Regional Accents of England’s West Country
Hark! The regional accents of England’s West Country
If I was to say “West Country accent” to most UK people, their response would be “ooh arr ooh arr” or to refer to us all as yokels.
The West Country is also referred to as the south west and consists of the counties Wiltshire, Avon, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
I hail from Devon and I am quite appalled if anyone accuses me of having a Wiltshire accent. There are distinct differences to the seasoned native.
The reason for this is that our “r’s are very distinctive. Pronunced in fact in a rhotic fashion – where the “r” is pronounced everywhere – is in contrast Received Pronunication as spoken by HM The Queen, where “r” is only pronounced before vowels. The West Country pronunciation of “r” corresponds with that in Ireland and in most of North America. For example: park, herd and car.
When I was a news reader at BBC Radio Devon a few years ago, I was self-conscious about my Plymouth accent. I used to try to write news stories and scripts that didn’t contain “r”. I remember a colleague suggesting that instead of saying “horse”, I think of it as being spelled “hawse.”
It’s still the case that a West Country accent continues to be ridiculed and stereotyped. Dawn French, the actress and comedian, comes from the same city as me, Plymouth, but she’s one of the worst offenders for camping up the dialect. I cringe when I hear her in programmes like Jam & Jerusalem.
I stoutly insist that we are one of the few regions that uses English correctly. Where I live now, east of London, the dialect is a nasal estuary English and it’s very common to hear people saying “them ones” and other atrocities, which you’d never hear in the West Country.
The venerable Lt-Col. J.A. Garton observed in 1971 that traditional Somerset English has a venerable and respectable origin, and is not a mere “debasement” of Standard English:
“The dialect is not, as some people suppose, English spoken in a slovenly and ignorant way. It is the remains of a language – the court language of King Alfred. Many words, thought to be wrongly pronounced by the countryman, are actually correct, and it is the accepted pronunciation which is wrong. English pronounces W-A-R-M worm, and W-O-R-M wyrm; in the dialect W-A-R-M is pronounced as it is spelt, Anglo-Saxon W-E-A-R-M. The Anglo-Saxon for worm is W-Y-R-M. Polite English pronounces W-A-S-P wosp; the Anglo-Saxon word is W-O-P-S and a Somerset man still says WOPSE. The verb To Be is used in the old form, I be, Thee bist, He be, We be, Thee ‘rt, They be. ‘Had I known I wouldn’t have gone’, is ‘If I’d a-know’d I ‘ooden never a-went’; ‘A’ is the old way of denoting the past participle, and went is from the verb to wend (Anglo-Saxon wendan).”
Inevitably over time, the true West Country accents and dialects have diminished, but the US visitor should still be able to discern a strong “burr” and a different way of phrasing in the West Country compared to anywhere else in the UK.
If you’re on a bus in Plymouth you’ll hear animated conversations that always include the line “I goes”, as in: “He said are you wearing a hat? I goes, yes a big pink one”. You’ll hear the word “was” pronounced as “wuz.” If it’s an elderly couple, they may well start their conversation with “Ear!” (here) or “Ark!” (Hark), and refer to you as “my lover”. I remember at school being asked “Liver, my lover?”
Further reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/feb/21/thewestcountrysnotjustzyd
Listen to all the UK dialects here: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/index.html
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/West-Country-Accent
