User:AmazingJus/sandbox/dorset

Phonology
Dorset is a medium-sized county in the South West of England with a distinct accent and dialect. Some of the distinct features of the accent involve H-dropping, elision, rhoticity and accentuated vowel sounds.

Vowels
Like other traditional dialects in England, there is considerable variation between vowels when compared to standard forms such as RP. "Ees; now mahogany's the goo, An' good wold English woak won't do. I wish vo'k always mid auvord Hot meals upon a woakèn bwoard, As good as think that took my cup, An' trencher all my growèn up."
 * is generally articulated shorter than in RP.
 * In the west of Dorset, the meet–meat merger does not occur; when the vowel is spelt as $⟨ea⟩$, e.g. bean, clean, lean and mead, the vowel becomes [diphthongized].. However, certain words, including bead, meat and read have a distinct monophthongal pronunciation, which is also used with day, head, lead (element) and whey. Note that the Old English ancestors also had monophthongal equivalents, i.e.,  and.
 * The modal verb will has varying pronunciations [...] in Blackmore Vale.
 * Before, such as beg, egg or peg, the set becomes lowered [souding like ]. This gives rise to a dialectal term aggy, referring to egg collecting.
 * is [diphthongized] when spelt as $⟨ear⟩$ or $⟨er⟩$, including words such as fern or learn.
 * is also [diphthongized in the same manner] found in words such as arm, card or garden.
 * The Trap–bath split occurs in Dorset, but in Blackmore [a more diphthongized form] occurs.
 * In Blackmore, the vowel (e.g. law, jaw) is pronounced like.
 * The vowel as in corn and horn [is usually flatter] than in standard English.
 * Pre-labialization is common with and mostly, as represented in Barnes' book, Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, where a $⟨w⟩$ was written before words like oak and old, as in the poem Woak were Good Enough Woonce which begins with:


 * [r-deletion]
 * In some words, including crust, dust and rut, the vowel resembles that of the vowel.
 * [hollor for hollow]
 * The vowel is pronounced as  when spelt as $⟨ay⟩$, as in hay, may or stay.

Consonants
Consonants are generally near-identical to other standard forms of English such as RP, but unique patterns still exist:
 * In Blackmore Vale, the fricative is often made into the stop  before, as in eleven or seven.
 * Th-stopping is present mostly before, as in throw or throat.
 * On the other hand, when spelt as $⟨dd⟩$ may be fricatized to, as in bladder or ladder.
 * Word-initial fricatives are often voiced to  respectively, in words such as see or feed. However, there are exceptions:
 * Words that are not of Germanic origin or have been adopted from other languages (such as family or scene) retain the original pronunciation.
 * Minimal pairs of otherwise homophonous words have been established; the first word in each pair is unvoiced in Dorset: sea/see, set (noun)/set (verb), son/sun, foul/fowl.
 * Also, voicing of such as the word think to  occurs.
 * Metathesis occurs with after voiceless stops, with clasp, crisp, wasp being spelt as claps, crips and waps respectively.
 * Historical aspirate before initial  is preserved; ring is often written as, representing the Old English pronunciation.
 * Like modern-day Irish and Scottish English, epenthetic sounds can be placed between certain consonants:
 * For, is often placed in between, allophonically related to , with  being another possibility. For instance, curl/twirl can be respelt as curdl/twirdl or currel/twirel.
 * The combination may sometimes include  as in helm or overwhelm.

Elision
Dorset is more flexible in eliding consonants when compared with RP. Here is a non-exhaustive list of them:
 * The word of is highly assimilated, which is typically rendered as o', as in a bit o' cheese, and typically found in set phrases such as o'clock or cat-o'-nine-tails. In Dorset, this can further extend to cases preceding particles, such as all o't for 'all of it' and all o'm for 'all of them'.
 * The hortative particle let's (contracted from let us) can be further contracted into le's.
 * Comparative word than can be assimilated into the previous superlative such as better than being rendered as better'n.

Verbs
As a traditional dialect, Dorset utilizes different verb conjugations from standard English, which are often considered archaic and/or nonstandard.


 * Contractions involving modal verbs such as couldn't or mustn't often elide the final.
 * The Dorset mid is used for both auxiliary verbs may and might.
 * In Blackmore Vale, the verb will varies between ... in pronunciation.

Several strong verbs in standard English are weak in Dorset:

On the other hand, some verbs that weak and mixed in the standard language are strong in Dorset:

Nouns

 * Some plural nouns suffixed with -s in the standard language still have the ending -en, as in cheesen, housen and placen.
 * In turn, nouns in the singular ending in -st often have -es as a means to simplify the consonant cluster that exists otherwise: coastes, postes, vistes.
 * Possessives (such as the ending -'s or pronouns my, your, his, her, etc.) are represented with the preposition o' (from of). For example, the veet o'n instead of his feet, with  him assimilated in.
 * Reflexive pronouns are based upon the genitive form, rather than the accusative. Compare Dorset hizzelf (from his self) with standard himself and theirself with themself.

Numerals

 * The ones digits are given before the tens, i.e. four and twenty instead of twenty-four.

Dorset dialect https://books.google.com/?id=p5NceJ6jEFAC