymes with finger)." Doesn't singer always rhyme with finger wherever you come from? How would you pronounce them differently?

"Accrington in rural eastern Lancashire" There's nothing very rural about Accrington as far as I can see.

"...a lorra laughs". This is now confined to the more rural parts of Lancashire. So Cilla Black comes from rural Lancashire does she?

This article really does need some proper referencing to reliable souces. Richerman (talk) 10:56, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Point 1 is fair enough, but means closer to RP/Standard English.

The answer to point 2 is "no". I presume you say the two the same way, but most areas of the UK do not. The g is always in "finger" but not in "singer".

Point 3 is fair enough.

As regards point 4, Cilla Black is an old woman now and you don't hear too many younger people talking like her. The point of the article is that the traditional Lancastrian (and Northern) t-to-r rule has been replaced by T-glottaling. Perhaps it would be better if the urban/rural distinction were replaced by an age distinction.

It does need references for each line as in the Yorkshire dialect and accent article. I may try to do some myself. The Linguistic Atlas of England is the best place for traditional dialect. Epa101 (talk) 22:39, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm completely confused by the ng-coalescence thing now. Yes, I do come from Manchester but I've always worked in universities with people who have all sorts of accents and I've never noticed this difference in pronunciation of G's. For that matter neither have any of my colleagues, but I will be listening for it in future. The main problem I have with this article is that there seems to be a lot of original research in it. The section on variations is particularly problematical as none of it is referenced and I would be surprised if it could be. Although it all rings true it sounds like someone's own opinions rather than something from published sources and that is not what wikipedia is all about - see wp:verifiability. Richerman (talk) 10:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

You've done a lot of work on it, which is good. I wrote the article originally. I know this is bad, but I didn't put the in-line citations at the time: I just put the works in at the bottom. I plan to improve the article within the next week. In the meantime, a glance at the Linguistic Atlas of England will show you that most of the features mentioned can be verified. Epa101 (talk) 22:03, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

There is an article on Ng coalescence. It can be heard across a large chunk of England, including the Sheffield area and the whole West Midlands as well as south Lancashire. Also, John Wells notes that it is not a stigmatised feature, so it extends right up the social ladder. It is not part of the traditional BBC accent though. Epa101 (talk) 22:05, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I read the article on ng coalescence but I'm still confused as I can't think of anyone who pronounces it that way. It's surprising what you don't hear when your not looking for it. On that point shoudn't it be either ng or NG coalescence rather than Ng? I've left it as Ng in the link as that's how it's written in the The Phonological history of English consonants article but here and here it's called NG coalescence. I would have thought that having both letters in either upper or lower case would be ok but, as you've probably noticed, I'm no expert. I think the statements that would be hard to verify are the ones about which accents people such as Peter Kay or Jon Anderson have. Richerman (talk) 12:40, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You're probably right on both counts; I think it should be NG in capitals, so I'll alter that. I've added a reference in for the early 20th century films that included Lancs dialect, as that was from the Fred Holcroft book. Too many pop-culture references is bad in a Wikipedia article, so that part may need to be cleaned up soon. Epa101 (talk) 10:09, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Good man that man! Youre right about the pop culture too - I think the films that are referenced are fine but the bit about Coronation Street and Emmerdale looks like original research and should go. Richerman (talk) 13:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I've removed most of the celebrities' references now. The article's much more in line with Wikipedia's guidelines now. Epa101 (talk) 22:09, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

"In Halifax, words such as fur and fair will often be pronounced the same." That is complete nonsense, obviously written by someone who doesn't have a clue about the accent of Halifax or the upper Calder Valley. The statement would be true if it referred to Todmorden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.226.91 (talk) 01:23, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Lancastrian slang

I have removed the following to the talk page. Apart from the fact that it is poorly written, with numerous errors in capital letters and spelling, it is completely unsourced, in places of dubious veracity, and reads like a (poorly written) personal essay. Another editor has requested help from WikiProject Greater Manchester and WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria in trying to sort this section out. Once this has been done, what is left can be reinserted into the article. Skinsmoke (talk) 00:33, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Despite much of the old Lancashire Dialect's slang being far less common for example "brock" meaning badger or "Rappet" meaning rabbit or even "Yedwarch" meaning Headache, there are still several slang words or pronounciations of official English words that vary from the way English is most commonly spoken. The reason for such a unique accent is primarily due to the county's historic settlement by Norsemen in the early middle ages and mass Irish immigration in the Victorian era.

