West Midlands English


West Midlands English is a group of dialects of the English language native to the West Midlands, England.

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".
In the south of the West Midlands, the accent is more similar to the general southern accent.
Dave Bradley, a presenter on BBC Hereford and Worcester said in 2005 that:

Phonology

  • West Midlands accents do not have the trap–bath split much like Northern England English, so cast is pronounced rather than the pronunciation of most southern accents. The northern limit of the in many words crosses England from mid-Shropshire to The Wash, passing just south of Birmingham.
  • Much like Northern England English as well, there is no foot–strut split in the West Midlands, except for Herefordshire and most of Shropshire, with words containing like strut or but being pronounced with, without any distinction between putt and put. This is often realised as in the Birmingham and Coventry areas, though the more sterotypically northern is found from Nuneaton northwards.
  • Some lexical sets in Standard English do not correlate exactly with the West Midlands dialect. A few commonly used words in Standard English's GOAT set have retained an older, pre toe-''tow merger quality of , which forms a separate lexical set along with some vowels in the Standard English GOOSE set which are immediately followed by an /l/. For examples, going and rowing do not rhyme in the West Midlands dialect, being pronounced as and respectively, and crew and cruel are not minimal pairs as their vowels differ - and respectively.
  • H-dropping is common, in which the sound is usually omitted from most words.
  • There is no Ng-coalescence. Cases of the spelling -ing are pronounced as rather than. Wells noted that there were no exceptions to this rule in Stoke-on-Trent, whereas there were for other areas with the pronunciation, such as Liverpool.
  • Dialect verbs are used, for example am for are, ay for is not, bay for are not, bin for am or, emphatically, for are. Hence the following joke dialogue about bay windows: "What sort of windas am them?" "They'm bay windas." "Well if they bay windas wot bin them?". There is also humour to be derived from the shop-owner's sign of Mr. "E. A. Wright". Saft also may mean silly as in, "Stop bein' so saft".
  • The Birmingham and Coventry accents are distinct, even though the cities are only 19 miles/30 km apart. Coventry being closer to an East Midlands accent.
  • Around Stoke-on-Trent, the short i'' can sometimes sound rather like ee, as very obvious when hearing a local say it; however, this is not always the case as most other words such as "miss" or "tip" are still pronounced as normal. The Potteries accent is perhaps the most distinctly 'northern' of the West Midlands accents, given that the urban area around Stoke-on-Trent is close to the Cheshire border.
  • Herefordshire and parts of Worcestershire and Shropshire have a rhotic accent, somewhat like the West Country, and in some parts of these counties, the local accent mixes features with the Welsh accent, particularly in places closer to the English–Welsh border.
  • In Warwickshire, the northern towns like Nuneaton and Bedworth have a similar accent to Coventry whereas southern Warwickshire generally have a southern accent.
  • Historically, and among some more traditional speech, there is a horse-''hoarse'' distinction, with the vowel qualities being approximately and .

    Varieties of West Midlands English

  • Black Country
  • Brummie
  • Coventry
  • Herefordshire
  • Cannock / Norton Canes / Brownhills
  • Potteries
  • Salopian
  • Warwickshire
  • Worcestershire