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60-598: Southern English may refer to: English in southern England , the English language of southern England Southern American English , the English language of the South of the United States See also [ edit ] Northern English (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

120-427: A /j/ in words like "use", "unit", etc. only if there is no consonant before the /j/ . Yod-coalescence is a process that fuses the clusters /dj, tj, sj, zj/ into the sibilants [dʒ, tʃ, ʃ, ʒ] respectively (for the meanings of those symbols, see English phonology ). The first two are examples of affrication . Unlike yod-dropping, yod-coalescence frequently occurs with clusters that would be considered to span

180-488: A shibboleth distinguishing Canadians from Americans. However, in a survey conducted in the Golden Horseshoe area of Southern Ontario in 1994, over 80% of respondents under the age of 40 pronounced student and news without yod. General American thus undergoes yod-dropping after all alveolar consonants . A few accents of American English , such as working-class Southern American English , however, preserve

240-683: A certain extent in New Zealand English , RP , many speakers in Scottish English , and even some varieties of English in Asia, like Philippine English (many speakers because of the influence by the phonology of their mother languages). That results in pronunciations such as the following: In certain varieties such as Australian, Ugandan, and some RP , stressed [sj, zj] can also coalesce: That can lead to additional homophony; for instance, dew and due come to be pronounced

300-501: A largely indigenous population, particularly the West Country . In many other areas they are declining because of RP and Estuary accents moving to the area; for instance, strong Isle of Wight accents tend to be more prevalent in older speakers. As well as rhoticity, here are common features of West County accents: In traditional Southern rural accents, the voiceless fricatives /s/, /f/, /θ/, /ʃ/ always remain voiceless, which

360-422: A pun on "new high". In some types of Caribbean English , the initial clusters /sp/ , /st/ , and /sk/ are reduced by the loss of /s/ . The following stop is then subject to regular aspiration (or devoicing of the following approximant) in its new word-initial environment. Some examples of such pronunciations are: According to Wells , these reductions occur only in the broadest creole . NG-coalescence

420-467: A syllable boundary and so commonly occurs before unstressed syllables. For example, in educate , the /dj/ cluster would not usually be subject to yod-dropping in General American, as the /d/ is assigned to the previous syllable, but it commonly coalesces to [dʒ] . Here are a few examples of yod-coalescence universal in all English dialects: In some other words, the coalesced pronunciation

480-430: A word like sing as being underlyingly /sɪnɡ/ , positing a rule that deletes [ɡ] after a nasal before a morpheme boundary, after the nasal has undergone assimilation. A problem with this view is that there are a few words in which [ŋ] is followed neither by a velar nor a morpheme boundary (such as gingham , dinghy , orangutan and Singapore for those speakers who pronounce them without [ɡ] ), and some in which

540-472: Is a family of similar strongly rhotic accents, now perceived as rural. It originally extended an even larger region, across much of South East England, including an area south of the " broad A " isogloss , but the modern West Country dialects are now most often classified west of a line roughly from Shropshire via Oxfordshire . Their shared characteristics have been caricatured as Mummerset . They persist most strongly in areas that remain largely rural with

600-416: Is a historical sound change by which the final cluster /nɡ/ , pronounced [ŋɡ] (the /n/ being realized as a velar nasal by assimilation with the velar /ɡ/ ), came to be pronounced as just [ŋ] – that is, the final [ɡ] was dropped, but the velar quality of the nasal remained. The change took place in educated London speech around the end of the 16th century, and explains why there is no [ɡ] sound at

660-722: Is common in English dialects around the world, but an older non-coalesced form still exists among some speakers of standard British English: Coalescence can even occur across word boundaries, as in the colloquial " gotcha " / ˈ ɡ ɒ tʃ ə / (for got you / ˈ ɡ ɒ t j u / ) and "whatcha" / ˈ w ɒ tʃ ə / (for what're you / ˈ w ɒ t ər j ə / ). In certain English accents, yod-coalescence also occurs in stressed syllables, as in tune and dune . That occurs in Australian , Cockney , Estuary English , Zimbabwean English , some speakers of Hiberno-English , Newfoundland English , South African English , and to