Examples include:

"Bin" meaning been; an example of this in a sentance would be "Ah've bin t' shop" or simply just "bin shop" meaning "One has just visited a store"

"Gob" coming diarectly from Irish Gaelic meaning mouth; The word is common also in other British accents, and the sweet(candy) Gobstopper (Jawbreaker to North Americans) takes its name from this as it quite literally prevents a person's mouth from functioning properly. "Stoppin' yer Gob"

"Codswallop" meaning rubbish, used for example "you're talking a load rubbish" would be "yer speakin codswallop".

The term codswallop supposedly takes it's name from a water company in Liverpool (named cods), which had glass stoppers in the top of bottles they produced which children would break open bottles to get in order to use as marbles. These glass stoppers would be called "cods" (taking there name from the manufacturer) and children would "wallop" (meaning to hit or throw) these "cods" thus creating the term "cods-wallop" how the term got its current meaning is unclear so maybe this tale is just a load of "codswallop" itself.

"Nowt" meaning nothing. Dispite many thinking the lancashire dialect is a dialect of simpletons this word proves that this is far from the case as it comes directly from the Latin word "Nought" meaning the number zero or nothing.

"owt" meaning anything, likely first said as it's similar to "nowt" but has a positive meaning.

The words "who", "us" and "give" are often used differently to there correct meanings. "who" meaning "she", "us" is used to said "I" or "me" and "give" is used often as "gave". For example "who give us it" would mean "She gave me it".

This is quite a poor passage. Some of these words are very common in Britain and outside it. Including "bin" for "been" is funny. Even Americans say that. I suggest that it all be deleted. The Lancashire Dictionary is mentioned in the article. That should be enough to illustrate that certain words are particular to Lancs (or, at least, used to be). Epa101 (talk) 13:37, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't disagree with that. The editor who raised it at the county projects was tempted to just delete it, but thought there may just be the odd thing worth keeping. I'm not so sure it adds anything at all, which is why I removed it to the talk page. Skinsmoke (talk) 13:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Scope to improve

I started this article some years ago, and it came up on my watchlist recently. It's interesting to learn that this article has been classified as High-Importance in the county projects.

I may take some criticism for the quality of this article. I admit that it's not great. It's certainly not up to the standard of other accent articles such as Cockney, Welsh English or Yorkshire dialect. I have ordered volume 1 of Graham Shorrock's A Grammar of the Dialect of the Bolton Area for £43 (ridiculous but it's not available in any local libraries). Therefore, I should be able to make some improvements to this article soon and introduce some comments about the modern Lancashire accent. However, this will be focussed on Bolton.

What else can be done to improve the article? I'm not sure. Lancashire still has a distinct accent, but academics have cruelly neglected it. Are there any other modern linguistic studies of Lancastrian speech? (Defining Lancashire broadly here) In developing this article, I leaned heavily on the Survey of English Dialects, but this completely neglects south Lancashire and I imagine that the speech described in it would seem very countrified to young Lancastrians today. For example, virtually every site in Lancs in the SED had [a:] for MOUTH. How many people west of the Pennines say that now? It's become confined to the Sheffield area.

Here are my only other suggestions:

• Accents of English, JC Wells - has a few passing comments on Lancs
• The Dialects of England, P Trudgill - has Central Lancashire as a distinct region, so this might be more useful
• Formant frequencies of vowels in 13 accents of the British Isles, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Volume 40, Issue 01 - contains a brief description of the vowels in Burnley.

Does anyone else have any good modern sources to improve this article? Epa101 (talk) 13:33, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

[a:] is still strong, and common in more places than Sheffield, but that's just my personal observation.Koncorde (talk) 15:27, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

That's interesting. Is it still used in Lancs?

