61-618: Cumbrian dialect or Cumberland dialect is a local dialect of Northern England in decline, spoken in Cumberland , Westmorland and Lancashire North of the Sands . Some parts of Cumbria have a more North-East English sound to them. Whilst clearly spoken with a Northern English accent, the Cumbrian dialect shares much vocabulary with Scots . A Cumbrian Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore by William Rollinson exists, as well as
122-705: A longer [aː] . 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
183-474: A more contemporary and lighthearted Cumbrian Dictionary and Phrase Book . As with other English dialects north of the Humber-Lune Line and the closely related Scots language, Cumbrian is descended from Northern Middle English and in turn Northumbrian Old English . Old English was introduced to Cumbria from Northumbria , where it was initially spoken alongside the native Cumbric language. Despite
244-674: A regular development in Northern English in which the Old English long vowel /ɑː/ <ā> was broken into /ie/, /ia/ and so on. This explains the shift to yan and ane from the Old English ān , which is itself derived from the Proto-Germanic *ainaz . 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
305-426: 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 )
366-407: A variety of distinctive pronunciations, terms, and expressions. Northern English accents are often stigmatized, and some native speakers modify their Northern speech characteristics in corporate and professional environments. There is some debate about how spoken varieties of English have impacted written English in Northern England; furthermore, representing a dialect or accent in writing
427-610: Is also widespread, particularly following a consonant or between vowels. 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: In most areas,
488-408: Is considered a greater indicator of a speaker's social class than the less stigmatized aspects listed above. The /ɒ/ vowel of LOT is a fully open [ɒ] rather than the open-mid [ɔ] of modern Received Pronunciation and Southern England English. The most common R sound, when pronounced in Northern England, is the typical English postalveolar approximant ; however, an alveolar tap
549-543: Is less true in modern Britain due to enhanced geographic mobility. There are several speech features that unite most of the accents of Northern England and distinguish them from Southern England and Scottish accents. 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
610-523: Is not straightforward. The varieties of English spoken across modern Great Britain form an accent/dialect continuum, and there is no agreed definition of which varieties are Northern, and no consensus about what constitutes "the North". Wells uses a very broad definition of the linguistic North, comprising all accents that have not undergone the TRAP – BATH and FOOT – STRUT splits. On that basis,
671-464: Is now associated with some old-fashioned speakers . It is generally more common in the north of England than in the south. The words cure, pure, sure may be pronounced with a triphthong [ɪuə] . Most consonants are pronounced as they are in other parts of the English speaking world. A few exceptions follow: ⟨g⟩ and ⟨k⟩ have a tendency to be dropped or unreleased in
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#1732771856906732-399: Is out". In modern dialects, the most obvious manifestation is a levelling of the past tense verb forms was and were . Either form 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") and in many dialects especially in the far North, weren't is treated as the negation of
793-431: Is quite a large variation in accent, especially between north and south or the coastal towns. There are some uniform features that should be taken into account when pronouncing dialect words. When certain vowels are followed by /l/ , an epenthetic schwa [ə] is often pronounced between them, creating two distinct syllables: The pronunciation of moor and poor is a traditional feature of Received Pronunciation but
854-463: 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 . Conversely, the process of "pronoun exchange" means that many first-person pronouns can be replaced by
915-520: Is still widely used, wan is starting to creep into some sociolects of the area. There were several villages in Cumbria that were used during the Survey of English Dialects to minutely detail localised dialects. At the time, Cumbria did not exist as a unit of local government; there were 12 sites within modern Cumbria spread across four different counties: There were several among the well-educated in
976-441: Is the sheep counting numerals which are still used in various forms by shepherds throughout the area, and apparently for knitting. The word 'Yan' (meaning 'one'), for example, is prevalent throughout Cumbria and is still often used, especially by non-speakers of 'received pronunciation' and children, e.g. "That yan owr there," or "Can I have yan of those?" The Northern subject rule may be attributable to Celtic Influence. Before
1037-534: Is traditionally always pronounced as a voiceless alveolar plosive, although in many places it has been replaced by the glottal stop [ʔ] now common throughout Britain. ⟨y⟩ may be consonantal [j] as in yam home [ˈjam] . As the adjectival or adverbial suffix -y it may be [ɪ] or [iː] as in clarty (muddy) [ˈklaːtɪ] . Medially and, in some cases, finally it is [ɐː] as in Thorfinsty (a place) [ˈθɔːfɪnstɐː] . Finally, in some parts of
1098-657: 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. 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
