http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/04/6 Wish I had a real Yorkshire accent now. Thought this Received Pronunciation business was meant to elevate me, not hinder me. Anyway, this article is another victory for God's Own County which we should celebrate.
I take it you are a child of the BBC Standard English? A craze that swept through England during the 70's 80's and 90's.
Indirectly perhaps. My mum's from Bradford and would have acquired a brilliant accent like the rest of her family have, but her school with posh pretences stamped all that out of her. Obviously kids mainly pick up their mum's accent so I'm stuck with this. My dad's the same anyway, comes from the Midlands so nothing to write home about. You lot enjoy your intelligent accent though.
Surely there's a slight variation between the accent in Hull and the accent in Wessieland. I live with a wessie from Bratfurd and she keeps on going on about "narn" and "farve" etc etc.
You know funny you mention this about acquiring your mum's accent, there have been studies that actually state that you acquire the accent and way of speaking of the first person that recited literature to you during your early Language Acquisition stage, which would explain this phenomena.
In some linguistics books it receives a specific name... can't remember off the top of my head, but it differs from the yorkshire accent.
The Hull accent as largely denoted by the glottal stop. We differ because our isolation and defensive ability has kept our accent more pure, compared to the North riding and more particularly the West Riding, who are influenced by waves of conquest and more in common with Lancashire, bizarrely a Welsh origin from strathyclyde. Of course South Yorkshire's just an invention of Winifred Holtby ad is really just bits of Notts and Derbyshire that nobody wanted.
I don't think it's as straightforward as that. We moved down from Jockoland to Wetherby in 1990. Our kids were 4 & 2. Now the eldest speaks Jocko in the house, and is more Yorkie than his mates outwith. The youngest, strangely, has a hybrid accent which the Jocks think is english, and the Yorkies think is Scottish! Perhaps that's why he drinks so much .....
I think the Yorkshire accent has a lot of similarites with Scandinavian accents so thats probably why we sound the most intelligent, just ask Febbos and all those other brainy Skandies!
The East Midlands accent is definitely the gayest. You should have heard the Derby fans at the KC the other day
You sound like Peter Lorimer then? And really, the East Yorkshire/Hull accent is no more distinct than the isolated ones of North Yorkshire or South Yorkshire. Yorkshire accents are more similar than they are different, and if you nitpicked with accents, every single village or suburb could claim its own. Microdialects, you might call them.
Strictly speaking there is no South Yorkshire. I don't know if it's still the case, but Hull University used to get a lot of research fellows and funding to investigate the reasons why the Hull accent differs so clearly from the West and North Ridings (although they too have regional variations). One conclusion was that the West riding was more akin to Lancashire and shared it's origins as being a Welsh based group that was part of the Strathclyde region.
That might be true in the sense of origins, but the similarities that underpin all Yorkshire accents mean you can tell they're not East Midlands or Lancashire ones today. West Yorkshire accents never pronounce the silent 'r' like they just just overrrr the borrrderrrr in Burrrnley. Although they do have a bit of a twang over in Hebden Bridge and that sort of area. South Yorkshire has the same Germanic vowels as other Yorkshire accents (coat = court), something you wouldn't see in the East Midlands anywhere. That was probably a case of the Midlands having a weak version of our vowels originally but eventually dropping it to fit in with their pals down South. The best accents in North Yorkshire are up in Wensleydale and places like that on the edge of County Durham. You'd be hard-pressed to find any differences with how they speak there and how they do in Darlo or Middlesbrough. It definitely is. When I went to Leicester this season, some embarrassing queer got on at East Midlands Parkway and started talking to a copper: "ooh ya should 'ave seen it the uvva week on ve traiyne. Chelsea was plaiyin' Man Yernaaahted. Never seen anyfin laaak it in ma laaaaaf". Cringe.
Well you practically said it. It's kids trying to emulate the nasal Manc accent because they think it makes them sound hard.
