Generally, the more east or south you go in Wales, the gentler that ‘o’ sound is, and with a heavier influence of English, vowels become more less defined or rounded. I know this first clip is in Welsh, but the interviewer displays all the sound that are definitely not scouser – they’re just part of the language and you can hear them in other non-British languages as well. The Celts moved and were pushed more and more Westwards over time, and it’s not unreasonable to think that the Brythonic language would influenced the various forms of English at that time on it’s way west. so that it sounds like /ts/), which is classically Liverpool” ”I was struck by her frequent affrication of /t/ (i.e. I can usually tell if someone lives within 5 miles of where I grew up, or 15 miles away by their tone and slight changes in pronunciation. What I’ve learnt is – the more scouser or northern English someone sounds, the less likely it is that they are a native Welsh speaker, and they’re more likely to come from further west. To be honest, a lot of people from north Wales wouldn’t really see people from Wrexham as Welsh because it’s so close to the border. That woman from Porthmadog is a Welsh speaker and I can hear it in her speech (I’m a native Welsh speaker as well. “Accents, Attitudes and Scouse Influence in North WalesĮnglish.” Publications of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (Netherlands). So I find it something of a puzzle: what is actually Scouse, and what is simply native to North Wales? Again though, it’s unclear if this is really “Scouse” at work of merely a feature of North Wales English the 2005 study I mention above concludes that affrication is in fact a “native” feature in North Wales, and more or less unrelated to Scouse. so that it sounds like /ts/), which is classically Liverpool. Her speech obviously lacks many Scouse features, but I was struck by her frequent affrication of /t/ (i.e. The study*, published in 2005, found that Scouse English was becoming a common influence on teenagers’ speech. Although I couldn’t locate videos of young Bangor natives, this young woman identified herself as being from a small village near Porthmadog, about 45 minutes south: One of the few studies done on this matter, in fact, studied English in Bangor, a city further to the West. Which really isn’t surprising the town is right across the border, and it’s likely that many residents commute into English cities for work. That being said, my impression from this video is that younger residents of Wrexham indeed have a lot of Northern Englishness (if not outright Scouseness) in their speech. Note also that many Welsh accents pronounce ‘strut’ and ‘cut’ with a schwa ( ə) yet this is also common in some Northern English speakers. But a number of Welsh accents do this as well, albeit usually with some lip rounding. For instance, at a number of moments in the video, we hear a fronted vowel for the ‘ur’ sound in words like ‘n urse’ (i.e. This video suggests a difficulty in deciding whether a Welsh accent has gotten the “Scouse treatment:” there’s some overlap between Welsh and Scouse English. Below is a snippet of the speech of North Wales’ most prominent town, Wrexham, from a documentary on binge drinking (so you really don’t have to watch the whole thing): Unlike similar notions, this one has evidence behind it, as I’ll discuss later. Many feel that accents in North Wales have begun to resemble those of Liverpool.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |