West Country English
West Country English is a group of English language varieties and accents used by much of the native population of South West England, the area sometimes popularly known as the West Country.
The West Country is often defined as encompassing the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, the City of Bristol, and Gloucestershire. However, the northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define. In the adjacent counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Oxfordshire it is possible to encounter similar accents and, indeed, much the same distinct dialect but with some similarities to others in neighbouring regions. Although natives of such locations, especially in rural parts, can still have West Country influences in their speech, the increased mobility and urbanisation of the population have meant that in Berkshire, Hampshire, and Oxfordshire the dialect itself, as opposed to various local accents, is becoming increasingly rare.
Academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectal forms. The Survey of English Dialects captured manners of speech across the South West region that were just as different from Standard English as any from the far North of England. There is some influence from the Welsh and Cornish languages depending on the specific location.
In literature
In literary contexts, most of the usage has been in either poetry or dialogue, to add "local colour". It has rarely been used for serious prose in recent times, but was used much more extensively up until the 19th century. West Country dialects are commonly represented as "Mummerset", a kind of catchall southern rural accent invented for broadcasting.Early period
- The Late West Saxon dialect was the standard literary language of later Anglo-Saxon England, and consequently the majority of Anglo-Saxon literature, including the epic poem Beowulf and the poetic Biblical paraphrase Judith, is preserved in West Saxon dialect, though not all of it was originally written in West Saxon.
- In the medieval period Sumer is icumen in is a notable example of a work in the dialect.
- The Cornish language descended from the ancient British language that was spoken all over what is now the West Country until the West Saxons conquered and settled most of the area. The Cornish language throughout much of the High Middle Ages was not just the vernacular but the prestigious language in Cornwall among all classes, but was also spoken in large areas of Devon well after the Norman conquest. Cornish began to decline after the Late Middle Ages with English expanding westwards, and after the Prayer Book Rebellion, suffered terminal decline, dying out in the 18th century..
17th century
- In King Lear, Edgar speaks in the West Country dialect, as one of his various personae.
- Both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh were noted at the Court of Queen Elizabeth for their strong Devon accents.
18th century
- Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, set in Somerset, again mainly dialogue. Considered one of the first true English novels.
19th century
- William Barnes' Dorset dialect poetry.
- Walter Hawken Tregellas, author of many stories written in the local dialect of the county of Cornwall and a number of other works.
- Anthony Trollope's series of books Chronicles of Barsetshire also use some in dialogue.
- The novels of Thomas Hardy often use the dialect in dialogue, notably Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
- Wiltshire Rhymes and Tales in the Wiltshire Dialect and other works by Edward Slow.
- The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Sorcerer is set in the fictional village of Ploverleigh in Somerset. Some dialogue and song lyrics, especially for the chorus, are a phonetic approximation of West Country speech. The Pirates of Penzance and Ruddigore are also set in Cornwall.
- John Davey a farmer from Zennor, records the native Cornish language Cranken Rhyme.
- R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone. According to Blackmore, he relied on a "phonogogic" style for his characters' speech, emphasizing their accents and word formation. He expended great effort, in all of his novels, on his characters' dialogues and dialects, striving to recount realistically not only the ways, but also the tones and accents, in which thoughts and utterances were formed by the various sorts of people who lived in the Exmoor district.
20th century
- Several pages of 'Folk-Speech of Zummerzet' in by George Harper, pp168–171.
- A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys / contains dialogue written in imitation of the local Somerset dialect.
- Albert John Coles,, writing as Jan Stewer, wrote 3,000 short stories in the Devonshire dialect for local Devon newspapers, and published collections of them, as well as performing them widely on stage, film, and broadcast.
- Laurie Lee's works such as Cider with Rosie portray a somewhat idealised Gloucestershire childhood in the Five Valleys area.
- John Fowles's Daniel Martin, which features the title character's girlfriend's dialect, and which has sometimes been criticised for being too stereotypical.
- Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills is a television play about children in the Forest of Dean during the Second World War. The dialogue is written in the style of the Forest dialect.