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720-415: Is no [ɡ] sound. An exception is the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives: in the words longer/longest , stronger/strongest , younger/youngest , the [ɡ] is pronounced in most accents. The pronunciation with [ɡ] is thus possible only before a vowel; before a consonant, the only possibility is a bare [ŋ] . In other cases (when it is not morpheme-final), word-internal -ng- does not show

780-505: Is particularly associated with English English accents in areas such as Lancashire , the West Midlands and Derbyshire , and is also present in north-east varieties of Welsh English . This includes the cities of Birmingham (see Brummie ), Manchester (see Manchester dialect ), Liverpool (see Scouse ), Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent (see Potteries dialect ). This also occurs in a small area of Kent . As this occurs around

840-633: Is possible that some Sussex and Kentish rhoticity lasted until as recently as the early 21st century in certain pockets. The vowel /ɒ/ (as in LOT ) is very occasionally used for the STRUT vowel, normally /ʌ/ ; it has been reported as a minority variant in Kent and Essex. In the 18th and 19th centuries, in Essex, Kent, and east Sussex, plus several other South East areas including London, Suffolk, and Norfolk, /v/

900-560: Is preserved in some Scots dialects, and Alexander John Ellis recorded it in parts of the Northern English counties of Cumbria and Northumberland in the late nineteenth century. The Middle English initial cluster /ɡn/ is reduced to /n/ in Modern English. Like the reduction of /kn/ , this seems to have taken place during the seventeenth century. The change affected words like gnat , gnostic , gnome , etc.,

960-707: Is the main difference from West Country accents. Features which can be found in East Anglian English (especially in Norfolk ) include: There are differences between and even within areas of East Anglia: the Norwich accent has distinguishing aspects from the Norfolk dialect that surrounds it – chiefly in the vowel sounds. The accent of Cambridgeshire is different from the Norfolk accent, whilst Suffolk has greater similarities to that of Norfolk. The East Anglian feature of yod -dropping

1020-639: Is the resulting mainstream accent that combines features of both Cockney and a more middle-class RP. Less affluent areas have variants of Estuary English that grade into southern rural England outside urban areas. Outside of South East England, West Country English (of South West England ) and East Anglian English survive as traditional broad dialects in Southern England today, though they too are subject to Estuary English influence in recent decades and are consequently weakening. London and greater Thames Estuary accents are non-rhotic : that is,

1080-730: Is the traditional accent of the working classes of the areas immediately surrounding the City of London itself (most famously including the East End). It is characterised by many phonological differences from RP: Multicultural London English (abbreviated MLE), colloquially called Blockney, is a dialect (and/or sociolect ) of English that emerged in the late 20th century. It is spoken mainly by youths in multicultural parts of working-class London. The speech of Jamaicans , or children of Jamaican parents, in London shows interesting combinations of

1140-495: The /h/ (or become reduced to /h/ ) in some or all dialects. The cluster /hw/ (spelled ⟨wh⟩ since Middle English ) has been subject to two kinds of reduction: The Old English consonant clusters /hl/ , /hr/ and /hn/ were reduced to /l/ , /r/ , and /n/ in Middle English. For example, Old English hlāf , hring and hnutu become loaf , ring and nut in Modern English. In some dialects of English

1200-498: The American South , still retain a ( falling ) /ɪu/ diphthong where standard English has /juː/ – these dialects therefore lack the clusters with /j/ and have not been subject to the reductions described here. The diphthongs /juː/ or /ɪʊ̯/ are most commonly indicated by the spellings eu , ew , uCV (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), ue and ui , as in feud , few , mute , cue and suit , while

1260-522: The United States this reduction is mostly found in accents of Philadelphia and New York City ; it also occurs in Cork accents of Irish English . In other dialects of English, hew and yew remain distinct; however, the cluster /hj/ of hew , human , etc. is often reduced from [çj] to just [ç] (a voiceless palatal fricative ). Y-cluster reductions are reductions of clusters ending with

