Accent and Dialect

Accent and Dialect

Accent is a certain way in which people pronounce a language=associated with a certain country, social class or area.

Dialect is a regional language that is noticeable by grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary. 

Cockney

Cockney is the second most famous British accent. It originated in the East End of London. It is typically associated with working class citizens of London and it contains several distinctive traits.

The main characteristics of cockney dialect are dropping of the letter “H” from many words, using double negatives, contractions and shifting vowels which drastically change the way words sound.

Also, a variety of consonants are replaced with other sounds, for example ‘frushes’ meaning thrushes. Sometimes, the final consonant of a word is dropped, for example ‘ova’ for meaning over.

Cockney rhyming slang is when a word is replaced with a phrase that usually contains a word that rhymes with the original word, for example “dog and bone” meaning “telephone.” Other examples of rhyming slang is ‘bacon and eggs’-legs, ham’n’cheesy-easy, plate of meat-street, Sweeney Todd-flying squad (police) and there are many more.

Another feature in the cockney dialect is glottal stopping; this is when the letter t is pronounced with the back of the throat in between vowels, e.g. better is ‘be’uh’. There is also L-vocalization which is when the l at the end of words often becomes vowel sounds, for example ‘pal’ sounds like pow. Finally, cockneys use Th-Fronting, were th in words like think or this is pronounced with more forward consonant depending on the word, i.e. thing becomes ‘fing’, this becomes ‘dis’ and mother becomes ‘muhvah.’

A cockney is someone who is born within hearing distance of the sound of Bow Bells (the bell sounds of the Church of St Mary Le Bow) and refers to an East London accent. To most people that don’t live in London, cockney means a Londoner. The cockney language can go back to the 19^th century when Sir Robert Peel formed the first Police stationed at Bow Street, London.

Examples of cockney people are Ray Winstone, Danny Dyer, Helena Bonham and Jamie Foreman. 

Geordie

Geordie usually refers to the people and dialect of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, in Northeast England. It may also refer to accents and dialects in Northeast England in general. Geordie is one of the most difficult to understand of typical British dialects.

There are grammatical and lexical features of the dialect. For example, in broad Geordie dialects, us is often replaced by we:

she took we, she wouldn't let we go, I mean, she, she did, she’d always took we on these trips…

In the Geordie dialect there are words that have a different meaning than Standard English.  For instance:

…used to get dropped off, off the bus in the mornings and, uhm, they picked us up on the way back…

Us in Geordie also refers to the first person-me

There are a variety of older dialect words such as gan (go), nae (not), clarts (mud) and many others. 

Other features of the Geordie accent are:

-The foot-strut merger-when the syllable in ‘could’ and ‘foot’ is pronounced with the same syllable as ‘fudge’ and ‘strut’.

-Non-rhoticity-r is pronounced at the end of a syllable or before a consonant

-The ‘ai’ in kite is pronounced ɛɪ, so it sounds a bit more like ‘kate.’

-The 'au' in “about” is pronounced u:  in strong dialects. For example “boot.”

Examples of famous people that are Geordies are Ant and Dec, Cheryl-Ferdinand Versini, Jimmy Nail, Sting, Alan Shearer, Tim Healey and Rowan Atkinson

Australian

Australian accent and dialect is spoken in all parts of Australia. Australian English is a fairly new dialect of English and is just over 200 years old. Children would have spoken the very early form of Australian English, these would be children born in Sydney. They would have spoke in similar ways to eachother in order to help bind the peer group and express their group membership. A new dialect was created by the first generation of children and it was to become the language of the nation. A wide range of different dialects from all over England (mainly in the South east, particularly London) would have been exposed to these children in the new colony. The new dialect would have been created from elements bin the speech yhat they heard around them. This new dialect would have been strong enough to deflect the influence of new children even when settlers arrived.

The three types of Australian Accents:

There are three types of Australian accents which are broad, general and cultivated.

A Broad accent is associated with Australian masculinity. Examples of people with a broad Australian accent are Steve Irwin, Paul Hogan and Bill Hunter. This accent is only spoken by a small part of the population but it has a great deal of cultural authority. The broad Australian accent was spoken by very women and if they were to sue it they would sound like they was making farting jokes.

A Cultivated Australian accent is usually spoken by women that want to show a feminine and sophisticated image. Newsreaders of the government funded ABC had to speak with the cultivated accent up until the 1970s. Due to not many Australian men being able to speak in this accent, male newsreaders were imported from England. This speaker is associated with the upper class. The Cultivated accent is similar to a British Accent. Ex-prime minister Malcolm Fraser and Cate Blanchette use this accent.  

A General Australian accent is a mix between the broad and cultivated accents. As they are reasonably neutral in principles, most of the speakers believe that they do not have an accent. They realise that they speak differently to the broad and cultivated speakers. About 80% of Australians speak with this accent. An example of someone who uses this accent is Nicole Kidman.

The biggest features of the Australian accent:

-The diphthong in ‘kite,’ ride’, ‘mine’ etc:

The more broad that the accent is, the more this moves toward the diphthong in words like ‘choice’ (i.e. retracted and raised). A Cultivated Australian speaker might pronounce ‘buy’ like (baɪ), whereas a Broad speaker might pronounce it like ‘boy’ (bɒe).

-The vowel in ‘mouth,’ ‘loud’, ‘out,’ etc:

The more broad that the accent is, the more the first part of this diphthong moves toward the ‘e” in “dress.  So a Cultivated speaker might have a diphthong closer to (aʊ), whereas a while a Broad speaker might pronounce it like an ‘eh-aw’ sound (ɛɔ).

Other features include:

-Words like ‘fleece,’ ‘keep,’ etc are a more pronounced like the diphthong in Broad Australian accents.
-Words like ‘face’ and ‘make’ are pronounced like the diphthong in American/RP “kite” in broad accents.
–Finally, words like ‘goose’ and ‘food’ have a fronter ‘oo’ vowel and pronounced like (ʏ) in Broad accents.