Yorkshire dialect and accent

The Yorkshire dialect and accent refers to the varieties of English used in the northern English county of Yorkshire. These varieties of English are non-rhotic and refer to themselves as Tyke and are referred to as Yorkshire by other varieties of English.

The film "Kes" is a good example of Yorkshire dialect in culture, having been set in Barnsley. Similarly the television series Last of the Summer Wine, filmed in West Yorkshire, has the majority of its characters using local language forms. The Chuckle Brothers speak with an accent that Southerners find much easier to understand and is to be found around Rotherham and Doncaster. The soap Emmerdale is set in North Yorkshire, but the accent heard in the soap does not reflect local trends accurately. The 1998 film Little Voice featured a Scarborough accent.

There is much variation in this region. There are differences between, for example, a Gargrave dialect and a Scarborough dialect - both of which can be, in turn, very hard for outsiders to understand.

Most of the accents in West and South Yorkshire are well-liked by the country, in general. In response to this, call centres have been increasingly located in this area. Research had shown that such accents were associated with loyalty and reliability.

Other Northern English dialects include

Geordie (spoken in Newcastle upon Tyne)
Pitmatic (spoken in Durham)
Scouse (spoken in Liverpool)
Mackem (spoken in Sunderland)

Accent (pronunciation)

Some features of Yorkshire accents are general features of Northern English accents. Many of these are listed in the Northern English accents section on the English English page.

Other features of pronunciation include:

Vowels

In some areas, especially in the southern half of Yorkshire, there is a tendency to pronounce the phoneme (as in mouth) as a monophthong , often represented with "ah", hence "dahn" for down, "sahth" for south. In these areas, the words out and art may be indistinguishable.
Many Yorkshire accents have an extra vowel phoneme compared with other accents such as RP, pronounced as a diphthong , used in words with eigh in the spelling, such as eight and weight, which is then pronounced differently from wait. See wait-weight merger.
Some words with igh in the spelling, like night, can be pronounced with (as in fleece) instead of (as in price). In some Yorkshire accents, the word right can also be pronounced with the same as weight, similar to an RP pronunciation of rate. The word write is usually pronounced as in RP, however.
Another group of words where may turn up in some accents is in words with ea in the spelling derived from a Middle English lengthened by Middle English open syllable lengthening, such as eat, meat and speak. In some accents, the three words meet, meat and team, which all have the same vowel in RP, may have three different vowels, , and respectively.
Words with ake at the end may be pronounced with (as in dress), as in "tek", "mek", and "sek" for take, make, and sake.
Words with the RP vowel , as in goat, may have a variety of different sounds. In traditional accents, diphthongs including , , and are used and in South Yorkshire particularly, words such as coal and hole may be pronounced as rhyming with coil . Other common sounds include a long back monophthong and a fronted monophthong (which can sound close to the vowel of RP nurse). The latter is a noticeable feature in Hull and has been noticed in Bradford. (Watt and Tillotson 2001)
Particularly in the area around Wakefield, the vowel , as in goose, can be realised as a diphthong .
Plurals and past participle endings which are pronounced and (with the vowel of kit) in RP may be pronounced with a schwa, . As Yorkshire accents are mostly non-rhotic, this means that the plural of badge can sound like the plural of badger and the plural of box can sound like the plural of boxer.

Holme Valley

The Yorkshire Dictionary Kellett, 2002 lists this area of Yorkshire as distinctive in its vowel pronunciation:

An ou noise is usually translated to air. "Mouse" becomes "meyas" and "about" becomes "abairt".
A short a is used in words such as "want", what", "wasp" where one would normally except an o sound.

Consonants

In some areas, an originally voiced consonant followed by a voiceless one can be pronounced as voiceless. For example, Bradford may be pronounced , with instead of the expected .
The replacing of a with an , e.g. "I'm gerring berrer" for "I'm getting better", "gerrof!" for "Get off!", "Purrit dahn" for "Put it down". In some areas, people may use a glottal stop for .
In Sheffield, pronunciation of th in some words, including the second person pronouns thee and thou, as is common, leading to the nickname "dee dahs" (cf. "thee tha") for locals and countless jokes about ambulance sirens.

Further information

These features can be found in the English Accents and Dialects collection on the British Library Collect Britain website. This website features samples of Yorkshire (and elsewhere in England) speech in wma format, with annotations on phonology with X-SAMPA phonetic transcriptions, lexis and grammar.

