Scouse

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the accent and dialect. For the dish, see Scouse (food).

Scouse
Liverpool English / Merseyside English
Native toEngland
RegionLiverpool City Region
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
GlottologNone
IETFen-scouse
Speech example
The voice of musician Ringo Starr, an example of a working-class male from the inner-city Dingle area of Liverpool.
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Speech example
The voice of historian Andrew Hussey, another example of a working-class male from inner-city Liverpool.
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Speech example
The voice of comedian John Bishop, an example of a working-class male from Runcorn, a town near Liverpool which had its local accent changed by large numbers of Liverpudlians moving in during the 1950s.[1]
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Scouse (

Liverpool docks, as well as Scandinavian sailors who also used the docks,[6] and thus has very little in common with the accents found throughout the rest of England.[7] People from Liverpool are known as Liverpudlians, but are usually called Scousers; the name comes from scouse, a stew originating from Scandinavian lobscouse eaten by sailors and locals.[8][9][10][11]

The development of Liverpool since the 1950s has spread the accent into nearby areas such as the towns of

Beatles-like" accent found in the southern suburbs of Liverpool is typically referred to as slow, soft, and dark.[14] Popular colloquialisms have shown a growing deviation from the historical Lancashire dialect that was previously found in Liverpool,[12] as well as a growth in the influence of the accent in the wider area.[7][15][16][17][18] Scouse is often considered by other Britons to be one of the country's least popular accents due to its difficulty, but it conversely also performs very well in polls of British accents that people perceive as happy and friendly.[19]

Etymology

The word

Low German labskaus and refers to a stew of the same name commonly eaten by sailors. In the 19th century, poorer people in Liverpool, Birkenhead, Bootle and Wallasey commonly ate scouse as it was a cheap dish and familiar to the families of seafarers. Outsiders tended to call these people "scousers".[21] In The Lancashire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore, Alan Crosby suggested that the word only became known nationwide with the popularity of the BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part (1965–1975), which featured a Liverpudlian socialist and a Cockney conservative in a regular argument.[10]

Origins

Originally a small fishing village, Liverpool developed as a port. After the 1700s, it developed into a major international trading and industrial centre. The city consequently became a

better source needed
]

The influence of immigrants from Ireland (especially

Northern Wales, as well as visiting Scandinavian sailors, contributed to a distinctive local Liverpool accent.[23][24] The first reference to a distinctive Liverpool accent was in 1890. Linguist Gerald Knowles suggested that the accent's nasal quality may have derived from poor public health in the 19th century, by which the prevalence of colds among many people over a long time resulted in a nasal accent coming to be regarded as the norm and copied by newer incomers learning the dialect of the local area.[25] Scousers tend to speak at a higher pitch than most other English speakers, sometimes approaching falsetto
.

Academic research

The Victorian phonetician Alexander John Ellis said that Liverpool and Birkenhead "had no dialect proper", as he conceived of dialects as speech that had been passed down through generations from the earliest English speakers. Ellis did research some locations on the Wirral, but these respondents spoke in the traditional Cheshire dialect at the time and not in Scouse.[26] The 1950s Survey of English Dialects recorded traditional Lancastrian dialect from the town of Halewood, finding no trace of Scouse influence. The phonetician John C. Wells wrote that "the Scouse accent might as well not exist" in The Linguistic Atlas of England, which was the Survey's principal output.[27]

An academic study of Scouse was undertaken by Gerald Knowles at the University of Leeds in 1973. He identified a key problem: that traditional dialect research had focused on developments from a single proto-language, but Scouse (and many other urban dialects) had resulted from interactions between an unknown number of languages.[28]

Phonology

This section contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The phonemic notation used in this article is based on the set of symbols used by Watson (2007).

Vowels

Monophthongs of Scouse (from Watson (2007:357)). /eː/ and /ɑː/ show considerable allophonic variation.[29]
Diphthongs of Scouse (part 1, from Watson (2007:357))
Diphthongs of Scouse (part 2, from Watson (2007:357)). /ɛʉ/ shows considerable allophonic variation.[29]
Vowels of Scouse[30]
Front Central Back
Short
Long
 Short Long Short Long
Close ɪ iː ʉː ʊ
Mid ɛ eː ə ɔː
Open a ɒ ɑː
Diphthongs eɪ   aɪ   ɔɪ   aʊ   ɛʉ   iɛ

Consonants

  • H-dropping, as in many other varieties of Northern England English. This renders hear /hiɛ/, high /haɪ/ and hold /hɛʉld/ variably homophonous with ear /iɛ/, eye /aɪ/ and old /ɛʉld/.[44]
  • NG-coalescence is not present as with other Northern English accents, for instance realising along as [əˈlɒŋɡ].[44]
  • Like many other accents around the world, G-dropping also occurs, with [ən] being the most common realization of the sequence.[44]
  • /t/ has several allophones depending on environment:
  • /k/ can turn into an affricate or a
    fricative, determined mostly by the quality of the preceding vowel.[45] If fricative, a palatal, velar or uvular articulation ([ç, x, χ] respectively) is realised. This is seen distinctively with words like book and clock.[45][43]
  • /p/ can be fricatised to [ɸ], albeit rarely.[45]
  • As with other varieties of English, the voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ are aspirated word-initially, except when /s/ precedes in the same syllable. It can also occur word- and utterance-finally, with potential preaspirated pronunciations [ʰp, ʰt, ʰk] (which is often perceived as glottal noise or as oral friction produced in the same environment as the stop) for utterance-final environments, primarily found in female speakers.[44]
  • The voiced plosives /b, d, ɡ/ are also fricatised, with /d/ particularly being lenited to the same extent as /t/, although the fricative allophone is frequently devoiced.[30]
  • Under Irish influence, the dental stops [
    d̪] are often used instead of the standard dental fricatives [θ, ð], leading to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops. The fricative forms are also found, whereas th-fronting is not as common.[44]
  • The accent is
    ɹ] otherwise, a variant sometimes also used in lieu of the tap.[44]

International recognition

See also: Category:People from Liverpool

Scouse is highly distinguishable from other English dialects. Because of this international recognition, Keith Szlamp made a request to IANA on 16 September 1996 to make it a recognised Internet dialect.[47] After citing a number of references,[48][49][50][51][11] the application was accepted on 25 May 2000 and now allows Internet documents that use the dialect to be categorised as Scouse by using the language tag "en-Scouse".