- The songs of Adge Cutler were famous for their West Country dialect, sung in a strong Somerset accent. His legacy lives on in the present day Wurzels and other so-called "Scrumpy and Western" artists.
- The folk group The Yetties perform songs composed in the dialect of Dorset.
- Andy Partridge, lead singer with the group XTC, has a pronounced Wiltshire accent. Although more noticeable in his speech, his accent may also be heard in some of his singing.
- J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy novels feature Hagrid, a character who has a West Country accent similar to that of the Forest of Dean.
History and origins
The dialects have their origins in the expansion of Anglo-Saxon into the west of modern-day England, where the kingdom of Wessex had been founded in the 6th century. As the Kings of Wessex became more powerful they enlarged their kingdom westwards and north-westwards by taking territory from the British kingdoms in those districts. From Wessex, the Anglo-Saxons spread into the Celtic regions of present-day Devon, Somerset and Gloucestershire, bringing their language with them. At a later period Cornwall came under Wessex influence, which appears to become more extensive after the time of Athelstan in the 10th century. However the spread of the English language took much longer here than elsewhere.
Outside Cornwall, it is believed that the various local dialects reflect the territories of various West Saxon tribes, who had their own dialects
which fused together into a national language in the later Anglo-Saxon period.
As Lt-Col. J. A. Garton observed in 1971, traditional Somerset English has a venerable and respectable origin, and is not a mere "debasement" of Standard English:
In some cases, many of these forms are closer to modern Saxon than Standard British English is, e.g.
The use of masculine and sometimes feminine, rather than neuter, pronouns with non-animate referents also parallels Low German, which unlike English retains grammatical genders. The pronunciation of "s" as "z" is also similar to Low German. However, recent research proposes that some syntactical features of English, including the unique forms of the verb to be, originate rather with the Brythonic languages.
In more recent times, West Country dialects have been treated with some derision, which has led many local speakers to abandon them or water them down. In particular it is British comedy which has brought them to the fore outside their native regions, and paradoxically groups such as The Wurzels, a comic North Somerset/Bristol band from whom the term Scrumpy and Western music originated, have both popularised and made fun of them simultaneously. In an unusual regional breakout, the Wurzels' song "The Combine Harvester" reached the top of the UK charts in 1976, where it did nothing to dispel the "simple farmer" stereotype of Somerset and West Country folk. It and all their songs are sung entirely in a local version of the dialect, which is somewhat exaggerated and distorted. Some words used aren't even typical of the local dialect. For instance, the word "nowt" is used in the song "Threshing Machine". This word is generally used in more northern parts of England, with the West Country equivalent being "nawt".
Celtic language influence
Although the English language gradually spread into Cornwall after approximately the 13th century, a complete language shift to English took centuries more. The linguistic boundary, between English in the east and Cornish in the west, shifted markedly in the county between 1300 and 1750. This is not to be thought of as a sharp boundary and it should not be inferred that there were no Cornish speakers to the east of a line, and no English speakers to the west. Nor should it be inferred that the boundary suddenly moved a great distance every 50 years.During the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, which centred on Devon and Cornwall, many of the Cornish objected to the Book of Common Prayer, on the basis that many Cornish could not speak English. Cornish probably ceased to be spoken as a community language sometime around 1780, with the last monoglot Cornish speaker believed to be Chesten Marchant, who died in 1676 at Gwithian. However, some people retained a fragmented knowledge and some words were adopted by dialect in Cornwall.
In recent years, the traffic has reversed, with the revived Cornish language reclaiming Cornish words that had been preserved in the local dialect into its lexicon, and also borrowing other dialect words. However, there has been some controversy over whether all of these words are of native origin, as opposed to imported from parts of England, or the Welsh Marches. Some modern day revived Cornish speakers have been known to use Cornish words within an English sentence, and even those who are not speakers of the language sometimes use words from the language in names.