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1320-617: The [j] was elided in the following environments: The previously mentioned accents that did not have the [ɪ] → [j] change were not subject to this process. Thus, for example, in much Welsh English pairs like chews / choose , yew / you and threw / through remain distinct: the first member of each pair has the diphthong /ɪʊ̯/ , while the second member has /uː/ : Conversely, an initial /j/ does not appear in Welsh English before /iː/ in words such as yeast and yield . Many varieties of English have extended yod-dropping to

1380-427: The [ɡ] is not deleted before a morpheme boundary ( longer etc., as noted above). The above-mentioned accents which lack NG-coalescence may more easily be analyzed as lacking a phoneme /ŋ/ . The same may apply to those where NG-coalescence is extended to morpheme-internal position, since here a more consistent [ɡ] -deletion rule can be formulated. G-dropping is a popular name for the feature of speech whereby /n/

1440-488: The [ɡ] is not dropped before a stressed syllable, as in engage ). It is because of NG-coalescence that /ŋ/ is now normally regarded one of the phonemes of standard English . In Middle English, the [ŋ] can be regarded as an allophone of /n/ , occurring before velar consonants , but in Modern English, in view of minimal pairs such as pan–pang and sin–sing , that analysis no longer appears to hold. Nevertheless, some linguists (particularly generativists ) do regard

1500-533: The palatal approximant /j/ , which is the sound of ⟨y⟩ in yes , and is sometimes referred to as "yod", from the Hebrew letter yod(h) , which has the sound [j] . Many such clusters arose in dialects in which the falling diphthong /ɪu/ (the product of the merger of several Middle English vowel sequences) became the rising diphthong /juː/ . (For more information, see Phonological history of English high back vowels .) They were thus often found before

1560-460: The pew sound is widely incorrect. In New Zealand and to some extent Australian English , debut is mainly pronounced without the yod as /ˈdæebʉː/ . Yod-dropping after /t/ , /d/ , and /n/ was also a traditional feature of Cockney speech, which continues to be the case after /n/ , but now, after /t/ and /d/ , yod-coalescence is now more common. Some East Anglian accents such as Norfolk dialect extend yod-dropping not only to

1620-541: The wr- cluster is pronounced /vr/ . Alexander John Ellis reported distinctions between wr and r in Cumbria and in several varieties of Scots in the nineteenth century. Old English also had a cluster /wl/ , which reduced to /l/ during Middle English. For example, the word lisp derives from Old English wlisp(ian) . Middle English initial /kn/ is reduced in modern English to /n/ , making pairs like knot/not and knight/night homophones. The /kn/ cluster

1680-426: The 19th century, all of which are also shared with rural traditional East Anglian English . Modern Kent, and Sussex English is usually associated with non-rhotic Estuary English, mainly in urban areas receiving an influx of East London migrants since World War II. However, rhoticity used to characterize the traditional rural accents in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, though it has long been a recessive feature. Still, it

1740-463: The 20th century (Kerswill & Williams 2000; Britain 2002). This involved a process of levelling between the extremes of working-class Cockney in inner-city London and the careful upper-class standard accent of Southern England, Received Pronunciation (RP), popular in the 20th century with upper-middle and upper-class residents. Now spread throughout the South East region, Estuary English

1800-599: The Jamaican accent with the London accent. For example, in Jamaican English , /θ/ is replaced by [t] , for example both /boːt/ . In London, word-final /t/ is realised as [ʔ] , as mentioned above. In Jamaican-London speech, glottalization of /t/ applies also to /t/ from /θ/ , for example both of them [bʌʊʔ ə dem] . Hypercorrections like [fʊθ] for foot are also heard from Jamaicans. John C. Wells 's dissertation, Jamaican pronunciation in London ,

