East-Midland English
Introduction
East Midlands, general facts The East Midlands, in its broadest sense, is the eastern part of central England (and therefore part of the United Kingdom as well).
The East Midlands covers three major landscape areas: The relatively flat coastal plain of Lincolnshire, the river valley of the Trent, the third largest (and longest) river in England, and the southern end of the Pennine range of hills in Derbyshire. The second of these contains several large cities: Nottingham, Leicester, Derby and Doncaster, historically centres based around coal mining and heavy industry. This is one of the drier regions of England.
The East-Midland dialect is very interesting. The northern parts of its dialect area were also an area of heavy Scandinavian settlement, so that northern East-Midland Middle English shows the same kinds of rapid development as its Northern neighbor. But the subdialect boundaries within East-Midland were far from static: the more northerly variety spread steadily southward, extending the influence of Scandinavianized English long after the Scandinavian population had been totally assimilated.
In the 13th century this part of England, especially Norfolk and Suffolk, began to outstrip the rest of the country in prosperity and population because of the excellence of its agriculture, and — crucially — increasing numbers of well-to-do speakers of East-Midland began to move to London, bringing their dialect with them. By the second half of the 14th century the dialect of London and the area immediately to the northeast, which had once been Kentish, was thoroughly East-Midland, and a rather Scandinavianized East Midland at that.
Since the London dialect steadily gained in prestige from that time on and began to develop into a literary standard, the northern, Scandinavianized variety of East-Midland became the basis of standard Modern English. For that reason, East-Midland is by far the most important dialect of Middle English for the subsequent development of the language. The English written and spoken today owes its origins to a mix of the East Midlands and London dialects. The East Midlands dialect was important because it came from the centre of the country and was intelligible to most people.
Great numbers of traders, pilgrims and others passed through towns such as Leicester and Nottingham. During the 13th and 14th centuries, large numbers of East Midlanders migrated to London, in turn influencing the standard form of English The East Midlands dialect was a mixture of English and Scandinavian, with a smattering of French. The impact of the Vikings can still be seen today in our version of English that was born on the borders of Mercia and Danelaw. As Dr Elaine Treharne from Leicester University points out, “It is fair to say that the Queen’s English has its roots in the towns of the Midlands as much as the palaces of Whitehall! 1) Fading of old traditions and huge shiftsin how we. communicate globally. Much of the dialect developed in rural communities and in the industrial heartlands of the region. Mining communities in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire were renowned for their use of dialect. At a time when regions are losing some of their traditional dialect, the East Midlands is keen to retain its cultural identity and linguistic style. Although some words are dying out, East Midlanders are keen to celebrate their local language
Examples of pronunciation: In Leicester, words with short vowels such as up and last have a northern pronunciation, whereas words with vowels such as down and road sound rather more like a south-eastern accent. The vowel sound at the end of words like border (and the name of the city) is also a distinctive feature. [ In north Nottinghamshire ee found in short words is pronounced as two syllables, for example feet being , sounding like “fee-yut” (and also in this case ending with a glottal stop). Lincolnshire also has a marked north south split in terms of accent.
The north shares many features with Yorkshire, such as the open a sound in “car” and “park” or the replacement of take and make with tek and mek. The south of Lincolnshire is close to Received Pronunciation, although it still has a short Northern a in words such as bath. In Northamptonshire, crossed by the North-South isogloss, residents of the north of the county have an accent similar to that of Leicestershire and those in the south an accent similar to rural Oxfordshire. The town of Corby in northern Northamptonshire has an accent with some originally Scottish features, apparently due to immigration of Scottish steelworkers.
It is common in Corby for the GOAT set of words to be pronounced with. This pronunciation is used across Scotland and most of Northern England, but Corby is alone in the Midlands in using it East Midlands accents are generally non-rhotic, instead drawing out their vowels, resulting in the Midlands Drawl, which can to non-natives be mistaken for dry sarcasm. Old and cold may be pronounced as “owd” and “cowd” (rhyming with “loud” in the West Midlands and “ode” in the East Midlands), and in the northern Midlands home can become “wom”.
The West Midlands accent is often described as having a pronounced nasal quality, the East Midlands accent much less so. Next As in the North, Midlands accents generally do not use a broad A, so that cast is pronounced rather than the pronunciation of most southern accents. The northern limit of the in many words crosses England from mid-Shropshire to The Wash, passing just south of Birmingham. ? Midlands speech also generally uses the northern short U, so putt is pronounced the same as put.
The southern limit of this pronunciation also crosses from mid-Shropshire to the Wash, but dipping further south to the northern part of Oxfordshire. Next Other features of Derbyshire dialect are: 1) the use of words like “thee” and “thou”‘ 2) the shortening of words for more economical speech 3) the use of very unusual words like “scratin'” (crying) deriving from old Norse or Viking The dialect of the East Midlands has been investigated in notable texts such as the affectionately titled Ey Up Mi Duck series of books by Richard Scollins and John Titford.
These books were originally intended as a study of Derbyshire Dialect, particularly the distinctive speech of Ilkeston and the Erewash valley, but later editions acknowledge similarities in vocabulary and grammar which unite the East Midlands dialects and broadened their appeal to the region as a whole. “Ey Up” (often spelt ayup / eyup) is a greeting thought to be of Old Norse origin (se upp) used widely throughout the North Midlands and South Yorkshire, and “Mi Duck” is thought to be derived from a respectful Anglo Saxon form of address, “Duka” (Literally “Duke”), and is unrelated to waterfowl.
Nonnatives of the East Midlands are often surprised to hear men greet each other as ‘Mi Duck. ‘ I, the man with the red scarf, Will give thee what I have, this last week’s earnings. Take them and buy thee a silver ring And wed me, to ease my yearnings. For the rest when thou art wedded I’ll wet my brow for thee With sweat, I’ll enter a house for thy sake, Thou shalt shut doors on me. Ay (or ey) up mi duck – hello there! Aya gorra weeya – is the wife with you?
It’s black uvver Bill’s mother’s – it looks like rain Coggie – swimming costume Croaker – doctor Duck’s necks – bottle of lemonade Gorra bag on – in a bad mood Laropped – drunk Nesh – cold Old cock – friend or mate Page owl – single woman out alone at night Skants – pants The rally – the railway line Thiz summat up wee im – I think he may be ill Who’s mashing? – who’s making the cups of tea CONCLUSION East Midlands English is a dialect traditionally spoken in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Northamptonshire.
It came from the centre of the country and was intelligible to most people. It includes special pronunciation, grammatical rules and has variations within the political region. East Midlands takes great pride in its distinctive dialect. In Lincolnshire local people are going back to the classroom to reclaim their linguistic roots. The English written and spoken today owes its origins to a mix of the East Midlands and London dialects. They have a lot of common and it is really hard to distinctive one dialect from another without knowing peculiarities of both dialects.
LIST OF REFERENCES & EXTERNAL LINKS
- Wiki Travel (2012) – England, East Midlands (http://wikitravel. org/en/East_Midlands) Penn Department of Linguistics – Dialects of Middle English (http://www. ling. upenn. edu/)
- Peter Gill (2009) – Dialect Poems (http://dspace. dial. pipex. com/) BBC Inside Out (2005) – Dialects and accents (http://www. bbc. co. uk/) Bell M. (1996).
- Teaching pronunciation and intonation to E. F. L. learners in Korea. Retrieved on 14 October, 2004. – p. 255 Tutorgipedia – English language in England (http://www. tutorgigpedia. com)