Brythonic languages have also had a long-term influence on the West Country dialects beyond Cornwall, both as a substrate and languages of contact. Recent research on the roots of English proposes that the extent of Brythonic syntactic influence on Old English and Middle English may have been underestimated, and specifically cites the preponderance of the forms of the verbs to be and to do in the southwestern region and their grammatical similarity to Welsh and Cornish in opposition to the Germanic languages.
Bos: Cornish verb to be
The Cornish dialect, or Anglo-Cornish, has the most substantial Celtic language influence, because many western parts were non-English speaking even into the early modern period. In places such as Mousehole, Newlyn and St Ives, fragments of Cornish survived in English even into the 20th century, e.g. some numerals and the Lord's Prayer were noted by W. D. Watson in 1925, Edwin Norris collected the Creed in 1860, and J. H. Nankivel also recorded numerals in 1865. The dialect of West Penwith is particularly distinctive, especially in terms of grammar. This is most likely due to the late decay of the Cornish language in this area. In Cornwall the following places were included in the Survey of English Dialects: Altarnun, Egloshayle, Gwinear, Kilkhampton, Mullion, St Buryan, and St Ewe.
In other areas, Celtic vocabulary is less common, but it is notable that "coombe", cognate with Welsh cwm, was borrowed from Brythonic into Old English and is common in placenames east of the Tamar, especially Devon, and also in northern Somerset around Bath and the examples Hazeley Combe and Combley Great Wood are to be found as far away as the Isle of Wight. Some possible examples of Brythonic words surviving in Devon dialect include:
- Goco — A bluebell
- Jonnick — Pleasant, agreeable
Characteristics
Phonology
- West Country accents are rhotic like most Canadian, American and Irish accents, meaning that the historical loss of non-syllable-final /r/ did not take place, in contrast to non-rhotic accents like Received Pronunciation. Often, this is specifically realised as the retroflex approximant, which is typically lengthened at the ends of words. Rhoticity appears to be declining in both real and apparent time in some areas of the West Country, for example Dorset.
- , as in guide or life, more precisely approaches,, or.
- , as in house or cow, more precisely approaches or, with even very front and unrounded variants such as.
- Word-final "-ing" in polysyllabic words is typically realised as.
- , as in trap or cat, is often open, the more open variant fairly common in urban areas but especially common in rural areas.
- * The split associated with London English may not exist for some speakers, or may exist marginally on the basis of simply a length difference. In other words, some may not have any contrast between and, for example making palm and Pam homophones. For some West Country speakers, the vowel is even the same in the,,, and word sets:. The split's "bath" vowel can also be represented by the sounds or in different parts of the West Country ; the isoglosses in the Linguistic Atlas of England are not straightforward cases of clear borders. Short vowels have also been reported, e.g.,.
- h-dropping: initial can often be omitted so "hair" and "air" become homophones. This is common in working-class speech in most parts of England.
- t-glottalisation: use of the glottal stop as an allophone of, generally when in any syllable-final position.
- The word-final letter "y" is pronounced or ; for example: party , silly etc.
- The Survey of English Dialects found that Cornwall retained some older features of speech that are now considered "Northern" in England. For example, a close in suck, but, cup, etc. and sometimes a short in words such as aunt.
- Initial fricative consonants can be voiced, particularly in more traditional and older speakers, so that "s" is pronounced as Standard English "z" and "f" as Standard English "v". This feature is now exceedingly rare.
- In words containing "r" before a vowel, there is frequent metathesis – "gurt", "Burdgwater" and "chillurn"
- In many words with the letter "l" near the end, such as gold or cold, the "l" is often not pronounced, so "an old gold bowl" would sound like "an ode goad bow".
- In Bristol, a terminal "a" can be realised as the sound – e.g. cinema as "cinemaw" and America as "Americaw" – which is often perceived by non-Bristolians to be an intrusive "l". Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle and Normali.e.: Eva, Ida, and Norma. The name Bristol itself is believed to have originated from this local pronunciation.