1159-681: The Isle of Man . Many Cumbrian place names in or near coastal areas are of Norse origin, including Ulverston from Ulfrs tun ('Ulfr's farmstead'), Kendal from Kent dalr ('valley of the River Kent') and Elterwater from eltr vatn ('swan lake'). Many of the traditional dialect words are also remnants of Norse influence, including beck ( bekkr , 'stream'), laik ( leik , 'to play'), lowp ( hlaupa , 'to jump') and glisky ( gliskr , 'shimmering'). Once Cumbrians had assimilated to speaking Northumbrian English, there were few further influences on
1220-542: 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
1281-637: The Scots language , with terms such as bairn ("child"), bonny ("beautiful"), gang or gan ("go/gone/going") and kirk ("church") found on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border . Very few terms from Brythonic languages have survived, with the exception of place name elements (especially in Cumbrian toponymy ) and the Yan Tan Tethera counting system, which largely fell out of use in
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#17327718569061342-450: The coda (word- or syllable-finally). This can sometimes occur in the onset as well in words such as finger. ⟨h⟩ is realised in various ways throughout the county. When William Barrow Kendall wrote his Furness Wordbook in 1867, he wrote that ⟨h⟩ 'should never be dropped', suggesting the practice had already become conspicuous. It seems the elision of both ⟨h⟩ and ⟨t⟩ began in
1403-678: The isogloss between North and South runs from the River Severn to the Wash , and covers not just the entire North of England (which Wells divides into "Far North" and "Middle North"), but also most of the Midlands, including the distinctive Brummie (Birmingham) and Black Country dialects . In historical linguistics, the dividing line between the North and the North Midlands (an area of mixed Northumbrian-Mercian dialects, including
1464-465: The 18th century who used dialect in their poetry. One of the earliest was the Rev. Josiah Relph , whose imitations of Theocritan Pastorals self-consciously introduce the demotic for local colour. Although written about 1735, they were not published until after the author's death in A Miscellany of Poems (Wigton, 1747), followed by two further editions in 1797 and 1805. The Rev. Robert Nelson followed him in
1525-924: The 5th century AD, when Cumbria was the centre of the kingdom of Rheged , the language spoken in northern England and southern Scotland from Lancashire and Yorkshire to Strathclyde had developed into a dialect of Brythonic known as Cumbric (the scarcity of linguistic evidence, however, means that Cumbric's distinctness from Old Welsh is more deduced than proven). Remnants of Brythonic and Cumbric are most often seen in place names, in elements such as caer 'fort' as in Carlisle , pen 'hill' as in Penrith , glinn 'valley' and redïn 'ferns, bracken' as in Glenridding , and craig 'crag, rock' as in High Crag . The most well known Celtic element in Cumbrian dialect
1586-405: The 8th century AD Cumbria was annexed to English Northumbria and Old English began to be spoken in parts, although evidence suggests Cumbric survived in central regions in some form until the 11th century. A far stronger influence on the modern dialect was Old Norse , spoken by Norse and/or Norse-Gael settlers who probably arrived on the coasts of Cumbria in the 10th century via Ireland and
1647-463: The Humber . This approach is taken by the Survey of English Dialects (SED), which uses the historic counties (minus Cheshire) as the basis of the studies. The SED also groups Manx English with Northern dialects, although this is a distinct variety of English and the Isle of Man is not part of England. Under Wells' scheme, this definition includes Far North and Middle North dialects but excludes
1708-417: The Lancashire accent is still prevalent), while conservative accents also pronounce look and cook as /luːk/ and /kuːk/ . 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
1769-760: The Lancashire, the West Riding and the Peak District dialects) runs from either the River Ribble or the River Lune on the west coast to the River Humber on the east coast. The dialects of this region are descended from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English rather than Mercian or other Anglo-Saxon dialects. In his seminal study of English dialects, Alexander J. Ellis defined
1830-463: The Midlands dialects. Scottish English is distinct from Northern England English, although the two have interacted and influenced each other. The Scots language and the Northumbrian and Cumbrian dialects of English descend from the Old English of Northumbria (diverging in the Middle English period) and are still very similar to each other. Many historical northern accents reflect
1891-500: The Westmoreland and Cumberland dialects , followed from London in 1839. This contained work by all the poets mentioned already, with the addition of some songs by John Rayson that were later to be included in his Miscellaneous Poems and Ballads (London, 1858). Another anthology of regional writing, Sidney Gilpin's The Songs and Ballads of Cumberland (London, 1866), collects together work in both standard English and dialect by all
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1952-517: The border between the North and the Midlands as that where the word house is pronounced with u: to the north. For Ellis, "the North" occupied the area northwards of a line running from the River Lune to the Humber Estuary . Although well-suited to historical analysis, this line does not reflect contemporary language; this line divides Lancashire and Yorkshire in half and few would today consider Manchester or Leeds, both located south of