1860-807: The UK, simply, Southern English ) is the collective set of different dialects and accents of Modern English spoken in Southern England . As of the 21st century, a wide class of dialects labelled " Estuary English " is on the rise in South East England and the Home Counties (the counties bordering London), which was the traditional interface between the London urban region and more local and rural accents. Commentators report widespread homogenisation in South East England in

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1920-413: The cluster /hj/ is reduced to /j/ , leading to pronunciations like /juːdʒ/ for huge and /ˈjuːmən/ for human , and making hew , hue , and Hugh homophones of ewe , yew , and you . This is sometimes considered a type of glide cluster reduction , but it is much less widespread than wh-reduction, and is generally stigmatized where it is found. Aside from accents with general H-dropping , in

1980-552: The coasts of France and the Netherlands. A universal feminine gender pronoun was typical, reflected in a joking saying in Sussex that "Everything in Sussex is a she except a tomcat and she's a he." English consonant-cluster reductions#''Yod''-coalescence The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, involving consonant clusters beginning with /h/ that have lost

2040-696: The consonant / r / (phonetically [ɹ] ) occurs only before vowels. General characteristics of all major London accents include: Features of working- or middle-class Estuary English, spoken in the counties all around London in the 21st century, include: It retains some aspects of Cockney, such as the vocalisation of [ɫ] ( dark L ) to [o] , and yod -coalescence in stressed syllables (for example, duty [dʒʉːʔi] ) and replacement of [t] with [ʔ] (the glottal stop ) in weak positions, or occasionally with d). Wells notes traditional aspects of rural South East speech as lengthened [æː] in trap words and use of [eɪ] or [ɛʊ] in mouth words. Cockney

2100-439: The county's west having Estuary English speech features and the county's east having the traditional Essaxon and East Anglian features. The region largely south of London, including Surrey, Sussex, and once even Kent, used to speak with what today would be lumped under a South West England or "West Country" dialect. In all these counties, front MOUTH , front START , and high (or even round ) PRICE vowels predominated in

2160-412: The distinction in pairs like do / dew because, like in the Welsh English dialects discussed above, they retain a diphthong /ɪʊ̯/ in words in which RP has /juː/ : /lut~lɪʊ̯t/ , /du~dɪʊ̯/ , etc. However, in words like annual , menu , volume , Matthew , continue , etc., with a syllable break before the /j/ , there is no yod-dropping. The same applies accordingly to British and other accents;

2220-513: The effects of coalescence, and the pronunciation [ŋɡ] is retained, as in finger and angle . This means that the words finger and singer do not rhyme in most modern varieties of English, although they did in Middle English. The process of NG-coalescence might therefore be referred to as the singer–finger split . Some accents, however, do not show the full effects of NG-coalescence as described above. In these accents, sing may be found with [ŋɡ] , and singer may rhyme with finger . This

2280-440: The end of words like fang , sing , wrong and tongue in the standard varieties of Modern English. The change in fact applies not only at the end of a word, but generally at the end of a morpheme . If a word ending in -ng is followed by a suffix or is compounded with another word, the [ŋ] pronunciation normally remains. For example, in the words fangs , sings , singing , singer , wronged , wrongly , hangman , there

2340-739: The fact that, in his words, "Old customs, old beliefs, old prejudices die hard in the soil of England". Gower described certain standard English words with nonstandard pronunciations in the Surrey dialect: Gowers mentions: Acrost for across; agoo for ago; batcheldor for bachelor; brownchitis (or sometime brown titus) for bronchitis; chimley or chimbley for chimney; crowner for coroner; crowner's quest for coroner's inquest; curosity and curous for curiosity and curious ; death for deaf; disgest for digest, and indisgestion for indigestion; gownd for gown; scholard for scholar; nevvy for nephew; non-plush'd for non-plussed; refuge for refuse; quid for cud, " chewing

2400-702: The following environments if the /j/ is in the same syllable as the preceding consonant: Yod-dropping in the above environments used to be considered nonstandard in England but now also occurs by educated RP -speakers. (The /j/ after /s/ is not normally dropped in RP in medial positions, however: compare pursuit /pəˈsjuːt/ .) In General American , yod-dropping is found not only in the above environments but also after /t/ , /d/ and /n/ , for example tune /ˈtuːn/ , dew /ˈduː/ , new /ˈnuː/ The lack of yod-dropping in those contexts has occasionally been held to be