I now have Shorrock's book. It is long and dense. It may take me a while to update anything, as I realise that I don't know much at all about the dialect of Bolton. On a first impression, it's interesting that Shorrock did his research around the same time that Petyt did his in West Yorkshire. Whereas Petyt found that dialect was virtually dead in Bradford, Huddersfield and Halifax, Shorrock seems to have found plenty of people who still spoke in the dialect around Bolton. Epa101 (talk) 21:27, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Bolton, Preston, Blackburn, Chorley, Burnley, as far south as Wigan and St Helens. You hear occasional snippets into Warrington. It's a generational thing, nowhere near as prominent with the younger lot. Again, all my "observation". Koncorde (talk) 22:18, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

That's interesting. Shorrock lists the traditional Bolton MOUTH vowel as [ɛ:] or sometimes [æ:]. In my observations, I associate Lancastrians more with diphthongs such as [ɐʏ], as in this engineer from Oldham. Epa101 (talk) 15:19, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

[æ:] and [ɛ:] to my ear sound more like something you'd get in a Mancunian or affected Mancunian area - so Bolton parts perhaps (particularly the younger generation maybe?). I would agree with the dipthong being more representative of the emerging speech. I think Lancastrian is best described as a melange, with some unique dialect (often distinct to individual towns). Koncorde (talk) 16:09, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I thought the Bolton/Chorley area had its own unique pronunciation, verging towards [ɛʊ] or [ɜʊ] maybe, not at all typical of the rest of Lancashire, but maybe I've been listening to the wrong people! -- Dr Greg  talk  22:21, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I think you'll probably find that the accent literally changes from mile to mile, it's far from homogeneous (which is where this article ran into issues originally by trying to pick up on the words that are commonly shared with Yorkshire). My own accent for instance is a (well spoken) but Lancastrian accent with occasional Scouse / Mancunian / local inflection. Koncorde (talk) 23:18, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I ought to admit that I am actually from (west) Yorkshire. I have never lived in Lancashire, but I have always been interested in dialect and I think that Lancashire is an interesting area linguistically. To add to the discussion about diversity, I'll add that multiple pronunciations can be found in one town as well. For example, Shorrock says that "no" might be pronounced in any one of [nɛ: nɜʏ næ: no:] in the Bolton area. If every large town in Lancashire is like this, then the article can't realistically cover everything. Epa101 (talk) 12:36, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I have a suggestion. I might add a new section entitled "Shorrock's grammar of the Bolton dialect", and list the vowels and consonants in his book (complete with examples in words). If I start editing the existing material, it's going to get messy with regular Bolton-specific sentences. Epa101 (talk) 12:39, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I think the article needs to importantly split what is dialect, and that pronunciation varies per local accent. For instance the examples given at the bottom of the article - the two Kays, Maconie and Vegas are all very distinct from each other as are Gracie Fields, George Formby, Horrocks, Ecclestone etc. Notably absent is Arthur Askey, born in Liverpool but with anything but a scouse accent. However each will use very generic Lancashire contractions, colloquialisms and dialect. Here's an external links with some further books for reference listed at the bottom [1]. I can rhyme off any number of lancashire phrases, but most will now be either commonly used across the UK, or no longer be uttered with the traditional stresses and inflections (in as much as the Ilkley Moor poem is hardly accurate of modern Yorkshire accent). Koncorde (talk) 15:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm writing to inform everyone that it'll be a while before I add any material from Shorrocks to this article. My home internet router has broken. Once it's fixed, I'll start the hard work of updating the article. Epa101 (talk) 12:36, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

And I'm back. After reading (in parts) Shorrocks's two parts on the Bolton dialect, I think that the best way to improve this article would be to add information on dialect grammar. He says that one of the main conclusions of his book is that non-standard grammar has been overlooked in dialectology. In terms of phonetics, he goes into fantastic detail on this, but it would be very difficult to add any of this to the article. He gives the traditional dialect form, the more modified "Northern Regional Standard" form and everything inbetween. Epa101 (talk) 23:30, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

About

What's not mentioned but what appears to be very common amongst Lancashire people from my experience is the pronunciation of the word "about" as roughly homophonous to "aboat", just like Scottish, Northern Irish, or Canadian accents. I don't know what the proper IPA explanation is, and I'm not sure exactly what the geographic distribution is of this phenomenon, but I feel someone who's better qualified than me to explain it should add it. 90.216.122.233 (talk) 09:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Specification