Vocabulary and grammar

Yorkshire dialect shares many features with other English dialects used in Northern England or in Scotland (eg "Aye" for "Yes").

Examples of vocabulary and grammar more specific to Yorkshire dialects include

Definite article reduction: shortening of the to a form without a vowel, often written t`. "Down the pub" is pronounced "down t` pub", where the t` represents a sound more like a glottal stop than a true t sound. That is, the phrase sounds like "downt pub", where the t of downt is completely or very nearly absent. It should be noted that giving the t` a full t sound ("down terpub") or omitting it entirely ("down pub") are mistakes commonly, and often deliberately, made by soemeone affecting a Yorkshire accent, or more usually a "Comedy Generic Northern English" accent. "Down TO the pub" uses TWO t`s, each pronounced as above ("Down ter pub"). Phoneticists will understand that in the above examples, er represents scwha. See this overview and a more detailed page on the Yorkshire Dialect website, and also Jones (2002).
The use of owt and nowt (sometimes spelled as aught and naught, but never pronounced 'ort' and 'nort') for "anything" or "nothing".
The word us is often used in place of me or in the place of our we should put us names on us property.
Use of the singular second-person pronoun thou (often written tha) and thee, largely in the southern parts of Yorkshire.
In all cases of the past tense of to be is were: "I were wearing t'red coat, but he were wearing t'green one".
While is often used in the sense of until (e.g. unless we go at a fair lick, we'll not be home while seven.) "Stay here while it shuts" might cause a non-local to think that they should stay there during its shutting, when the order really means that they should only stay until it shuts. "Wait while lights flash" is seen on British road signs at railway level crossings (railroad grade crossings); the potential for misunderstanding is obvious.
In common with many other dialects, aye is frequently used for yes.
Generally in cities such as Sheffield in South Yorkshire and Leeds in West Yorkshire, love is a term used by anyone, said to anyone in any situation and in some environments it is used on the end of almost every sentence which is addressing someone (e.g. "That'll be three pounds please love").
The word daft has a slightly different connotation in parts of Yorkshire. In most of Britain, its usage corresponds to "silly", but it is often used to mean "unintelligent" in Yorkshire.
The word self may become sen, e.g. yourself becomes thy sen.
Remnants from the Vikings include the verb laik, to play.

For further details and a full list, go to Yorkshire colloquialisms

Notes

Several recordings in the English Accents and Dialects collection show this feature, for example this Sheffield speaker.
For Sheffield, Alexander (2001) uses the spellings "leet" and "neet" for light and night, but "reight" and "feight" for right and fight.
See Wakelin (1977), p90, for details. For Sheffield, Alexander (2001) uses the spellings "eight" and "meight" for eat and meat, but "creeam" and "teeam" for cream and team. The spelling "ey" is used on this Calderdale pronunciation page, for eat and speak as well as right and fight. See also Meet-meat merger.
These phonetic transcriptions are from Watt and Tillotson (2001). For Sheffield, Alexander (2001) uses the spellings "nooase" for nose and "rooad" for road, but "coyal" and "oyal" for coal and hole. See Wakelin (1977), p89, for some information on the origin of the different vowels.
Several recordings in the English Accents and Dialects collection show this feature, for example this Ossett speaker.
In the English Accents and Dialects collection, this is referred to as Yorkshire assimilation. Several of the recordings in the collection show this feature, for example this Bradford speaker.

References

Alexander, D. (2001). Orreight mi ol'. Sheffield: ALD. ISBN 1901587185. A book about the traditional Sheffield dialect.
Jones, M. J. (2002). The origin of Definite Article Reduction in northern English dialects: evidence from dialect allomorphy. English Language and Linguistics 6.2: 325-345.
Wakelin, M. F. (1977). English Dialects: An Introduction, , Revised Edition, London: The Athlone Press.
Watt, D. and Tillotson, J. (2001). A spectrographic analysis of vowel fronting in Bradford English. English World-Wide 22:2, pp 269-302. Available at ^*
Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521285402.

Books written in Yorkshire Dialect

Yorkshire ditties (Series 1) by John Hartley - {link}
Yorkshire ditties (Series 2) by John Hartley - {link}
Yorkshire tales (Series 3) by John Hartley - {link}
Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1673-1915) and traditional poems by Frederic William Moorman, - {link}
Songs of the Ridings by Frederic William Moorman, - {link}
"A Kind of Loving" and "Joby" by Stan Barstow.
Most of the dialogue in "GB84" by David Peace.
Kes

External links

British English | Yorkshire

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