Vocabulary
- Some of the vocabulary used relates to English words of a bygone era, e.g. the verb "to hark", "thee" etc., the increased use of the infinitive form of the verb "to be" etc.
| Phrase | Meaning |
| acker | friend |
| :wiktionary:afeared|afear'd | to be afraid, e.g. Dorset's official motto, "Who's afear'd". |
| Alaska | I will ask her |
| Allernbatch | old sore |
| Alright me Ansum? | How are you, my friend? |
| Alright me Babber?, Gloucestershire and Bristol | Similar to "Alright me ansum". |
| Alright my Luvver? | |
| :wiktionary:anywhen|anywhen | at any time |
| :wiktionary:happen|'appen | perhaps, possibly |
| Appleknocker | a resident of the Isle of Wight. |
| arable | , often used for a road surface, as in "Thic road be arable" |
| Bad Lot | e.g. "They'm a bad lot, mind" |
| baint | am not e.g. "I baint afear'd o' thic wopsy". |
| bauy, bay, bey | boy |
| Beached Whale | many meanings, most commonly used to mean a gurt emmet |
| Benny | to lose your temper |
| Billy Baker | woodlouse |
| blige | blimey |
| Boris | daddy longlegs |
| Bunny | steep wooded valley |
| Caulkhead | a long-standing island resident, usually a descendant of a family living there. This refers to the island's heavy involvement in the production of rope and caulk. |
| :wiktionary:cheers|cheers | Goodbye or see you later, e.g. Bob: I've got to get going now, Bar. Bar: Ah? Cheers then, Bob. |
| cheerzen/Cheers'en | Thank you |
| chinny reckon | I do not believe you in the slightest |
| chine | steep wooded valley |
| chuggy pig | woodlouse |
| chump | log |
| chuting | guttering |
| comical | peculiar, e.g. 'e were proper comical |
| combe | steep wooded valley |
| coombe | steep wooded valley. Combe/Coombe is the second most common placename element in Devon and is equivalent to the Welsh cwm. |
| coupie/croupie | crouch, as in the phrase coupie down |
| crowst | a picnic lunch, crib |
| cuzzel | soft |
| daddy granfer | woodlouse |
| daps | sportshoes |
| Diddykai, Diddycoy, Diddy | Gypsy, Traveller |
| dimpsy | describing the state of twilight as in its getting a bit dimpsy |
| dizzibles | state of undress |
| doughboy | dumpling |
| Dreckley | soon, like mañana, but less urgent I be wiv 'ee dreckley or ee looked me dreckly in the eyes. |
| drive | any driver of a taxi or bus. The usual gesture when disembarking from a bus is cheers drive |
| Emmet | tourist or visitor |
| et | that, e.g. Giss et peak |
| facety/facetie | stuck up, entitled, snobbish e.g. She's a right facety one |
| gallybagger | scarecrow |
| Geddon alt; geddy on | Get on, e.g. geddon chap! enthusiastic encouragement or delight |
| gert lush | very good |
| gleanie | guinea fowl |
| gockey | idiot |
| gramersow | woodlouse |
| granfer | grandfather |
| granfergrig | woodlouse |
| grockle | tourist, visitor or gypsy |
| grockle shell | caravan or motor home |
| grockle can | a bus or a coach carrying tourists |
| gurt | big or great, used to express a large size often as extra emphasis That's a gurt big tractor!. |
| haling | coughing |
| ang' about | Wait or Pause but often exclaimed when a sudden thought occurs. |
| hark at he | listen to him, often sarcastic. |
| headlights | light-headedness, giddiness |
| hilts and gilts | female and male piglets, respectively. |
| hinkypunk | Will o' the wisp |
| hucky duck | Aqueduct |
| huppenstop | raised stone platform where milk churns are left for collection — no longer used but many still exist outside farms. |
| ideal | idea; In Bristol there is a propensity for local speakers to add an l to words ending with a |
| In any case | - |
| Janner | a term with various meanings, normally associated with Devon. An old term for someone who makes their living off of the sea. Plymothians are often generally referred to as Janners, and supporters of the city's football team Plymouth Argyle are sometimes also referred to thus. In Wiltshire, a similar word ' jidder ' is used — possible relation to 'gypsy'. |
