Talk:Midlands English

Untitled
I was born in Wolverhampton, and now live in Worcestershire, but am not enough of a linguist to edit this properly, so will just mention a few things that may be useful:


 * 1) Is "Midlands English" too broad a term? West Midlands English and East Midlands English seem fairly distinct to me.
 * 2) One specific feature that comes to mind is having a "hard G" (I can see all you linguists wincing at that term!) in the combination "NG", so that for example "finger" rhymes exactly with "singer", and "Birmingham" is pronounced "Ber-ming-uhm".
 * 3) The word "her" (actually "'er") is used instead of "she".
 * 4) This article only seems to deal with Birmingham and the Black Country, rather than any of the more rural areas; a thick Worcestershire dialect is very different from a thick Dudley one.
 * 5) Leading on from that, a feature of Worcestershire English (and a couple of adjoining counties) is that people use "just" to mean "just now", as in "Where's John? He was here just".

There are probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind just now. Loganberry (Talk) 13:13, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this article is only relevant to the Black Country dialect, not to the rest of the midlands. I grew up in the east midlands, and our accent is nothing like the one described in this article despite the fact that it's titled Midlands English.

didnt a famous author once say this

"Today, Australian English, famous for its air of novelty, is something of a living museum, preserving.. eighteenth and nineteenth century regional words from Cornwall, Wessex, the Midlands, East Anglia, Northumbria, Scotland and Ireland.

The Story of English, Robert McCrum, 1992"

this is a loada bull I hayte you, for screwin with history to suit your own flase ideology, yow dow know shyte. by definition if black country is the oldest and most historic of all the diallects out of all the english diallects it shares more with colonial era dailects than say cockney, was influenced by yidish according to this pathetic encyclopedia. why dya think half the colonial new world towns are named after dudley missouri tamworth queensland birmingham alabama need I go on. its laughable theyre trying to make out the aussies get it from the irish, but everyone knows the irish never spoke english till we got there, I very often hear the voice of a new yorker down the streets of sydney. and that steve iriwin is fake, he puts black country in his voice to spice things up, beuryde crockodiouyle, beya for beer. we black country folks may be the scum of the earth according to you wenches, but don't deny the truth in history, errr there ya go again, wench, an american word borrowed from black country folks, if you guys don't shut up om gonna write a bloody book on the lies and bullshit on this encyclopedia, written by a bunch of pathetic new age who don't live beyond the doors of what they think of life, than what life really is and hate their own roots, prefer this phony arse lifestyle, who get fed their backon from some slick brainwashin holligan and have the audasity to tell the rest of the world how history went.

""Mi Duck" is thought to be derived from a respectful Anglo Saxon form of address, "Duka" (Literally "Duke")"

or Danish "min dukke" "my doll"

Proposed split into "East Midlands English" and "West Midlands English"
I think they are definitely different enough to that they are better split what does any one else think?

the reference midlands english is not related to australian english is false, because the south staffordshire, north black country variety does. the aussie way of placing o after a shortening of a word, ie like abbo, salvo army, how about wolvo for wolverhampton chesso for chelsyn hay. the australian beer, as beah is simular to our bayah, canabea, not to say the various australian towns that were named after towns in the midlands, such as the dudley penninsula tamworth, bridgetown, theres loads. not to mension the midlands was the first place you'd hear good aye in the midlands it means "good ain't it" people think it means good day, but it doesnt. and not to mension the amount of miners from south staffordshire who left looking for gold insteada coal. theres already a mension of the midlands on the australian english page, its a bit contradicting. not to mension the link has already been written about in a book. I think we should take that bit out, because midlands english is a very broad term and covers alot of diallects, and some of those did have an influence with the miners emmigrating.

Expansion
Could someone knowlegable about this topic reintegrate some of the information from the East and West Midlands articles into this one. Other wise this need to be turned into a disambiguation page pointing to both of those articles. Thanks, -JCarriker 23:29, 7 May 2006 (UTC) done A Geek Tragedy 21:43, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it should be a disambiguation - I split them from here because the accents aren't very similar and the west midlands material was dominating and being referred to just a "Midlands English" which was misleading. I will try to work out how to make a dismbiguation page and do it A Geek Tragedy 21:34, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh My, I'm glad I found this page! I'm a linguist with a particular interest in Dialect and history of dialect and accents. I'm from Nottingham, which has an accent and dialect a world away from the accents of those in Southern parts of Northampton, and nothing at all like those with a black country accent. The great vowel shift hasn't been mentioned (that's the reason those further south say 'barth' for 'bath' and 'parth' for path) and the fact that, as was kinda brushed upon in the tirade above, the Midlands accent was the olden-day version of RP (civil war era, when kings and queens still lived this far 'up north'). No disrespect intented to any previous contributor at all, but I intend to radically alter the East Midlands page; as that is my particular area of knowledge I will leave the West Mid's bit basically alone for now. Anyone else with knowledge to help, please let me know on my talk page. Thanks Codeye 03:37, 16 December 2006 (UTC)