Yorkshire dialect

The Yorkshire dialect and accent refers to the varieties of English used in the northern English county of Yorkshire. These varieties of English refer to themselves as Tyke and are referred to as Yorkshire by other varieties of English.

Note: "Accent" and "Dialect", though often confused, do not mean the same thing: "Dialect" refers to the grammar and vocabulary used by a speaker; "Accent" refers to pronounciation. For example, a speaker from Leeds is likely to have a Leeds Accent, whether or not they are using Leeds dialect words.

Geographic distribution

Many films demonstrate Yorkshire accents, although this source needs to be used with care: the film industry is notorious for using "generic Northern" accents, or confusing Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the best examples, characters will even use Yorkshire dialect - often as a somewhat simplistic device to establish their (lower) social class. Good films for hearing Yorkshire accents are Kes, filmed around Barnsley with local actors; the 1997 film The Full Monty, featuring Sheffield accents (the main actor is not from Sheffield, but is well known for working hard at getting his accent right); and the 1998 film Little Voice, featuring a Scarborough accent (though Jane Horrocks is well known for her Lancashire accent).

In television, the sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, filmed in Holmfirth, has the many characters using local language forms (though not always very local, the series is renowned as something of a "pension fund" for elderly actors with generally Northern English (and sometimes wider) backgrounds). The Chuckle Brothers speak with an accent that southerners find much easier to understand and that can be found around Rotherham. Similarly, some programmes misrepresent it (or at least do not claim to be very local). The 1996 film Brassed Off was filmed in Grimethorpe, yet the accents are not representative. The soap Emmerdale is set around Otley ("Hotten"), but the accent heard in the soap does not reflect local trends accurately.

Within the British Isles, the accent tends to have strong associations with common sense, so exaggerated Dales accents are occasionally heard in British comedy when "plain speaking" is called for.

• Blackadder — In the third season episode 'Amy and Amiability', the episode's eponymous heroine Amy Hardwood's father (played by Lancastrian Warren Clarke) plays a stereotypical Eighteenth Century Yorkshire mill owner complete with Dales accent.
• Red Dwarf — In the fourth season episode 'DNA', the android Kryten's third spare head develops a broad Dales accent and stereotypical demeanor after it succumbs to 'droid rot'. As the episode's plot concerns the android being transmogrified into a human, Spare Head 3 is the straight-talking voice of hard reality, reminding Kryten that he 'came into this world as a Mechanoid, and a Mechanoid you'll always be' as a mild parody of typically British drama concerning class mobility and the common perception of a Dales accent being a solidly working-class one.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus — The only Python from Yorkshire is Michael Palin, from Sheffield in South Yorkshire, but in "plain speaking / hard times" sketches, a Yorkshire Accent is almost obligatory ("We lived in a hole in t' road, ate gravel" etc.; "Trouble at 'Mill. One of t' crossbeam's gone out of skew on t' treadle.").

There is much variation in this region, some very local; the Survey of English Dialects identified many different accents in Yorkshire. On a large scale, there are differences between a Dales dialect and a Scarborough dialect – both of which can be, in turn, very hard for outsiders to understand. Even relatively close places, for example, Leeds and Harrogate, a mere 13 miles apart, have distinct accents and even dialects, with Leeds accents tending to be very deep and gruff, compared to the generally posh Harrogate accent. Natives will usually have little difficulty in identifying that a speaker is from a different, though close, town (for example "Dee" ("thee") and "Dah" ("tha"), see below). Another example is the accent differences across Yorkshire over the pronunciation of the same dialect word for the narrow passage between terraced houses ("Jennel", "Jinnel", "Ginnel"), and the pronounciation of "over" ("ovver", "o'er"). One source of confusion is how a floo-er would be a flower and a term of affection in the north and east ridings, but a floor in the West Riding. When it is used as a term of affection, people from the West Riding are often confused at how someone is being called a floor.

The Yorkshire Dialect Society - along with famous dialect analysts such as Rohrer, Sheard and Stead - draws a border roughly at the River Wharfe between two main zones. The area to the south-west of the river is more influenced by Mercian dialect whilst that to the north-east is more influenced by Northumbrian dialect. Hull (North Bank of the Humber, and therefore just in the Northern section according to the quoted division) is no exception to this. Due to the migration of many people to the city during the Industrial Revolution, Hull's accent is noticeably different to the rest of the East Riding.

Also in certain respects, the Middlesbrough and South Tees accent is a form of Yorkshire accent that hinters on a cross between North Yorkshire and Durham; however, much to the amusement and sometimes frustration of locals, it is often confused for Geordie, usually by people in the South of England.

Studies have shown that accents in the West Riding (that is, mostly, modern West and South Yorkshire) are well-liked by the country and are associated with common sense, loyalty and reliability. In response to this, call centres have been increasingly located in this area.

Other northern English dialects include

• Geordie (spoken in Newcastle upon Tyne)
• Pitmatic (spoken in Durham)
• Scouse (spoken in Liverpool)
• Smoggie or Tees speak (Middlesbrough and Teesside)
• Mackem (spoken in Sunderland)
• Lancashire dialect, which varies across the county.

