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First draft of a new section on Lancashire dialect

Alexander John Ellis divided the county of Lancashire into four areas. Three of these four were considered North Midland, whereas the fourth (mostly the section that is in modern Cumbria) was considered Northern. Dialect isoglosses in England seldom correspond to county boundaries, and an area of Lancashire could have a dialect more similar to an area of a neighbouring county than to a distant area of Lancashire.

Ellis expressly excluded the Scouse dialect of Liverpool from the areas below, although his Area 22 included some sites in modern Merseyside (e.g. Newton-le-Willows, Prescot). In more recent decades, the Scouse dialect has migrated beyond the city of Liverpool into surrounding areas.

Ellis did not include Barrow-in-Furness in his survey, so it is not known whether he would have treated the Barrovian dialect similarly to Scouse or whether he would have included it in his area 31, which surrounds Barrow.

Ellis often spoke of "the Lancashire U" in his work. This was similar to the ʊ in other Northern and North Midland dialects, but more centralised ʊ̈.

Dialect area number	Dialect area name	Distinctive characteristics	Sites in Lancashire	Areas of other counties in same dialect area
21	southern North Midland	ɐʏ in MOUTH words. ɪŋk for the present participle.	Bury, Failsworth, Manchester, Moston, Oldham, Patricroft, Royton, Rochdale, Stalybridge	Parts of north-east Cheshire and north-west Derbyshire
22	western North Midland	eː in FACE words. ʊə in GOAT words, although ɔɪ occurs in words such as "coal" and "hole". ɛɪ in some FLEECE words (e.g. "speak").	Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Clitheroe, Colne Valley, Earlestown, Farrington, Halliwell, Haslingden, Higham, Hoddlesden, Leigh, Leyland, Mellor, Newton-le-Willows, Ormskirk, Penwortham, Prescot, Sabden, Samlesbury, Skelmersdale, Walton-le-Dale, Warrington, Westhoughton, Whalley, Wigan, Worsthorn	None. Ellis said that he considered including the Yorkshire sites of Halifax, Huddersfield, Marsden and Saddleworth in this area, but decided to include them in area 24 instead.
23	northern North Midland	aʊ in MOUTH words. ɑɪ in PRICE words.	Abbeystead, Blackpool, Garstang, Goosnargh, Kirkham, Poulton-le-Fylde, Preston, Wyersdale	Isle of Man
31	west Northern	ia in FACE words. eɪ in FLEECT words. aɪ in PRICE words. iʊ in GOOSE words. ʊu in MOUTH words.	Broughton-in-Furness, Cark-in-Cartmel, Caton, Cockerham, Coniston, Dalton, Heysham, High Nibthwaite, Hornby, Lancaster, Lower Holker in Cartmel, Newton-in-Cartmel, Quernmoor, Skerton, Ulverston	All of Westmorland. Parts of east Cumberland, south Durham and north-west Yorkshire

Dialect glossaries

A number of dialect glossaries were published in the 18th and 19th Centuries, often by philologists who were interested in the old words retained in certain dialects.

• A Glossary of the Words and Phrases of Furness (North Lancashire), RB Peacock, London Phil. Soc. Trans., 1869.
• A Glossary of Rochdale-with-Rossendale Words and Phrases, H Cunliffe, 1886.
• A Blegburn Dickshonary, J Baron, 1891.
• The Dialect of South Lancashire, or Tom Bobbin's Tummus and MEary; with his rhymes and an enlarged glossary of words and phrases, chiefly used by the rural population of the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire, Samuel Bamford, 1854.
• Glossary of provincial words used in the neighbourhood of Ashton-under-Lyne, Mr. Barnes, 1846.
• A Grammar Of The Dialect Of Oldham (Lancashire), Karl Georg Schilling, 1906.
• A Grammar Of The Dialect Of Adlington (Lancashire), Karl Andrew Hargreaves, 1904.
• A Glossary of the Dialect of the Hundred of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, in the County of Lancaster; together with an essay on some leading characteristics of the dialects spoken in the six northern counties of England (ancient Northumbria), JC Atkinson, 1869.
• Glossary of provincial words used in the neighbourhood of Ormskirk, W Hawkstead Talbot, 1846.

Of these, only the works on Oldham and Adlington contain any phonetic notation, and this was in a slightly different code to the modern IPA.

Dialect	Reference	Short vowels	Long vowels	Diphthongs	Triphthongs
Adlington	Hargreaves, 1904	a ɑ e ɪ ɔ ʊ o ə	aː ɑ: eː ɛː iː ɔ: uː oː əː	aɪː aːe eiː iːə ʊə ɔɪː ɔʊː uɪ ʊiː	aɪə
Oldham	Schilling, 1906	a e ɪ ɔ ʊ o ə	aː eː iː ɔ: uː oː ɜː	aɪ eɪ ɪə aʊ ʊə ɛʊ ɛə ɔɪ ɔə uɪ ɪɛ

Dialect literature

Graham Shorrocks wrote that Lancashire has been the county with the strongest tradition of dialect poetry since the mid-19th century. John Collier, writing under the name Tommy Bobbin, published more than a hundred editions of "A View of the Lancashire Dialect". Many of these gave commentaries on the poverty of the working class at the time and occasional political sentiments: for example, the ballad Joan of Grinfilt portrayed an unemployed handloom worker who would rather die as a soldier in a foreign war than starve at home. Vicinus argued that, after 1870, dialect writing declined in quality owing to "clichés and sentimentality".

The Lancashire Authors Association was founded in 1909 and still exists for writers in the dialect, producing an annual paper called The Record.

Get citation

McKnight, Rebecca; Price, Jonathan; Geddes, John. Psychiatry (5 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 431. ISBN 9780198754008.