West Midlands English

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

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" (which can be argued as an even shorter form of "I ain't").
In the south of the West Midlands (southern Warwickshire and Worcestershire), 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, 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.
* There is no foot–strut split in the West Midlands, except for Herefordshire, with words containing like ''strut'' or ''but'' being pronounced with , without any distinction between ''putt'' and ''put''.
* 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.Wells in Trudgill ed., ''Language in the British Isles'', page 58, Cambridge University Press, 1984
* Dialect verbs are used, for example ''am'' for ''are'', ''ay'' for ''is not'' (related to ''ain't''), ''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" (that is, "He ay sn'tright," a phrase implying someone is ''saft'' oftin the ''jed'' ead. ''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 mixing with the Welsh accent, particularly when 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.

Varieties of West Midlands English

* Black Country
* Brummie (spoken in Birmingham)
* Coventry
* Herefordshire (West Country accent)
* Potteries (North Staffordshire)
* Salopian (Shropshire)
* Warwickshire
* Worcestershire

References

Further reading

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External links

*Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
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{{English dialects by continent

British English
Culture in the West Midlands (region)
Dialects of English