Accent (pronunciation)

(The following sections are rather technical, and perhaps therefore dry for the non-specialist)

Some features of Yorkshire accents are general features of northern English accents. Many of these are listed in the northern English accents section on the English English page. For example Yorkshire speakers usually have short [a] in words like bath, grass, chance as opposed to the long [ɑː] of Received Pronunciation (RP), and tend not to distinguish RP /ʌ/ and /ʊ/, making pairs of words like put and putt homophones.

Most Yorkshire accents are non-rhotic, but rhotic accents do exist in some areas that border with Lancashire. Much of the East Riding is partially rhotic: a final r on a word, as in letter, hour, quarter would be pronounced in a rhotic manner, but an r mid-way through a word, as in start, yard, burn would be pronounced in a non-rhotic manner.

Other features of pronunciation include:

Vowels

• In some areas, especially in the southern half of Yorkshire, there is a tendency to pronounce the phoneme /aʊ/ (as in mouth) as a monophthong [aː], often represented with "ah", hence "dahn" for down, "sahth" for south. In these areas, the words out and art may be indistinguishable. In the area around Halifax, Huddersfield and the Holme Valley, this would be more akin to dairn, abairt etc.
• In North and East Yorkshire, this is more likely to be an /u:/ sound so that "mouth" would rhyme with "tooth", "down" would rhyme with "goon", etc.
• Many Yorkshire accents have an extra vowel phoneme compared with other accents such as RP, pronounced as a diphthong [ɛɪ], used in words with eigh in the spelling, such as eight and weight, which is then pronounced differently from wait. See Wait-weight merger vowels. Some words with igh in the spelling, like night, can be pronounced with /iː/ (as in fleece) instead of /aɪ/ (as in price).
• In some Yorkshire accents, the word right can also be pronounced with the same [ɛɪ] as weight, similar to an RP pronunciation of rate. The word write is usually pronounced as in RP, however. Fight can also be pronounced as fate.
• Another group of words where [ɛɪ] may turn up in some accents is in words with ea in the spelling derived from a Middle English /ɛ/ lengthened by Middle English open syllable lengthening, such as eat, meat and speak. In some accents, the three words meet, meat and team, which all have the same vowel /iː/ in RP, may have three different vowels, [iː], [ɛɪ] and [ɪə] respectively.
• Words with ake at the end may be pronounced with /ɛ/ (as in dress), as in "tek", "mek", and "sek" for take, make, and sake.
• Words with the RP vowel /əʊ/, as in goat, may have a variety of different sounds. In traditional accents, diphthongs including [oi], [ɔu], [ɔə] and [uə] are used and in south Yorkshire particularly, words such as coal and hole may be pronounced as rhyming with coil . In some Pennine accents, the words "gone", "none" and "stone" can all rhyme with each other. Other common sounds include a long back monophthong [ɔː] and, in a recent trend, a fronted monophthong [ɵː] (which can sound close to the vowel of RP nurse). The latter is said to originate amongst females in Hull, although parts of Northumberland have long used the sound. It has spread as far as Bradford. (Watt and Tillotson 2001)
• In both the West Riding and in the city of York, the vowel /uː/, as in goose, can be realised as a diphthong [ʊu].
• The West Riding to the south of Leeds and Bradford shares one feature with much of the east of England. Past participle endings which are pronounced /ɪz/ and /ɪd/ (with the vowel of kit) in RP may be pronounced with a schwa, /ə/. As these accents are mostly non-rhotic, this means that the plural of badge can sound like the plural of badger and the plural of box can sound like the plural of boxer.
• In Hull, Middlesbrough and other parts of the east coast, the sound in "word", "heard", "nurse", etc. is pronounced in much the same way, with an extended 'e' sound (e.g imagine elongating the the vowel part of 'wed' to sound 'word').

Consonants

• In some areas, an originally voiced consonant followed by a voiceless one can be pronounced as voiceless. For example, Bradford may be pronounced [bɹatfəd], with [t] instead of the expected [d].
• The replacing of a /t/ with an /r/, e.g. "I'm gerring berrer" for "I'm getting better", "gerrof!" for "Get off!", "Purrit dahn" for "Put it down", or using /dd/ to replace /t/, e.g. "Geddof!" for "Get off!", "Puddit down" for "Put it down", though the latter tends to be in the West Riding. In yet another variant, some areas [e.g. Dewsbury and parts of the Dales] traditionally pronounce "getting" as "gItting" [more readily seen as Cumbrian].
• As in most of England, the younger generation presents an increasing tendency to use a glottal stop for all non-initial /t/ sounds, excepting those in consonant clusters. e.g [bɒʔl] for bottle, [saʔ] for sat. Glottal stops are also a possible realisation of the definite article; see the section below on definite article reduction.
• Sheffield pronunication of "th" tends somewhat towards [d]. This pronounciation, particualrly in the the second person pronouns "dee" and "dah" (for thee and thou/thy) has lead to Sheffielders being given the nickname "dee dahs" (cf. "thee tha") by people from nearby Rotherham and Barnsley. However, the pronounciation is not very widespread; it was not found during the 1960s Survey of English Dialects, and some Sheffielders claim its prevelance has always been exaggerated.