| Janny Reckon | Derived from Chinny Reckon and Janner, and is often used in response to a wildly exaggerated fisherman's tale. |
| Jasper | a Devon, Wiltshire word for wasp. |
| keendle teening | candle lighting |
| Kimberlin | someone from Weymouth or further away — not a Portlander |
| Love, My Love, Luvver | Terms of endearment when used on their own. Can also be joined to a greeting and used towards strangers, e.g. "Good morning my luvver" may be said by a shop keeper to a customer. See also "Alright my Luvver?". |
| Ling | to throw Ling 'ee 'ere — Throw it here |
| Madderdo'ee | Does it matter? |
| maid | girl |
| maggoty | fanciful |
| mackey | massive or large, often to benefit |
| mallyshag | caterpillar |
| mang | to mix |
| :wiktionary:mush#Etymology 5|mush | friendly greeting as in mate |
| :wiktionary:nipper|nipper | a young boy, also a term of endearment between heterosexual men used in the same way as 'mate'. |
| Now we're farming. | Term to describe when something is proceeding nicely or as planned. |
| old butt | friend |
| Ooh Arr | multiple meanings, including Oh Yes. Popularised by the Wurzels, this phrase has become stereotypical, and is used often to mock speakers of West Country dialects. In the modern day Ooh Ah is commonly used as the correct phrase though mostly avoided due to stereotypes. |
| Ort/Ought Nort/Nought | Something / Nothing I a'en got ought for'ee=I have nothing for you 'Er did'n give I nought He gave me nothing |
| Overner | not from the Island, a mainland person. Extremely common usage |
| Overlander | a non-resident of the Island, an outsider. Overner is the abbreviated form of this word, and 'Overlander' is also used in parts of Australia. |
| Parcel of ol' Crams | "a phrase with which the native sum up and dismisses everything that he... cannot comprehend, does not believe, has no patience with, or is entertained by but unwilling to praise." |
| piggy widden | phrase used to calm babies |
| pitching | settling on the ground |
| :wiktionary:plim#English|plim up, plimmed | swell up, swollen |
| poached, -ing up | cutting up, of a field, as in the ground's poaching up, we'll have to bring the cattle indoors for the winter. |
| proper job | Something done well or a general expression of satisfaction. |
| pummy | Apple pumace from the cider-wring |
| scag | to tear or catch |
| scrage | a scratch or scrape usually on a limb |
| scrope | to move awkwardly or clumsily through overgrowth or vegetation. |
| skew-whiff | crooked, slanting, awry. |
| slit pigs | male piglets that have been castrated |
| smooth | to stroke |
| Sound | many meanings, but mainly to communicate gratitude, appreciation and/or mutual respect. |
| :wiktionary:somewhen|somewhen | At some time |
| sprieve | Dry after a bath, shower or swim by evaporation. |
| spuddler | Somebody attempting to stir up trouble. e.g. That's not true, you spuddlin' bugger! |
| thic | that — said knowingly, i.e. to make dialect deliberately stronger. E.g. Get in thic bed! |
| thic/thac/they thiccy/thaccy/they | This, that, those. e.g. Put'n in thic yer box. Put it in this box here. Whad'v'ee done wi' thaccy pile o'dashels? What have you done with that pile of thistles |
| tinklebob | an icicle. |
| wambling | wandering, aimless |
| wuzzer/wazzin | Was she?/Was he? |
| Where's it to? | Where is it? e.g. Dorchester, where's it to? It's in Dorset. |
| wopsy | a wasp. |
| :wiktionary:young'un|young'un | any young person "Ow be young un?" or "Where bist goin' youngun?" |
| zat | soft |
Some dialect words now appear mainly, or solely, in place names, such as "batch", "tyning", "hoe". These are not to be confused with fossilised Brythonic or Cornish language terms, for example, "-coombe" is quite a common suffix in West Country place names, and means a "valley".
Grammar
- The second person singular thee and thou forms used, thee often contracted to 'ee.
