Talk:West Midlands English

[Untitled]
See Talk:Midlands English for previous discussion

Er... The Black Country accent is not "Yam Yam". Supposedly, that is given from the way Brummies say "You are" (Which is changed to You am, and further curtailed to Y'am). The Black Country accent's version is a shortened version of "Yow am", more specifically "Yow'm" Worley-d 18:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed These Statements
I had to remove these statements from the article:

"Midlands English is much more naturalistic, especially the Black Country variety which has frozen in time."

"Naturalistic" is completely meaningless in a linguistic context. The archaic quality has been previously described in the article, and it's not actually "frozen in time" just more conservative.

"Some New World dialects borrow some of the Old World characteristics of this dialect."

This is a fascinating subject but needs an explanation of what dialects (with references).

Removed This Sociological Content
I removed these two paragraphs as they are dealing with sociological subject matter. These points should appear in the Black Country and Birmingham articles instead.

This article should be just on the linguistic characteristics of West Midlands English.

"Inhabitants are proud to be known as Black Country "folk" and resist hints at any relationship to people living in Birmingham, calling Birmingham "Brum-a-jum" (Birmingham's colloquial name is Brummagem). Residents of Birmingham (Brummies) meanwhile often refer to their Black Country neighbours as "Yam Yams", a reference to the use of "Yow am" instead of "You are".

"This often good natured exchange has been reciprocated in latter years with the Brummie "Yo Am" for "You Are" being used as a countermeasure with the jocular retort "YoYo" used when referring to the Brummies"

Cheshire
I have removed Cheshire from the list as it is commonly held to be in the North, not the Midlands: this applies to the map that appears in the article and in numerous others. Salopian (talk) 02:00, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Misleading
This article is misleading. The accents in Herefordshire and south Worcestershire, are nothing like those of the Black Country or Birmingham, yet geographically (although not in population theses areas make up as much of the region as the West Midlands conurbation. -- PBS (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This article- where to begin. Shake my head, I can't find the time to put any effort in on this mess. Brummie-centric, as are most West Midlands related articles. Time better devoted to the articles on the actual dialects than fixing this at the moKaleeyed (talk) 21:56, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Useless Article
What is the point of this article? There is no such thing as "West Midlands English". There is no common accent in the region. Even the "West Midlands" region is an artificial construct with no historic link. If anything, you could say Shropshire, Cheshire and Herefordshire/Worcestershire could go together as historic Marches counties but they have little in common with Birmingham/Black County/Coventry.

Purpose of the article
I am going to agree with a previous editor and argue that this article lacks any real purpose. As far as I can tell there is no reference on the page pointing to the existence of "West Midlands English", which make sense given that the region is an artificial construct of the late 20th century. The accents or dialects of the region are in no sense unified and grouping them together is totally arbitrary. The page should be removed, or perhaps split into more meaningful pages for the actual distinct dialects that exist within the region.

james_mc (talk) 15:31, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Yod-coalescence
I believe the north Warwickshire dialect has yod coalescence (i.e. "chree" rather than "tree"), no evidence for this but y'know. Great Mercian (talk) 10:05, 23 November 2022 (UTC)