Black Country dialect

The Black Country dialect is spoken in the city of Wolverhampton and the Black Country (That is to say the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, and Walsall), both of which are located in England. It also influences the accents of towns and villages in the rural counties to the north, south and west of the Black Country. It is distinct from the accent heard in the neighbouring city of Birmingham.

Description

In general, the Black Country dialect has resisted many of the changes from Middle English that are seen in other dialects of British English, resembling particularly that of the English language in northern England and West Country English.

• There is no trap-bath split, so there is no /ɑː/ in words like bath, grass, etc., so to rhyme with math(s), gas, etc.
• /æ/ is uniformly pronounced as [a].
• There is no foot-strut split, so that cut rhymes with put, and both use /ʊ/.
• There is no NG-coalescence, so singer rhymes with finger, with both commonly pronounced with [ŋg~ŋk]. Indeed, the accent can be analyzed as lacking the phoneme /ŋ/ with that sound instead being regarded as an allophone of /n/.
• The Black Country accent is non-rhotic, and draw and drawer are nearly homophones.^[1]
• Final unstressed vowels are further reduced, such as /wɪndə/ for window and /fə/ for far.^[2]
• L-vocalisation occurs like in Bristol, where final /l/ becomes [w~u~o], as in [kʰowd] for cold.
• Final fricative consonants can be voiced and so /s/ is pronounced as [z] and /f/ as [v].

The traditional Black Country dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English^[3] and can be very confusing for outsiders. Thee, thy and thou are still in use, as is the case in parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. "'Ow B'ist," meaning "How are you?" is a greeting contracted from "How be-est thou?" with the typical answer being "'Bay too bah," ("I be not too bad"), meaning "I am not too bad." "I haven't seen her" becomes "I ay sid 'er." Black Country dialect often uses "ar" where other parts of England use "yes" (this is common as far away as Yorkshire). Similarly, the local version of "you" is pronounced /ˈjaʊ/ YOW, rhyming with "now." Among older speakers ye is used for you, as it is in most northern parts of England and Scotland. The local pronunciation "goo" (elsewhere "go") or "gewin'" is similar to that elsewhere in the Midlands. It is quite common for broad Black Country speakers to say "'agooin'" where others say "going." This is found in the greeting "Ow b'ist gooin" (How are you), to which a typical response would be "Bostin ah kid" (very well). Although the term yam yam may come from ya'm (you are) ya/ye is an archaic form of you and in many areas ye (pronounced like yea or ya) is used 'owamya aer kid' 'ar ah'm owkay ta'. It is possible that Black Country simply retains more country speech, unlike Birmingham, which has been settled for a much longer period of time and has developed a town speech and has therefore been influenced more by standard English much longer.

A road sign containing local dialect was placed at the A461/A459/A4037 junction in 1997 before the construction of a traffic island on the site. The sign read, in translation,^[4] "If you're soft (stupid) enough to come down here on your way home, your tea will be spoilt".^[5][6]

The dialect's perception was boosted in 2008 when an internet video, The Black Country Alphabet, described the whole alphabet in Black Country speak.^[7]

Notes

References

• Clark, Urszula (2013), Language and Identity in Englishes, Routledge, pp. 92–94, 140, ISBN 9781135904807