West Country English - English dialects and accents spoken for the most part by the indigenous people of the South West England region known as West Country .
West Country, strictly speaking, covers the counties of Cornwall , Devon , Dorset , Somerset , Wiltshire , although Gloucestershire , Herefordshire and Worcestershire are sometimes included. However, the northern and eastern borders of the region are difficult to determine. Hampshire and Isle of Wight should also be included linguistically and historically.
In the neighboring counties of Berkshire , Hampshire , Isle of Wight and Oxfordshire, one may encounter similar accents and, in fact, also with different dialects, although some common features with others in neighboring regions - speakers of dialects from the Isle of Wight, for example, can have an understandable conversation with a native dialect from Devon, no big deal. Although immigrants from such places, especially from rural areas, can still influence the Western country in their speech, increased mobility and urbanization of the population have led to the fact that in Berkshire, Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight) and Oxfordshire the dialect itself, unlike various local accents are becoming increasingly rare.
Academic and regional variations are considered dialectic forms. A study of the dialects of the English language (1950-1961) revealed similarities in speech patterns in the Southwest region, which were just as different from standard English as in the far north of England. There is some influence of the Welsh and Cornish languages, depending on the specific location.
In the literature
In literary contexts, the dialect was more often used either in poetry or in dialogue to add “local flavor”. It has rarely been used for serious prose lately, but has been used much more widely until the 19th century. Dialects of a western country are usually represented as “Mummerset,” a kind of clever southern rural accent invented for broadcasting. [ clarify ]
Literature
- MA Courtney; TQ Couch: Glossary of Words in Use in Cornwall. West Cornwall, by MA Courtney; East Cornwall, by TQ Couch. London: published for the English Dialect Society, by Trübner & Co., 1880
- John Kjederqvist: The Dialect of Pewsey (Wiltshire), Transactions of the Philological Society 1903-1906
- Etsko Kruisinga: A Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset, Bonn 1905
- Bertil Widén: Studies in the Dorset Dialect, Lund 1949
- Clement Marten: The Devonshire Dialect, Exeter 1974
- Norman Rogers: Wessex Dialect, Bradford-on-Avon 1979
- Clement Marten: Flibberts and Skriddicks - Stories and Poems in the Devon Dialect, Exeter 1983
Links
- Sound familiar? - Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from all over the UK on the “Does this sound familiar?” Website