- Bist may be used instead of are for the second person, e.g.: how bist? This has its origins in the Old English – or Anglo-Saxon – language; compare the modern German "Wie bist du?".
- Use of masculine pronouns with non-animate referents, e.g.: put'ee over there and 'e's a nice scarf.
- An a- prefix may be used to denote the past participle; a-went.
- Use of they in conjunction with plural nouns, where Standard English demands those e.g.: They shoes are mine. This is also used in Modern Scots but differentiated thae meaning those and thay the plural of he, she and it, both from the Anglo-Saxon ðà/þà 'they/those', the plural form of se 'he/that', seo 'she/that' and ðæt/þæt 'it/that'.
- In other areas, be may be used exclusively in the present tense, often in the present continuous; Where you be going to?
- The use of to to denote location. Where's that to?. This is something that can still be heard often, unlike many other characteristics. This former usage is common to Newfoundland English, where many of the island's modern-day descendants have West Country origins — particularly Bristol — as a result of the 17th–19th century migratory fishery.
- Use of the past tense "writ" where Standard English uses "wrote". e.g.: I writ a letter.
- Nominative pronouns as indirect objects. For instance, Don't tell I, tell'ee!, "'ey give I fifty quid and I zay no, giv'ee to charity inztead". When in casual Standard English the oblique case is used, in the West Country dialect the object of many a verb takes the nominative case. In most Germanic languages it is nominative pronouns which follow the verb to be, e.g.: It is I, It is he, These are they and not It is me, It is him, These are them.
Social stigma and future of the dialect
As more and more of the English population moved into towns and cities during the 20th century, non-regional, Standard English accents increasingly became a marker of personal social mobility. Universal primary education was also an important factor as it made it possible for some to move out of their rural environments into situations where other modes of speech were current.
A West Country accent continues to be a reason for denigration and stereotype:
In the early part of the twentieth century, the journalist and writer Albert John Coles used the pseudonym Jan Stewer to pen a long-running series of humorous articles and correspondences in Devon dialect for the Western Morning News. These now preserve a record of the dialect as recalled with affection in the period. The tales perpetuate – albeit sympathetically – the rustic uneducated stereotype as the protagonist experiences the modern world.
There is a popular prejudice that stereotypes speakers as unsophisticated and even backward, due possibly to the deliberate and lengthened nature of the accent. This can work to the West Country speaker's advantage, however: recent studies of how trustworthy Britons find their fellows based on their regional accents put the West Country accent high up, under southern Scottish English but a long way above Cockney and Scouse. Recent polls put the West Country accent as third and fifth most attractive in the British Isles respectively.
The West Country accent is probably most identified in film as "pirate speech"cartoon-like "Ooh arr, me 'earties! Sploice the mainbrace!" talk is very similar. This may be a result of the strong seafaring and fisherman tradition of the West Country, both legal and outlaw. Edward Teach was a native of Bristol, and privateer and English hero Sir Francis Drake hailed from Tavistock in Devon. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance may also have added to the association. West Country native Robert Newton's performance in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island is credited with popularizing the stereotypical West Country "pirate voice". Newton's strong West Country accent also featured in Blackbeard the Pirate.
Literature
- M. A. Courtney; T. Q. Couch: Glossary of Words in Use in Cornwall. West Cornwall, by M. A. Courtney; East Cornwall, by T. Q. Couch. London: published for the English Dialect Society, by Trübner & Co., 1880
- John Kjederqvist: "The Dialect of Pewsey ", Transactions of the Philological Society 1903–1906
- Etsko Kruisinga: A Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset, Bonn, 1905
- Clement Marten: The Devonshire Dialect, Exeter, 1974
- Clement Marten: Flibberts and Skriddicks: Stories and Poems in the Devon Dialect, Exeter, 1983
- Mary Palmer: by A Lady to which is added a Glossary by J.F. Palmer, London & Exeter, 1837
- Norman Rogers: Wessex Dialect, Bradford-on-Avon, 1979
- Bertil Widén: Studies in the Dorset Dialect, Lund, 1949