West Midlands English

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West Midlands English
Native toEngland
RegionWest Midlands
EthnicityEnglish
Indo-European
Early forms
DialectsWest Midlands English
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Location of The West Midlands within England
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West Midlands English is a group of

English West Midlands
.

County accents

Certain areas of the West Midlands are stereotyped as having stronger accents than others, Dudley in the Black Country being an example. There are some local phrases in the Black Country that are renowned. People do tend to substitute a reply of "arr" for "yes". Generally, most words are shortened, most commonly being "I haven't" to "I ay" (which can be argued as an even shorter form of "I ain't").[citation needed] In the south of the West Midlands (southern

southern accent
.

Dave Bradley, a presenter on

BBC Hereford and Worcester
said in 2005 that:

[in Herefordshire and Worcestershire] we have many different ways of speaking the English language, at least I think that's what we are speaking !!!

Go from Kington in North Herefordshire with the Welsh-border lilt, to Evesham in the south of Worcestershire where there's a very different sound.

From Kidderminster and the North Worcestershire area were many, but not all, have a Brummigum twang, and then off down to Ross where there's a hint of the rounded Gloucestershire tones.

— Dave Bradley[1]

Phonology

Varieties of West Midlands English

References

  1. BBC Hereford and Worcester. Archived
    from the original on 19 February 2011.
  2. ^ Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2002). The Phonetics of Dutch and English (5 ed.). Leiden/Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 290–302.
  3. ^ Wells in Trudgill ed., Language in the British Isles, page 58, Cambridge University Press, 1984

Further reading

  • Clark, Urszula (2004), "The English West Midlands: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 134–162,

External links