2460-549: The historical monophthong /uː/ is commonly indicated by the spellings oo and ou , as in moon and soup . Yod-dropping is the elision of the /j/ from certain syllable-initial clusters of the type described above. Particular cases of yod-dropping may affect all or some of the dialects that have the relevant clusters. The change of [ɪ] to [j] in these positions (as described above) produced some clusters which would have been difficult or impossible to pronounce, which led to what John Wells calls Early Yod Dropping in which

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2520-528: The increasingly disappearing feature of rhoticity. In addition to the above features, namely rhoticity, the traditional Sussex accent showed certain other features, like an extremely narrow PRICE vowel and th-stopping . Reduplicated plural forms were a grammatical feature of the Sussex dialect, particularly in words ending -st , such as ghostesses in place of the standard English ghosts . Many old Sussex words once existed, thought to have derived from Sussex's fishermen and their links with fishermen from

2580-401: The initial cluster /kn/ to /n/ relatively recently; the change seems to have taken place in educated English during the 17th century. Several German-language grammars of English from the late 17th and early 18th centuries transcribed English kn- as tn- , dn- , implying that a stage of assimilation (or perhaps debuccalization to /ʔn/ ) preceded that of complete reduction. The cluster

2640-510: The late 1800s. Many words are unique to 19th-century Essex dialect, some examples including bonx meaning "to beat up batter for pudding" and hodmedod or hodmadod meaning "snail". Several nonstandard grammatical features exist, such as irregular plural forms like housen for "houses". Modern Essex English is usually associated with non-rhotic Estuary English, mainly in urban areas receiving an influx of East London migrants since World War II. The Essex accent has an east–west variation with

2700-541: The mining area of Kent, it might be a result of large-scale migration by miners from other more northerly coalfields to Kent in the 1920s. It is also associated with some American English accents in the New York City area. On the other hand, in some accents of the west of Scotland and Ulster , NG-coalescence is extended to morpheme-internal position, so that finger is pronounced /ˈfɪŋər/ (cf. Dutch vinger /ˈvɪŋər/ ), thus rhyming with singer (although

2760-533: The mudflats near Rochester and created a comic character Sam Weller who spoke the local accent, principally Kentish but with strong London influences. Modern Estuary dialect features were also reported in some traditional varieties, including L -vocalization e.g. old as owd , as well as yod-coalescence in Kent. A unique dialect existed as recently as the late 19th century in the historic county of Surrey , in western Kent , and in parts of northern Sussex , though it has now almost entirely died out. It

2820-693: The older rhotic accent can still be heard amongst some speakers, for example in the speech of John Arlott , Lord Denning and Reg Presley . Since the 1960s, particularly in Andover and Basingstoke, the local accent has changed reflecting the arrival of East Londoners relocated by London County Council. It can be argued that Hampshire is a borderline county moving East, linguistically. "Estuary-isms" can be found in Portsmouth or "Pompey" English, some of which may actually originate from Portsmouth rather than London. South West England or "West Country" English

2880-399: The position after /t/ , /d/ or /n/ but also to the position after nonalveolar consonants as well: pairs like beauty / booty , mute / moot , cute / coot can then be homophonous. A well-known series of British television advertisements beginning in the 1980s featured Bernard Matthews , who was from Norfolk and described his turkeys as "bootiful" (for beautiful ). Such accents pronounce

2940-414: The quid; "sarment for sermon; varmint for vermin; sloop for slope; spartacles for spectacles; spavin for spasms. I knew an old woman who was constantly suffering from "the windy spavin;" taters for potatoes; wunstfor once; wuts for oats, etc., etc." Syntax of the Surrey dialect included: Phonological features included long-standing yod-coalescence , now typical of dialects throughout England, as well as

