English language in Northern England
The spoken English language in Northern England has been shaped by the region's history of settlement and migration, and today encompasses a group of related accents and dialects known as Northern England English or Northern English.
The strongest influence on modern varieties of Northern English was the Northumbrian dialect of Middle English. Additional influences came from contact with Old Norse during the Viking Age; with Irish English following the Great Famine, particularly in Lancashire and the south of Yorkshire; and with Midlands dialects since the Industrial Revolution. All these produced new and distinctive styles of speech.
Traditional dialects are associated with many of the historic counties of England, and include those of Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumbria, and Yorkshire. Following urbanisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, distinctive dialects arose in many urban centres in Northern England, with English spoken using a variety of distinctive pronunciations, terms, and expressions. Northern English accents are often stigmatized, and some native speakers modify their Northern speech characteristics in corporate and professional environments.
There is some debate about how spoken varieties of English have impacted written English in Northern England; furthermore, representing a dialect or accent in writing is not straightforward.
Definition
The varieties of English spoken across modern Great Britain form an accent and dialect continuum, and there is no agreed definition of which varieties are Northern, and no consensus about what constitutes "the North".Wells uses a broad definition of the linguistic North, comprising all accents that have not undergone the TRAP–BATH and FOOT–STRUT splits. On that basis, the isogloss between North and South runs from the River Severn to The Wash, and covers the entire North of England and most of the Midlands, including the distinctive Brummie and Black Country dialects.
In his seminal study of English dialects, Alexander J. Ellis defined the border between the North and the Midlands as that where the word house is pronounced with to the north. For Ellis, "the North" occupied the area northwards of a line running from the Humber Estuary on the east coast to the River Lune on the west.
According to Wells, although well-suited to historical analysis, Ellis's line does not reflect everyday usage, which does not consider Manchester or Leeds, both located south of the line, as part of the Midlands.
An alternative approach is to define the linguistic North as equivalent to the cultural area of Northern Englandapproximately the seven historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, County Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire, or the three modern statistical regions of North East England, North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber.
This approach was taken by the Survey of English Dialects, which used the historic counties as a basis, and grouped Manx English with Northern dialects. Under Wells' scheme, the SED's definition includes Far North and Middle North dialects but excludes those of the Midlands.
Scottish English is distinct from Northern English, although the two have interacted with and influenced each other.
History
Many historical northern dialects reflect the influence of Old Norse. In addition to previous contact with Vikings, during the 9th and 10th centuries most of northern and eastern England was part of either the Danelaw or the Danish-controlled Kingdom of Northumbria. Consequently, modern Yorkshire dialects, in particular, are considered to have been influenced heavily by Old West Norse and Old East Norse.In the 19th century, there was large-scale migration from Ireland to Northern England, particularly to Liverpool and its hinterland. Summarising the views of several scholars, Wales highlights some features of accents and dialects in the North West influenced by Hiberno-English, such as the dental articulation of dat and tree, and the usage of yous as the second-person plural pronoun.
Northern accent and dialect varieties
Varieties include:- Cheshire dialect
- Cumbrian dialect
- Geordiespoken in Newcastle and Tyneside, which includes southern parts of Northumberland
- Lancashire dialect
- Mackemin Sunderland and Wearside
- Mancunianin Manchester, Salford, various other areas of Greater Manchester, and parts of Lancashire and eastern Cheshire
- Northumbrian dialect
- Pitmatictwo varieties: one in the former mining communities of County Durham, the other in Northumberland
- Scousein Liverpool and Merseyside, with varieties in western Cheshire and southern Lancashire
- Smoggiein Teesside
- Yorkshire dialect.
General Northern English refers to a newer "pan-regional standard accent" emerging from dialect leveling and the "reduction of accent variation" found in Northern England. GNE is associated with educated urbanites. A 2020 study sampling 105 accents from Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sheffield discovered a "considerable degree of leveling, especially between Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, although some differences persist."
Phonological characteristics
Speech features
There are several speech features that unite most of the accents of Northern England and distinguish them from Southern England and Scottish accents.''Trapbath'' split
The accents of Northern England generally do not have the trap–bath split observed in Southern England English, so that the vowel in bath, ask and cast is the short vowel :, rather than found in the south. There are a few words in the BATH set like can't, shan’t, half, calf, rather which are pronounced with /ɑː/ in most Northern English accents as opposed to in Northern American accents. The vowel of cat, trap is normally pronounced like in Standard Southern British English, rather than the found in traditional Received Pronunciation or General American, while, as in the words palm, cart, start, tomato, may not be differentiated from by quality, but by length, being pronounced as a longer.''Footstrut'' split
The foot–strut split is absent in Northern English, so that, for example, cut and put rhyme and are both pronounced with ; words like love, up, tough, judge, etc. also use this vowel sound. This has led to Northern England being described "Oop North" by some in the south of England. Some words with in RP even have book is pronounced in some Northern accents, while conservative accents also pronounce look and cook as and.Other vowels
The Received Pronunciation phonemes and are often pronounced as monophthongs, or as older diphthongs. However, the quality of these vowels varies considerably across the region, and this is considered a greater indicator of a speaker's social class than the less stigmatised aspects listed above.In most areas, happy-tensing has not occurred; the unstressed vowel at the end of words such happy, coffee and taxi is pronounced, like the i in bit, and not. This was also the norm in RP until the late 20th century. The tenser, similar to Southern England and Modern RP, is found throughout the North East from Teesside northwards, and in the Merseyside and Hull areas.
The vowel of is a fully open rather than the open-mid of modern Received Pronunciation and Southern England English.
''R'' sound
The most common R sound, when pronounced in Northern England, is the typical English ; however, an is also widespread, particularly following a consonant or between vowels. This tap predominates most fully in the Scouse accent. The North, like most of the South, is largely non-rhotic, meaning that R is pronounced only before a vowel or between vowels, but not after a vowel. However, regions that are rhotic or somewhat rhotic are possible, particularly amongst older speakers:- Lancashire and Greater Manchester areas north of the city of Manchester may residually be rhotic or pre-consonantally rhotic, for example, in Accrington and Rochdale.
- Lincolnshire may weakly retain word-final rhoticity.
- Uvular rhoticity, in which the same R sound as in French and German is used, has been described as the traditional "burr" of rural, northern Northumberlandpossible as well, though also rare, in County Durham.
Other features
Some northern English speakers have noticeable rises in their intonation: to other speakers of English, they may sound "perpetually surprised or sarcastic."