Talking in questions

In response to Gaynor's comment on my last post, I wanted to point out a phenomenom that we don't necessarily notice.

Gaynor commented that she hopes that the trend of speaking in questions doesn't catch on. I whole-heartedly agree (although I think it might already be too late) if the questions we are referring to are the kind that end sentences with a "Yeh?" For example:

"It's gonna be great, yeh?"
"You're gonna love it, yeh?"

Another pet hate is rising intonation, but we will deal with that another time.

The fact is, we all speak in questions most of the time, we just don't notice it. These questions are not questions at all, really. They are called "tag questions", and their purpose is not to illicit a true response, rather to aid the flow of the conversation by constantly including the interlocutors (other people in the conversation). Here are a few examples that you may find familiar:

"Ay, he's bloody good on that guitar, i'nt 'e?" (isn't he)
"She looks lovely in that frock, du'nt she?" (doesn't she)
"It was a belter, that film, wa'n't it?" (wasn't it)
"I've said it before, 'avn't a? (haven't I)

Imagine having a conversation without using these tag questions. Better still, try to have a conversation without using them, and see how stilted and abrupt the conversation seems.

The reader will notice that the verbs in the tag questions agree with the verbs in the main clause, as follows:

• "He is bloody good on that guitar, isn't he?

He - personal pronoun, third person, masculine

is - to be, present tense, third person, non gender specific

It would sound ridiculous to use verbs that do not agree as follows:

• "He is bloody good on that guitar, wasn't he/hasn't he/didn't he?"

The verbs are invariably switched according to whether the verb in the main clause is negated or not, so a declarative statement that says, "He is bloody good..." is followed by an interrogative tag question "...is he not?" (isn't he):

• He is... isn't he

If the declarative statement is negated, "He is not very good on that guitar..." then the interrogative tag question is not negated "... is he?"

• He is not... is he

An interesting side note is the use of tag questions by the youth particularly in the London area, where the tag question "Isn't it?" is usually contracted and pronounced as "Innit?" We have all heard this, but the interesting feature of its use by young people is that it does not agree with the verb is in the main clause.

For example, I have heard young people (15 - 25) in the London area say the following:

• "I'm goin' out, innit?"
• "I don't care, innit?"
• "I told him I don't want to, innit?"

They seem to be favouring the "to be" verb in all tag questions, rather than matching the verb in the tag with the main clause. As a comparison, I would say the above statements as follows:

• "I'm goin' out, aren't a?"
• "I don't care, do a?"
• "I told 'im I don't want to, di'n't a?" (didn't I)

Note: The final sentence is actually more complicated than it looks at first glance. The verb that the tag question (didn't I) actually agrees with is the non verbalised "did" in the main clause, and NOT the "don't" in the "I don't want to".

To simplify things, imagine that I had said, "I did tell him" instead of "I told him" and you will see that the verb in the tag does indeed agree.

Knew, New, and News.

During my visit to Warrington last month, I was surprised to hear my sister pronounce a word in a way that I thought impossible in the dialect. The word was "knew", as in "I knew it."

I had always thought that we Warringtonians, like the vast majority of people in the country, pronounce "knew" with the phonetic /j/ after the "n" as follows:
/nju/
as opposed to our American cousins who generally pronounce it without the phonetic /j/ as follows:
/nu/
I thought that this held true for all the words with this combination of sounds: "new", "knew", "news"; apparently not!

I was surprised, nay, shocked, to hear my beloved older sister pronounce "knew" without the phonetic /j/. I listened more closely, thinking perhaps that she had been thinking of another word and had mispronounced accidentally, but no, she repeatedly pronounced it as /nu/.

The one thing I didn't do was compare her pronunciation of the other words normally pronounced with the /nj/ combination: "new" and "news" (my rationale being that there may be some interference from the present tense form of the verb "to know", which, of course, is never pronounced with /nj/).

I will report back on this topic the next time I speak to her.

How do my fellow Warringtonians pronounce "knew"? Let me know. Post a comment.

New dialect word of the week

After a break and a trip to see my Dad (who is now recovering from his heart attack), we have a new dialect word of the week.

This time it is a culinary treat :-)

Elision - or what's left out!