2013-477: The clear L , and in Lancashire and Manchester, which universally use only the dark L . Some northern English speakers have noticeable rises in their intonation , even to the extent that, to other speakers of English, they may sound "perpetually surprised or sarcastic." The grammatical patterns of Northern England English are similar to those of British English in general. However, there are several unique characteristics that mark out Northern English. Under
2074-487: The corpus, despite being limited to the North East and to the North West and Yorkshire respectively. Agnes Wheeler Agnes Wheeler or Ann Coward (bap. 1734 – 1804) was a British writer on the Cumbrian dialect . She is known for one book published in 1790. The Westmorland Dialect, in three familiar Dialogues: in which an Attempt is made to illustrate the provincial Idiom was an early attempt at recording
2135-820: The county, there is a tendency to palatalize the consonant cluster ⟨cl⟩ in word-initial and medial position, thereby rendering it as something more closely approaching [tl]. As a result, some speakers pronounce clarty (muddy) as [ˈtlaːtɪ] , "clean" as [ˈtliːn] , and "likely" and "lightly" may be indistinguishable. Stress is usually placed on the initial syllable: yakeren "acorn" [ˈjakɜɾən] . Unstressed initial vowels are usually fully realised, whilst those in final syllables are usually reduced to schwa [ə] . The Cumbrian numbers, often called 'sheep counting numerals' because of their (declining) use by shepherds to this very day, show clear signs that they may well have their origins in Cumbric . The table below shows
2196-505: The dialect. In the Middle Ages , much of Cumbria frequently swapped hands between England and Scotland but this had little effect on the language used. In the nineteenth century miners from Cornwall and Wales began relocating to Cumbria to take advantage of the work offered by new iron ore, copper and wadd mines but whilst they seem to have affected some local accents (notably Barrow-in-Furness) they don't seem to have contributed much to
2257-409: The drop of the h there is more emphasis on the letter o . The indefinite article used would be 'an'. 'A hospital' becomes an 'ospital. Another example is with the letter t where twenty is often pronounced twen'y (again an emphasis on the n could occur) or twe'y (realised as /ˈtwɛ.ʔɪ/). Books: Northern England English The spoken English language in Northern England has been shaped by
2318-399: 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. Almost all British vernaculars have regularised reflexive pronouns , but the resulting form of
2379-488: The following decades. Some of these publications also incorporated the work of his precursors and a few other contemporaries, such as Ewan Clark and Mark Lonsdale. One such collection was Ballads in the Cumberland dialect, chiefly by R. Anderson (1808, second edition 1815, Wigton), and a third from Carlisle in 1823. A more ambitious anthology of dialect verse, Dialogues, poems, songs, and ballads, by various writers, in
2440-471: The industrial towns and slowly spread out. In the south, it is now very common. ⟨l⟩ in the word final position may be dropped or realised as [w] : woo wool [ˈwəw] ; pow pole [ˈpɒw] . ⟨r⟩ is realised as [ɾ] following consonants and in word-initial position but is often elided in the coda, unless a following word begins with a vowel: ross [ˈɾɒs] ; gimmer [ˈɡɪmə] ; gimmer hogg [ˈɡɪməɾ‿ɒɡ] . ⟨t⟩
2501-926: The influence of the Old Norse language strongly, compared with other varieties of English spoken in England. 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 and Old East Norse (the ancestor language of modern Norwegian, Swedish and Danish). During
Cumbrian dialect - Misplaced Pages Continue
2562-840: The letter y on the end of words as in happy or city is pronounced [ɪ] , like the i in bit , and not [i] . This was also the norm in RP until the late 20th century. The tenser [i] , similar to Southern England and Modern RP, is found in throughout the North East from Teesside northwards, and in the Merseyside and Hull areas. The North does not have a clear distinction between the "clear L " and "dark L " of most other accents in England; in other words, most Northern accents pronounce all L sounds with some moderate amount of velarization . Exceptions to this are in Tyneside, Wearside and Northumberland, which universally use only
2623-429: The line, as part of the Midlands. 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
2684-474: The local dialect of Cumbria today is definite article reduction . Unlike the Lancashire dialect, where 'the' is abbreviated to 'th', in Cumbrian (as in Yorkshire and south Durham) the sound is harder and in sentences sounds as if it is attached to the previous word, for example " int " instead of "in the" " ont " instead of "on the". Cumbria is a large area with several relatively isolated districts, so there
2745-761: The local dialect. There were four editions of the book. Her work was later used in Specimens of the Westmorland Dialect published by the Revd Thomas Clarke in 1887. She was born near Cartmel and went to London for 18 years where she married a Captain Wheeler and worked as a housekeeper. She returned to Cumbria a widow where she wrote for the local press in plain English. She published her one book in dialect which initially had three dialogues but in later editions four. The conversations discuss