I think the article needs to specify when using the IPA symbol "u", if it should be pronounced as in standard English (i.e. not really u in terms of IPA), or most other European languages, the close back rounded vowel.–– ♫ Mara ♫ 20:58, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

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Split of the article into an article about the dialect and another about the mixture of the standard language and the dialect

Hello,

this article covers both the dialect and the mixture of the standard language and the dialect. Kind regards,

Sarcelles (talk) 09:05, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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Plan to revamp

I created this article back in 2007. Looking at it now, I feel rather disappointed with it. I have become much more knowledgeable about dialects in the years since I started this article, but there has been precious little research into Lancashire dialects since the advent of sociolinguistics, and the research that was done in the past is dated.

Here's what I suggest:

• Divisions of Lancashire dialect: mention AJ Ellis's regions (which excluded Liverpool). Although this research was conducted long since, it still gives an idea of the diversity in the county.
• 19th Century dialect glossaries (e.g. Schilling on Oldham, Hoops on Adlington, Nodal & Milner on Lancashire in general)
• 19th Century dialect poetry (mentioning that there are a few people still writing in Lancashire dialect now)
• Survey of English Dialects (current section plus a line on how the plan to investigate more urban dialects was abandoned, which was a terrible shame for Lancashire)
• Brief comment on Graham Shorrocks's work on Bolton, but it is covered in its own article
• Whatever modern research I can find.

As this would involve comprehensive change, I thought that I should post my plan here first. Please let me have your comments. I'll wait a fortnight before acting. Epa101 (talk) 23:06, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

See my sandbox: User:Epa101/sandbox. Comments welcome before I put it on the real article here. Epa101 (talk) 23:32, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Go for it. Be bold. Koncorde (talk) 04:55, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, @Koncorde:. I'm sorry that I failed to be specific enough with many of my wikilinks. That's the sort of thing that I forget about when I'm working in my sandbox. You might notice that I've not added anything yet on modern research. There is not much at all. I still plan to do a section for this, but I'm working out what to say. Epa101 (talk) 10:43, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

If you need any more specific feedback just ping me. Happy to help, give suggestions, but don't want to get in the way of your thought process etc if you have an idea. We can always go back and review after the fact. Koncorde (talk) 11:07, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Very good of you, @Koncorde:. I have added a section on modern research now. Tomorrow, I'd like to tidy up the AJ Ellis section a bit. Then might be a good time for feedback. Epa101 (talk) 13:49, 19 January 2020 (UTC) Actually, there is something that I can ask you now. What do you think of the section at the end, "In popular culture"? I am concerned that there are few references in this section and some of the examples given are of celebrities who are not the best examples of the dialect. Something like the Mike Leigh film Peterloo seems good example as it was deliberately done in Lancashire dialect, but many of the other cases are just actors who happen to have a few Lancastrian pronunciations. My instinct is to trim it down a lot. What do you think? Epa101 (talk) 13:54, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

What is the section meant to be? For instance if it's a series of comments and discussions by leading authors, or insights from academics, or even polls etc then that's good. But just lists of stuff that's a bit northern isn't really saying much (and becomes hard to justify without direct attribution) and lists of people who may or may not speak with the accents listed is a bit crufty.

I'm not sure how Kym Marsh, as a simple example, is "popular culture". Is it not then just a list of more modern stuff?

An "in popular culture" section for me would be stuff like key characters, tropes, recurring themes etc. For instance references to the ginger cat who used to be on at the beginning of Corrie, or the 3 ducks and a mural, or more recently even stuff like the parochial Phoenix Nights ( particularly the Preston Posse Vs Keighley Confederates, and the "send the buggers back" sequences), but there are many others - and in fact much of Peter Kay / Jason Manford and similar comics are based around Lancashire dialect. Whether there are reliable sources or content to support it is another thing. Koncorde (talk) 17:17, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I see what you mean. Perhaps we should delete all sentences that don't have a reliable source linking them to Lancashire dialect. As poetry is a form of popular culture and this is mentioned elsewhere in the article, I might change "In popular culture" to "In film, music and television". Epa101 (talk) 23:17, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Now actioned. Epa101 (talk) 12:49, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

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