I would like to dedicate this post to my Dad who is recovering from a heart attack in hospital!
Looks like I'm going to hear the dialect again sooner than I thought.


Elision is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as follows:

Elision

noun

[mass noun]

• the omission of a sound or syllable when speaking (as in I’m, let’s):the shortening of words by elision

Elision is an important part of the Warrington dialect, and it has come up in a couple of comments, so I would like to elaborate on it here.

As the definition suggests, elision is concerned with leaving certain sounds out. But it is not solely confined to contractions such as I'm (I am), they're (they are), isn't (is not), etc. The most apparent incidence of elision in the dialect occurs with the definite article, or "the", when it precedes a word that begins with a vowel sound.

In the case of elision, it is important to be precise when talking about the beginnings of words; here we I will be referring to sounds and not letters. This becomes apparent when we take into consideration the common phenomenon of h-dropping. H-dropping, as the name suggests, is the phenomenon of leaving the "h" sound unpronounced at the beginning of words in which it is usually pronounced (words such as hour, honour, honesty, to name but a few, are never pronounced with the initial "h").

H-dropping is by no means specific to the Warrington dialect, but it is a clear feature of the dialect, and can be heard in the speech of the majority of Warringtonians. Words such as horse, house, heater, etc are pronounced without the initial "h" as follows: 'orse, 'ouse, 'eater; the "h" is replaced by an omission apostrophe as in the previously mentioned contractions.

The frequency of h-dropping in the dialect provides speakers with ample opportunity for definitie-article elision because the lack of the initial "h" frees up, as it were, the initial vowel sounds. Thus, 'orse, 'ouse, and 'eater begin with the sounds /o/, /a/, and /i/ respectively.

The elision occurs when the definite article "the" is required. The "e" in "the" is lost and the remaining "th" is combined with the subsequent word as follows: th'orse, th'ouse, th'eater; the horse, the house, and the heater, respectively.

However, I suspect that this particular type of elision is either on the way out, or possibly has disappeared from the speech of younger generations in the town!

For example, among my own peer group (born early to mid 1970s), I do not remember hearing it used hardly at all. An example of one of the different types of elision arising at the time can be seen in references to the Warrington hospital.

As a young man, I would have said "I am going to the hospital" as follows:

"Am gooin the ozzy"

whereas my parents generation (born 1930s & 1940s) still pronounce the same sentence as follows:

"Am goin' t'th'ospital"

There are various phonetic differences that I am unable to transcribe here, but the main difference is in the elision between "the" and "hospital". My parents' generation maintain the elision described above th'ospital. My idiolect (the form of the dialect that any given individual speaks) does not show any elision between "the" and "hospital" at all. In fact, there is an intrusive /j/ (pronounced like "y" in yoga) between "the" and "hospital" as follows: the (y)'ozzy.

What is your experience? Think about what you say and how you say it, and post your comments here!

Survey results and food for thought!

Well, a disappointing response to the survey, but thank you to the people who answered, I appreciate your interest in the topic :-)


Despite the very low number of responses, the conclusions that can be drawn are as I had expected: Warringtonians pronounce "Nothing" as Neiwt.


This is important because it clearly distinguishes the Warrington dialect from the Lancashire dialect. Warrington was, of course, part of Lancashire up to 1974, when it then became part of Cheshire. A shift in county borders does not mean a shift in dialect, so the difference in pronunciation is interesting.


The Lancashire dialect has been studied in some detail, and one of its features is the owt - nowt pronunciation of anything - nothing, respectively. Although the Warrington dialect has many similarities and indeed shares many features with the Lancashire dialect, in this instance it differs distinctly. 


Naught, Neiwt and Nowt seem to be almost certainly related. Naught meaning the decimal "0" and equally "nothing". Naught seems to have developed from the much older Old English word "nawiht" or "nōwiht", which in turn is a contraction of "ne-ō-wiht", which means "not a thing". It is easy to see the connection between "neiwt", "nowt" and "nawiht". This often happens in dialects; a word becomes popular for an arbitrary reason and then sticks despite concurrent developments in the standard language.