2806-485: The mid and late 19th century, there was large-scale migration from Ireland, which affected the speech of parts of Northern England. This is most apparent in the accents along the west coast, such as Liverpool, Birkenhead, Barrow-in-Furness and Whitehaven. Variations in modern Northern English accents/dialects include: In some areas, dialects and phrases can vary greatly within very small geographic regions. Historically, accents did change over very small distances, but this
2867-507: The modern county being created only in 1974 from the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and north Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire, Cumbria is an ancient division. Before the arrival of the Romans, the area was the home of the Carvetii tribe, which was later assimilated to the larger Brigantes tribe. These people would have spoken Brythonic , which developed into Old Welsh , but around
2928-501: 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
2989-530: The new editions of his poems published from Wigton in 1807 and 1808. What seems to have lifted use of Cumbrian dialect from a passing curiosity to a demonstration of regional pride in the hands of labouring class poets was the vogue of Robert Burns , among whose disciples the calico worker Robert Anderson counted himself. His Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect were published from Carlisle in 1805 and were reprinted in several different formats over
3050-640: The nineteenth century. The Yan Tan Tethera system was traditionally used in counting stitches in knitting, as well as in children's nursery rhymes , counting-out games , and was anecdotally connected to shepherding. This was most likely borrowed from a relatively modern form of the Welsh language rather than being a remnant of the Brythonic of what is now Northern England. The forms yan and yen used to mean one as in someyan ("someone") that yan ("that one"), in some northern English dialects, represents
3111-525: The poets mentioned so far, as well as Border Ballads, poems by William Wordsworth and family, and other verse of regional interest. Some later poets include John Sewart ( Rhymes in the Westmoreland Dialect , Settle, 1869) and Gwordie Greenup (the pseudonym of Stanley Martin), who published short collections in prose and verse during the 1860s and 1870s. A more recent anthology, Oor mak o' toak: an anthology of Lakeland dialect poems, 1747-1946 ,
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#17327718569063172-453: 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
3233-467: 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 . 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
3294-421: 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. In addition to Standard English terms, the Northern English lexis includes many words derived from Norse languages, as well as words from Middle English that disappeared in other regions. Some of these are now shared with Scottish English and
3355-534: The same tradition with A choice collection of poems in Cumberland dialect (Sunderland, 1780). Ewan Clark, a contemporary of Nelson's, also wrote a handful of dialect imitations that were included in his Miscellaneous Poems (Whitehaven 1779). Female members of the gentry writing in dialect at this time included Susanna Blamire and her companion Catherine Gilpin. Miss Blamire had written songs in Scots that were set to music by Joseph Haydn . Her work in Cumbrian dialect
3416-631: 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
3477-630: The variation of the numbers throughout Cumbria, as well as the relevant cognate in Welsh, Cornish and Breton, which are the three geographically closest British languages to Cumbric, for comparison. NB: when these numerals were used for counting sheep, repeatedly, the shepherd would count to fifteen or twenty and then move a small stone from one of his pockets to the other before beginning again, thus keeping score. Numbers eleven, twelve etc. would have been 'yandick, tyandick', while sixteen and seventeen would have been 'yan-bumfit, tyan-bumfit' etc. Although yan
3538-430: The vocabulary. The earliest recordings of the dialect were in a book published by Agnes Wheeler in 1790. The Westmoreland dialect in three familiar dialogues, in which an attempt is made to illustrate the provincial idiom. There were four editions of the book. Her work was later used in Specimens of the Westmorland Dialect published by the Revd Thomas Clarke in 1887. One of the lasting characteristics still found in
3599-673: Was . 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. While standard English now only has
3660-595: Was less well known and remained uncollected until the publication of The Muse of Cumberland in 1842. This was followed by Songs and Poems , edited by Sidney Gilpin in 1866, in which Miss Gilpin's work also appeared. In the 19th century appeared a few poems in dialect in the Miscellaneous Poems of John Stagg (Workington, 1804, second edition the following year). Known as 'the Cumbrian Minstrel', he too wrote in Scots and these poems appeared in
3721-703: Was published from Carlisle in 1946 by the Lakeland Dialect Society. Barrow-in-Furness is unique within Cumbria and the local dialect tends to be more Lancashire orientated. Like Liverpool this is down to the large numbers of settlers from various regions (including predominantly Scotland , elsewhere in England and Ireland amongst other locations). In general the Barrovian dialect tends to drop certain letters (including h and t ) for example holiday would be pronounced as 'oliday , and with
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