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The Yorkshire accent is the name generally given to the group of English accents used by the majority of people in the English county of Yorkshire. It should be noted that there is much variation in this region and there would be a whole host of differences between a Keighley accent and a Scarborough accent - both of which are, in turn, very hard for outsiders to understand. The film "Kes" is the best piece of Yorkshire dialect in culture, having been set in Barnsley. The characteristic features of the accent of the region include
- A flat, uninflected manner of speech, with less tonal variation than Standard English.
- The "u" sound is pronounced like the standard English "oo", so "luck" is pronounced (in SAMPA) "lUk". The difference between the Yorkshire Pronunciation of "look" and "luck" is difficult to hear, the "look" vowel being slightly longer in duration and tending towards the SAMPA lyk pronunciation.
- Shortening of "the" to "t", as in "I'm going down 't pub". Sometimes even the "t" is now omitted totally, often it is pronounced as a glottal stop.
- Many dialect words, for example "owt" and "nowt" for "anything" or "nothing", "bevvy" for drink, "growler" for "pork pie", "lughole" for "ear", "gip" for "vomit" [which funnily makes the unaesthetic Gipton estate in Leeds into "vomit-town"!] etc.
- The word "us" is often used in place of "me" or in the place of "our" [e.g. we should put us names on us property.]
- Use of the singular second-person pronoun "thou" and "thee", largely in the southern parts of Yorkshire. These are often pronounced "thah" and "thi".
- In all cases of the past tense of "to be" is "were": "I were wearing t'red coat, but he were wearing t'green one".
- The word "self" becomes "sen", particularly in North Yorkshire. E.g. "Yourself" becomes "Thy sen"
- In the South-East of Yorkshire vowel shifts so "i" becomes "ee", and "ee" becomes "i", so "Where have you been last night" becomes "wherst tha bin last neet".
- The letter "y" on the end of words is pronounced like the "i" in "city" or "pity" and is thus shorter than in Standard English [e.g. "It's a piti 'at ah didn't get sum sweets."]. 1
- In West Yorkshire, words like "blue" and "you" have an exaggerated "euw" sound in "bleuw" and "yeuw". This is best heard in the West Yorkshire town "Deuws-bri" [Dewsbury].
- An "h" at the start of the world is usually dropped, but not if there is a "hu" sound ["human", "herd", "hook" or "Huddersfield"].
- A consonant at the end of the word can sometimes become merged with the next word [if the next word begins with a vowel], as occurs in a French accent. e.g. "Pack it in!" becomes "Pa-ki-tin!"
- Where Standard English would have a long vowel syllable, Yorkshire often splits it into two syllables. e.g. "school" becomes "skeu-il", "there" becomes "they-yer" and "door" becomes "deu-er".
See, for example ey up!
1 - The word spice is often used as a substitute for sweets.
English language