It seems "nawiht" and its various pronunciations has been around since the Old English period (400 - 1100AD). So we can assume that both neiwt and nowt are between 1500 - 1000 years old.


The premise that both pronunciations have been around so long, and that "nowt" has not superseded "neiwt" is testament to the Warrington dialect. Warrington was part of the County Palatine Lancashire for hundreds of years, and yet it still maintained its own unique features.


So the next time you say "neiwt", you are not saying nothing, you really are saying something!!!

New Dialect word of the week AND another survey

A "double whammy", to use the American vernacular, this week.

The new dialect word of the week is a real gem! Click on the link to find out.

And we have another survey that may be related to the dialect word of the week; I hope to find out from the good people of the town.

The survey focuses again on pronunciation, and this time we are dealing with possibly a very old word indeed! More details when the survey results are published.

So, to business - How do you pronounce the following words in the dialect:

Nothing:

1. Nowt

2. Neiwt

3. Some other pronunciation

Anything:

1. Owt

2. Eiwt

3. Some other pronunciation

As with the previous survey, please answer with the corresponding numbers and year of birth. My answers are:

2 & 2, 1974.

If you answer with a number 3 for either or both, please try to spell your pronunciation.

Let's see what we come up with. Many thanks :-)

British Library Wordbank project

I have contacted the British Library concerning its Wordbank project, which aims to collect dialect words for posterity.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/world-translation-center/british-wordbank/162263300513573

The project has been running for some months now, and they have amassed quite a lot of dialect words from around the country. I hope the British Library will take me up on my offer of collaboration as we are essentially striving towards the same goal. Let's see what happens. I'll keep you all posted.

Keep those dialect words coming in, and we can record the Warrington dialect for future generations!

New dialect word of the week

A new dialect word of the week in keeping with the season :-)

Click on the "Dialect word of the week" link on the right.

Survey Results

Thank you to everyone that responded to the survey!

We didn't get as many responses as I had hoped for, and as such it is a little difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions. However, here is a little information on the phenomena we can see at work in the responses we received, and one conclusion that we can draw from the available data:

The omission of the "T"s in the "Go get them" sentence is a common linguistic phenomenon known as glottalisation. The term comes from the part of the throat known as the glottis, where the vocal chords are situated. Glottalisation occurs when the vocal chords are temporarily closed to obstruct the passage of air through them. This creates the sound that we think of as representing the omission of the "T"s.

If you now say "Go ge' 'em" to yourself, you will notice that there is a very brief gap in between ge' and 'em; this is the glottalisation, or as it is often called, the glottal stop.

The replacement of the "T"s with "R"s is another common linguistic phenomenon known as a linking R. The linking R occurs between two words; the preceding ending in a vowel sound, and the following beginning in a vowel sound. Note, we are referring to the sounds now, and not the actual letters! So, in the sentence "Go get them", in the natural speech of many Warringtonians, the verb get loses the final consonant and thus ends in a vowel sound /e/, and the pronoun them loses its initial consonants and begins with a vowel sound /e/, and hence we have the required prerequisites for the linking R to occur. As as our survey shows, it does indeed occur :-)

The second part of our survey requires us to know a little about a linguistic phenomenon known as phonetic transcription. As the name suggests, it belongs to the field of phonetics, which is defined as the study of the sounds of human speech. We need not go into this area in great depth, only to say that the sounds of any language are represented in written text by the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA (which can be seen in dictionaries next to the word entry).

To be clear, the IPA does not refer to the spelling of words with letters (orthography), rather the sounds that make up words!

Our survey was interested to see if and when there has been a change in pronunciation of the vowel sound in "book". The two coexisting pronunciations are represented in the IPA phonetic transcription as follows (note that phonetic transcriptions are always surrounded by forward slashes):

1. book (rhyming with stuck) /buk/
2. book (rhyming with puke) /byk/


Of the six responses we received, five of them reported that they pronounced "book" as /buk/. Only one reported a pronunciation of "book" as /byk/. What is interesting about this is that those using the /buk/ pronunciation are born from 1950 onwards. The one /byk/ pronunciation was born pre-1950. On its own this carries very little weight, but in the absence of further responses, I factored in the pronunciation of my own Warrington-born relatives born pre-1950, and they all pronounce "book" as /byk/.

