|
The West Country dialects or West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English dialects or accents used by much of the indigenous population of the southwestern part of England, the area popularly known as the West Country. This region encompasses Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire, though the northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define. The city of Bristol has its own local dialect which is also distinctly West Country in tone. Immigration to the towns from other regions means that the dialects are now only commonly encountered in rural areas. In the nearby counties of Berkshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it was possible to encounter comparable accents and, indeed, distinct local dialects until perhaps the 1960s. Although natives of such locations, especially in western parts, can still have West Country influences in their speech, this is less than in the true West Country counties. The increased mobility and urbanisation of the population have meant that local Berkshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight dialects (as opposed to accents) are today essentially extinct. Strong West Country accents can still be difficult for speakers of Standard English to understand. Although popularly considered to be only accents, academically the regional variations are considered to be dialect forms. These are dialects of English and should not be confused with Cornish, which is a Celtic language related to Welsh, and more closely to Breton.
In literature In literary terms, most of the usage has been in either poetry or dialogue, to add "local colour". It has rarely been used for serious prose in recent times, but was used much more extensively in the 19th century. Early period 19th Century 20th century Contemporary History and origins Until the 19th century, the West Country and its dialects were largely protected from outside influences, due to its relative geographical isolation. The West Country dialects derive not from a corrupted form of modern English, but reflect the historical origins of the English language and its historical pronunciation, in particular Late West Saxon, which formed one of the earliest English language standards. The dialects have their origins in the expansion of Anglo-Saxon into the west of modern-day England, where the kingdom of Wessex (West-Saxons) was founded. From Wessex, Anglo-Saxon spread into the Celtic regions of Dumnonia. Penetration of the English language into Cornwall took centuries more; during the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, which centred on Devon and Cornwall, many of the Cornish and Devonians objected to the Prayer Book on the basis that many Cornish and West Devonians could not speak English. The last monoglot Cornish speaker is believed to have been Chesten Marchant, who died in 1676 at Gwithian (Dolly Pentreath was bilingual). In recent years, the traffic has reversed, with the revived "Modern Cornish" variety reclaiming many Celtic words from the local dialect into its lexicon. It is thought that the various local dialects may reflect the territories of various Saxon clans (who had their own dialects of Saxon), and that the progress of their occupation explains the greater dominance of a more Germanic accent in the earlier and more heavily occupied eastern parts of the region, while the slower and lower density Saxon infiltration into Devon enabled more of a Celtic accent to be retained. As Lt-Col. J.A. Garton observed in 1971 *, 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)." In some cases, many of these forms are closer to Standard German than Standard British English is, e.g.
The use of male (rather than neutral) gender with nouns, and sometimes female, also parallels German, which unlike English retains grammatical genders. The pronunciation of "s" as "z" is also similar to German. In more recent times, West Country dialects have been treated with some derision, which has led many local speakers to abandon them or water them down. In particular it is British comedy which has brought them to the fore outside their native regions, and paradoxically groups such as The Wurzels, a comic North Somerset/Bristol band from whom the term Scrumpy and Western music originated, have both popularised and made fun of them simultaneously. In an unusual regional breakout, the Wurzels' song Combine Harvester reached the top of the UK charts in 1976, where it did absolutely nothing to dispel the "simple farmer" stereotype of Somerset folk. It and all their songs are sung entirely in a local version of the dialect, which is somewhat exaggerated and distorted. Celtic language influence As previously stated, Brythonic languages have had a long-term influence on the West Country dialects. There is evidence of some minor Irish settlement in the coastal areas, especially Somerset, but the colonies here were not as successful as in Scotland, or even north-west England. The Cornish dialect, or Anglo-Cornish (to avoid confusion with the Cornish language), has the most substantial Celtic language influence, because many western parts were non-English speaking, even into the early modern period. In places such as Mousehole, Newlyn and St Ives, fragments of Cornish survived in English even into the 20th century, e.g. some numerals (esp. for counting fish) and the Lord's Prayer were noted by WD Watson in 1925, Edwin Norris collected the Creed in 1860, and JH Nankivel also recorded numerals in 1865. The dialect of West Penwith is particularly distinctive, especially in terms of grammar. This is most likely due to the late decay of the Cornish language in this area. In other areas, Celtic vocabulary is less common, but it is notable that "coombe", cognate with Welsh cwm is common in placenames east of the Tamar, especially Devon. Some examples of Brythonic words surviving in Devon dialect include: Characteristics The characteristic features of the accent of the region include: In various districts there are also distinct grammatical and syntactical differences in the dialect: West Country accents also share certain characteristics with the accents of other isolated rural areas, for example those in parts of East Anglia. There is a popular prejudice that stereotypes speakers as unsophisticated and even backward, due possibly to the deliberate and lengthened nature of the accent. This can work to the West Country speaker's advantage, however: recent studies of how trustworthy Britons find their fellows based on their regional accents put the West Country accent high up, under southern Scottish English but a long way above Cockney and Scouse. Presumably this is premised upon the perception that farmers are people of the soil, and hence more honest compared to city dwellers, or that slow speech means slow thought, hence more incapable of guile. The West Country accent is probably most identified in American English as "pirate speech" — cartoon-like "Ooh arr, me 'earties! Sploice the mainbrace!" talk is very similar. This may be a result of the strong seafaring and fisherman tradition of the West Country, both legal and outlaw. Edward Teach (Blackbeard) was a native of Bristol, and privateer and English hero Sir Francis Drake hailed from Tavistock in Devon. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance may also have added to the association. It has also been suggested that Westcountryman Robert Newton's performance 1950 Disney film Treasure Island may have influenced people's preconceptions of what accent a pirate "should" have*. Additional selected vocabulary Some of these terms are obsolete, but some are in current use. See also | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |