Port Talbot English

Phonetics and phonology

Consonants

• Consonants can be geminated by any preceding vowel except long non-close vowels, which is most noticeable for fortis plosives and when they are in intervocalic positions. For instance, the plosives in these pairs are lengthened: lob–''lobby, shunt–shunting and sit–city. In clusters, the first of any fortis elements is selected: in shunting or in nasty or simply the first consonant when there is no fortis element, as in lovely'' in which is lengthened.
• The voiceless stops have considerable strong aspiration, often as a weak affricate. That is especially for the case of.
• T-glottalization is uncommon but may occur word-finally.
• H-dropping also often occurs.
• are postalveolar affricates, as in RP.
• Like many other Welsh accents, Port Talbot English is non-rhotic, but when pronounced, is more often a tap than an approximant.
• is always clear.
• Consonants from Welsh such as and are encountered in local Welsh placenames.

  Vowels

Monophthongs

Length

• Unstressed long vowels tend to be shortened, as seen in free wheel.
• Sometimes, under the same environment as geminating consonants, short vowels can be lengthened as in casserole.

  Quality

• The vowel is tense, but unlike Received Pronunciation, it is long, as in the vowel.
• Vowels corresponding to unstressed in RP are as follows:
• * in the inflectional suffixes -ed and -es;
• * in the suffix -est;
• * in prefixes like anti- and poly-.
• There is no contrastive vowel. Depending on word, it is replaced by either , a disyllabic sequence of and and a monosyllabic sequence when word initial.
• As in many other southern Welsh accents, the vowel is rounded and fronted to. However, a small minority of speakers realise it rhotically as as in many varieties of North American English.
• The horse–hoarse merger is absent in PTE, hence the words horse and hoarse are kept distinct. is found in fortress and important, where the horse vowel may be found in other dialects that keep the distinction.
• is open-mid in stressed positions. When unstressed, it may be slightly raised to mid.
• The vowel is mainly. Exceptions are before and, as in all or exhaust, as well as the word saucepan, where it is replaced by the vowel. However long does appear before the cluster and the word palsy.
• The trap–bath split is nearly absent, although the word bath along with path, laugh and its derivatives, ghastly and last have a long , yet just like in Northern England, the remainder of words are short.
• The words bad, bag and man are often found with long.

  Diphthongs

• A distinction between and, corresponding to the vowel in other dialects. Thus the pairs blue/''blew and grue/grew are not homophones.
• * When a word is spelt with an, the corresponding vowel is. It also occurs in the words insurance and surety.
• * The spellings, and following are typically pronounced.
• * can also be found in the word blue, and the sequence, such as flute, lunatic and Pluto
• * is found otherwise, such as crew or glue.
• The sequence in most dialects will be rendered as in word-initial position and after, such as use and youth. You and its derivatives can be pronounced either as or. is otherwise found for all other positions.
• Another distinction for the and lexical sets, thus the minimal pairs pain/pane and toe/tow. They are generally diphthongised as and when the spelling contains / and / respectively and monophthongised as and elsewhere. However, these are subject to several exceptions:
• * The vowel is always diphthong word-finally or preceding a vowel. It is further seen in the suffix sequence, thus café, mosaic and patience are always. It is usually a diphthong before a nasal, however proper names do have a monophthong.
• * The is a monophthong in bait, gait, gaiter, Jamaica, raisin, traipse and waist.
• * Before a single, the is always diphthongal, such as coal or gold. The spelling is diphthongal in roll, stroll and its derivatives, yet monophthongal elsewhere.
• * is monophthongal in though, and morpheme-final -ow.
• * Own'' as a possessive adjective is monophthongal.

  Elision and assimilation

• , at the end of a morpheme or word, are very commonly elided: not good and handbag, the latter with the assimilation of the nasal with the b.
• The indefinite article an may be reduced to a, as in apple.
• The schwa is often elided although but it is also very common to retain it.
• The sequence coop, like in the rest of South Wales, is characteristically pronounced like cop.
• Elisions in the phrases isn't it?, never mind and there you are are very common.
• Why + negative do, such as why don't, why doesn't or why didn't is also very commonly elided to.

  Phonemic incidence

• Like in most of Northern England and the Midlands, tooth is pronounced with the vowel, as in.
• Mauve is pronounced with., instead of or.
• Motor is pronounced, and the strong form of their is pronounced.
• In an address, girl and man are pronounced with the vowel.

• Daunt and jaunt may be pronounced with.
• Hose and whole may be pronounced with and area with.
• Want may be pronounced with, instead of.

  Prosody

• Intonation in PTE is similar to Abercraf English. One prominent pattern is that the main pitch movement is not necessarily confined to the stressed syllable but can be spread further, to the end of the word.
• Like in other Welsh accents, PTE tends to avoid having double stress patterns, making words such as Bridgend or icecream lose their secondary stress.

  Grammar

• Ain't commonly used as a negation.
• The Northern Subject Rule is used in present-tense verb forms and extends to personal pronouns: I goes to work, the birds sings and you says.
• Certain words have grammatical meaning unique to PTE, including after meaning 'later' and never as 'didn't'.
• Double negatives occur, much like in other vernacular English dialects.
• The prepositions on, by and for are used idiomatically, as is characteristic for South Wales accent: by here/there. Phrasal examples include what is on this?, there's times on him/her, what's the time by you, you can't go by him/her and there's gratitude for you.

  Vocabulary

• ashman — bin man, dustman
• cam — a stride
• crachach — used everywhere in Wales; a derogatory term used to refer to members of the Establishment in the country. It can simply refer to 'posh people'.
• lose — to miss
• poin — to pester, to nag
• troughing — guttering
• venter — to bet

  Idioms

• burnt to glory — burnt to the point of ashes
• gone home — said when a piece of clothing has worn out
• possible if — in PTE it specifically means 'surely it's not that case that...'
• sure to be — a phrase that represents 'certainly' or 'without a doubt'