Scouse has also become well-known as the accent of The Beatles, an international cultural phenomenon.[52] While the members of the band are famously from Liverpool,[53] their accents have more in common with the older Lancashire-like Liverpool dialect found in the southern suburbs; the accent has evolved into Scouse since the 1960s.

See also

Other

northern English dialects
include:

References

  1. ^ "John Bishop". Desert Island Discs. 24 June 2012. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  2. ^ Watson (2007:351–360)
  3. ^ Collins & Mees 2013, pp. 193–194.
  4. ISBN 1-85359-032-0
  5. ISBN 978-1-4411-4373-0
  6. ^ "The origins of Scouse". www.bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 May 2023.
  7. ^ a b Dominic Tobin and Jonathan Leake (3 January 2010). "Regional accents thrive against the odds in Britain". The Sunday Times. Times Newspapers. Archived from the original on 9 September 2011.
  8. ISBN 0-7862-8517-6
    )
  9. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Harry Enfield - The Scousers Visit The Beach" – via www.youtube.com.
  10. ^ a b Alan Crosby, The Lancashire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore, 2000, entry for word Scouser
  11. ^ a b Szlamp, K.: The definition of the word 'Scouser' Archived 14 July 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Oxford English Dictionary
  12. ^ a b Patrick Honeybone. "New-dialect formation in nineteenth century Liverpool: a brief history of Scouse" (PDF). Open House Press.
  13. ^ Bona, Emilia (29 September 2019). "11 funny differences between north and south Liverpool". Liverpool Echo.
  14. ^ "BBC News - London 2012: A 12-part guide to the UK in 212 words each". Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
  15. ^ Julie Henry (30 March 2008). "Scouse twang spreads beyond Merseyside". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022.
  16. ^ Nick Coligan (29 March 2008). "Scouse accent defying experts and 'evolving'". Liverpool Echo. Archived from the original on 13 October 2012. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
  17. ^ Chris Osuh (31 March 2008). "Scouse accent on the move". Manchester Evening News. Archived from the original on 11 January 2013. Retrieved 20 April 2011.
  18. ^ Richard Savill (3 January 2010). "British regional accents 'still thriving'". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022.
  19. ^ Bona, Emilia (17 August 2015). "Scouse ranked second-least attractive accent in the country". Liverpool Echo.
  20. ^ "lobscouse" at Oxford English Dictionary; retrieved 13 May 2017
  21. ^ "Scouse" at Oxford English Dictionary; retrieved 13 May 2017
  22. ^ Robb Wilton, character comedian born Robert Wilton Smith in Liverpool 1881. Spoke in Lancashire dialect & delivered monologues. Died 1957 Postcard. 1881–1957.
  23. ^ Paul Coslett, The origins of Scouse, BBC Liverpool, 11 January 2005. Retrieved 6 February 2015
  24. ^ The Vauxhall and other dockland areas of the city, in particular, retained a strong Irish character that set them apart culturally from other areas. Peter Grant, The Scouse accent: Dey talk like dat, don’t dey?, Liverpool Daily Post, 9 August 2008. Archived from the original on 26 May 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  25. ^ Scouse: the accent that defined an era, Times Higher Education, 29 June 2007. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  26. ^ Knowles, Gerald (1973). "2.2". Scouse: the urban dialect of Liverpool (PhD). University of Leeds. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  27. ^ Review of the Linguistic Atlas of England, John C. Wells, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 1 December 1978
  28. ^ Knowles, Gerald (1973). "3.2". Scouse: the urban dialect of Liverpool (PhD). University of Leeds. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  29. ^ a b c d e f g h Watson (2007), p. 358.
  30. ^ a b c d e Watson (2007), p. 357.
  31. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 361, 372.
  32. ^ Roca & Johnson (1999), p. 188.
  33. ^ Beal (2004), p. 125.
  34. ^ Cruttenden (2014), pp. 118, 138.
  35. ^ a b Watson (2007), pp. 357–358.
  36. ^ a b c d Collins & Mees (2013), p. 185.
  37. ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 373.
  38. ^ Watson (2007), pp. 352–353.
  39. ^ a b Wells (1982), p. 372.
  40. ^ Cruttenden (2014), pp. 92, 115.
  41. ^ Cruttenden (2014), p. 125.
  42. ^ Beal (2004), p. 123.
  43. ^ a b c Wells (1982), pp. 372–373.
  44. ^ a b c d e f Watson (2007), p. 352.
  45. ^ a b c d e f Watson (2007), p. 353.
  46. ^ Watson (2007), pp. 353, 355.
  47. ^ "LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM". IANA.org. 25 May 2000. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  48. ISBN 978-0901367013
    .
  49. ISBN 978-0901367037
    .
  50. ISBN 978-0901367044
    .
  51. ISBN 978-0901367310
    .
  52. ^ "CLEAN AIR CLEANING UP OLD BEATLES ACCENT". abcnews.go.com. 23 February 2002. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  53. AllMusic
    . Retrieved 5 July 2013.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
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