Further information

These features can be found in the English Accents and Dialects collection on the British Library Collect Britain website. This website features samples of Yorkshire (and elsewhere in England) speech in wma format, with annotations on phonology with X-SAMPA phonetic transcriptions, lexis and grammar.

See also Wells (1982), section 4.4.

Vocabulary and grammar

Yorkshire dialect shares many features with other English dialects used in northern England or in Scotland (e.g. "Aye" for "Yes").

Examples of vocabulary and grammar more specific to Yorkshire dialects include

• Definite article reduction: shortening of the to a form without a vowel, often written t`. "Down the pub" is pronounced "down t` pub", where the t` represents a sound more like a glottal stop than a true t sound. That is, the phrase sounds like "downt <very brief pause> pub", where the t of downt is completely or very nearly absent. Giving the t` a full t sound ("down <brief pause> terpub") or omitting it entirely ("down pub") are mistakes commonly, and often deliberately, made by soemeone affecting a Yorkshire accent, or more usually a "comedy generic northern" accent. "Down to the pub" uses two t`s, each pronounced as above ("Down <t`> ter <t`> pub"). Phoneticists will understand that in the above examples, er represents schwa. See this overview and a more detailed page on the Yorkshire Dialect website, and also Jones (2002).
• The use of owt and nowt (sometimes spelled as aught and naught, but never pronounced /ɔːt/ and /nɔːt/ as those spellings might suggest) for "anything" or "nothing".
• Nouns describing units of value, weight, distance, height and sometimes volumes of liquid have no plural marker. For example, "ten pounds" becomes "ten pound"; "five miles" becomes "five mile". NEVER "He's got five dog". This is also the case in Dutch and German.
• Location descriptions gain an extra of. For example, "off the streets" becomes "off of the streets"; "alongside the table" becomes "alongside of the table".
• 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 (often written tha) and thee.
• In the West Riding, all cases of the past tense of to be is were: "I were wearing t'red coat, but he were wearing t'green one". Amongst younger speakers this may be pronounced "woh" or "wuh". The East Riding does the opposite and makes all cases into was.
• In the North and West Ridings, "there are" often becomes "there is", often said 'thuz' in the West.
• While is often used in the sense of until (e.g. unless we go at a fair lick, we'll not be home while seven.) "Stay here while it shuts" might cause a non-local to think that they should stay there during its shutting, when the order really means that they should only stay until it shuts. "Wait while lights flash" is seen on British road signs at railway level crossings (railroad grade crossings); the potential for misunderstanding is obvious.
• In common with many other dialects, aye is frequently used for yes.
• Generally in cities such as Sheffield and Leeds, love is a term used by anyone, said to anyone in any situation and in some environments it is used on the end of almost every sentence which is addressing someone (e.g. "That'll be three pounds please love").
• The word daft has a slightly different connotation in parts of Yorkshire. In most of Britain, its usage corresponds to "silly", but it is often used to mean "unintelligent" in Yorkshire.
• The word self may become sen, e.g. yourself becomes thy sen. This originates from the southern fringes of Yorkshire, but has become more widespread in recent times. The north-west of Yorkshire is more likely to use sel, e.g. thysel.
• Remnants from the Vikings include the verb laik, to play.

For further details and a full list, go to Yorkshire colloquialisms

Notes

Spice - used to refer to sweets and not actual spice.

References

• Alexander, D. (2001). Orreight mi ol'. Sheffield: ALD. ISBN 1-901587-18-5. A book about the traditional Sheffield dialect.
• Jones, M. J. (2002). The origin of Definite Article Reduction in northern English dialects: evidence from dialect allomorphy. English Language and Linguistics 6.2: 325-345.
• Wakelin, M. F. (1977). English Dialects: An Introduction, , Revised Edition, London: The Athlone Press.
• Watt, D. and Tillotson, J. (2001). A spectrographic analysis of vowel fronting in Bradford English. English World-Wide 22:2, pp 269-302. Available at [3]
• Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English 2: The British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-28540-2.

Books written in Yorkshire Dialect

• Yorkshire ditties (Series 1) by John Hartley - {link}
• Yorkshire ditties (Series 2) by John Hartley - {link}
• Yorkshire tales (Series 3) by John Hartley - {link}
• Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1673-1915) and traditional poems by Frederic William Moorman, - {link}
• Songs of the Ridings by Frederic William Moorman, - {link}
• "A Kind of Loving" and "Joby" by Stan Barstow.
• Most of the dialogue in "GB84" by David Peace.
• A Kestrel for a Knave later turned into the film Kes.
• The Secret Garden (parts of) by Frances Hodgson Burnett

See also

• Yorkshire colloquialisms

External links

• English Accents and Dialects collection on the British Library Collect Britain website.
• Yorkshire Dialect website
• Yorkshire Dialect Society
• Dialect Poems from the English regions
• Whoohoo Yorkshire Dialect Translator