3000-574: The same as Jew . Yod-coalescence has traditionally been resisted in Received Pronunciation . It has certainly become established in words of the first group listed above ( nature , soldier , pressure etc.), but it is not yet universal in those of the second group ( educate etc.), and it does not generally occur in those of the third group ( dew , tune etc.). See also Old and Middle English had an initial /wr/ cluster (note that /r/ does not denote [ ɹ ] here), hence

3060-456: The spelling of words like write and wrong . This was reduced to just /r/ , apparently during the 17th century. An intermediate stage may have been an [r] with lip rounding . As a result of this reduction, pairs of words like rap and wrap , rite and write , etc. are homophones in practically all varieties of Modern English. They remain distinct in the Doric dialect of Scots , where

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3120-428: The spelling with gn- being retained despite the loss of the /ɡ/ sound. The cluster is preserved in some Scots dialects. The song The Gnu jokes about this silent g and other silent letters in English. In fact the g in gnu may always have been silent in English, since this loanword did not enter the language until the late 18th century. The trumpeter Kenny Wheeler wrote a composition titled Gnu High ,

3180-585: The title Southern English . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southern_English&oldid=1162597837 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages English in southern England English in Southern England (also, rarely, Southern English English ; Southern England English ; or in

3240-563: The vowel /uː/ , as in cube /kjuːb/ – which was in some cases modified to /ʊə/ or /ʊ/ before (historical) /r/ , as in cure , or weakened to /ʊ/ or /ə/ as in argument . They also occurred in words ending in -ion and -ious , such as nation and precious . This change from /ɪu/ to /juː/ , which had occurred in London by the end of the 17th century, did not take place in all dialects. A few dialects, notably in Wales , as well as in some parts of northern England, New England , and

3300-496: The yod is often dropped after initial /l/ , for example, but it is not dropped in words like volume or value . (British speakers omit the /j/ in figure , but most Americans retain it.) Additionally, there is no /j/ in British pronunciations of coupon and Pulitzer , /ˈkuːpɒn/ and /ˈpʊlɪtsə/ respectively, but many American speakers keep the yod, realizing them as /ˈkjuːpɒn/ and /ˈpjuːlɪtsər/ , although Pulitzer with

3360-401: Was common in Essex. In addition, Mersea Island (though not the rest of Essex) showed some rhoticity in speakers born as late as the early 20th century, a feature that characterised other rural dialects of South East England in the 19th century. Th-fronting , a feature now widespread in England, was found throughout Essex in the 1950s Survey of English Dialects , which studied speakers born in

3420-451: Was first documented by Granville W. G. Leveson Gower (1838–1895), of Titsey Place , during the 1870s and first published by him in A Glossary of Surrey Words in 1893. Gower was first made aware of the dialect after reading a letter in a local newspaper. Following that, and after his own enquiries, he expressed a fear that improved transport and the spread of education would cause such local dialects to disappear and be forgotten despite

3480-409: Was pronounced as /w/ in pre-vocalic position: thus, village sounded like willage and venom like wenom . In the 19th century, across all of Southern England, arter without an f (non-rhotically, / ˈ ɑː t ə / ) was a common pronunciation of after . The pattern of speech in some of Charles Dickens ' books pertains to Kentish dialect, as the author lived at Higham , was familiar with

3540-507: Was published by the Philological Society in 1973. Berkshire and Hampshire are on the modern-day border between Estuary English and West Country English . Berkshire is predominantly non-rhotic today, but traditional accents may still be found across the county. Parts of West Berkshire may still be rhotic or variably rhotic today, though this feature is quickly becoming ever less frequent. In country areas and Southampton,

3600-552: Was spelled cn- in Old English; this changed to kn- in Middle English, and this spelling survives in Modern English, despite the loss of the /k/ sound. Cognates in other Germanic languages usually still sound the initial /k/ . For example, the Old English ancestor of knee was cnēo , pronounced /kneːo̯/ , and the cognate word in Modern German is Knie , pronounced /kniː/ . Most dialects of English reduced

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