We can therefore conclude, albeit tentatively, that there was the start of a vowel sound /y/ - /u/ shift in the Warrington dialect at some point circa 1950!

This pronunciation shift is also relevant for similarly pronounced words such as: "look" and "cook".

Again, a big THANK YOU to all those that took /tuk/ not /tyk/ the time to answer. Your participation is very much appreciated :-)

A quick survey

I would like to do a quick survey concerning pronunciation in the Warrington area. It should only take you 30 seconds to do, but would provide very interesting results.

How do you pronounce the following word - BOOK?

1. Rhyming with "stuck"
2. Rhyming with ""puke"

How do you pronounce the following sentence - GO GET THEM?

3. Without the "T"s, as follows: "Go ge' 'em"
4. With an "R", as follows: Go gerrum

Please respond by posting a comment underneath this blog entry.

The comment only has to include: the number that corresponds to your pronunciation AND your year of birth. For example, my response would be: 1 & 4, 1974

No other information is required.

Let's see how many responses we get, and I'll post the results in a few days.

Many thanks :-)

New dialect word of the week

Check out the latest dialect word of the week!

Wirelect is one month old today!

Wirelect is one month old today!

And to celebrate, here are some statistics ;-)

In just one month visitors from 32 cities in 9 countries around the world have read Wirelect content nearly 1000 times!

Most visits come from England, followed very closely by Finland, and then Australia.

We have had comments from a few people, with one regular contributor in addition to myself.

This is a great start, but we need more words and phrases in order to amass enough data to put together a dictionary. If you are a Warringtonian, please add a comment. The best contributors will get their name in the finished dictionary!

Thank you to everyone who has visited and/or contributed. Keep watching, this is just the start!

Register - the way we speak and why.

Did you know that you can speak many different versions of your own language?

You can. We all can!

Check out the "Understanding language" page for more information on how we communicate.

Phrases and Idioms

Do you like a drink of corporation pop after taking shanks' pony?

Not sure what this means? Check out the new page for Phrases and Idioms!

Add your own phrases and sayings in the comment field.

New dialect word of the week

Check out the new dialect word of the week!

Post your comments.

Themes

Check out the new information on the Themes page: Descriptive and prescriptive language

Wirelect in the news!

Wirelect in the news!

The Warrington Guardian has published a feature on the Wirelect project in the paper copy of the newspaper.

Have a look and tell your friends!

Many thanks to the Warrington Guardian!

I do not know if it will be published in the electronic version of the Warrington Guardian. I will post the link here if/when it is published electronically.

New words posted!

Check out the latest dialect words on "Dialect word of the week".

Any opinions? Do you disagree with the definition? Post your comments!

Themes - Etymology

Wirelect has a new page - Themes

This page will contain some of the central concepts in the project, and just general information on dialects and dialectology.

This time it's the turn of Etymology, or the history of a word.

Click on the "Themes" link on the right of this post and check it out.

Dialect word of the week

Check out this week's "Dialect word of the week".

Click on the link on the right of this post. Feel free to comment.

Dialect word of the week

Check out the new page - Dialect word of the week.

Every week I will post a dialect word with a dictionary definition (if one exists), my own definition (if different from dictionary definition), an example of use, and hopefully an on-line reference of some sort.

If you use the word yourself and have any comments, or you disagree with the definition, or whatever, post your comments on the page.

How to post your comments

If you want to post a word or phrase then follow these simple instructions:

• Click on the "Your dialect words" link on the right of this blog post
• Enter the word or phrase you want to share with the community
• Select a profile from the drop-down menu (e.g. anonymous)
• Click the "Post comment" box

That's it!

Thanks for posting :-)

Wirelect - open for business!

Welcome to Wirelect!

Wirelect is a blog project dedicated to the Warrington dialect. The aim is to collect and document the Warrington dialect by crowdsourcing, that is, you the reader. The blog is open for anyone to read, but it is the aim of the project to get speakers of the Warrington dialect to sign up to the blog, and post the words and phrases that they use so that we can document the dialect.

This is just the start. Much more information and instructions will become available in the coming days and weeks.

So sign up and "mek yer voice 'erd!"