DIALECT 



7-7 



vigorous thought, were required to build up our 



glorious Kli^lish speech. 



hialect, however, is by no means yet extinct, 

 even in England, though railways and school 

 boards threaten its speedy annihilation. The 

 writer, who lias l>een leu to investigate the 

 subject during the last twenty years, linds that 

 we have still six great forms of l<x-al H]ecch 

 Southern. Western. Eastern, Midland, Northern, 

 and Lowland Scotch further divisible into forty- 

 two distriets, each of which has generally numer- 

 ous varieties. His object was to determine the 

 pronunciation as at present existing all over that 

 part of Knirland and Scotland which is not still 

 Celtic ; hence his distinctions are mainly based on 

 pronunciation an referred to the oldest English 

 form of literary speech, the West Saxon or Wessex, 

 which, however, never prevailed over the whole 

 country, and is not even the foundation of modern 

 literary speech. Of this pronunciation he was 

 obliged to omit one striking and characteristic 

 part viz. the intonation or singsong of speech, 

 which generally strikes a stranger first and most 

 strongly, because he could not invent any practical 

 means of expressing it, and it was very seldom 

 indeed that he could hear it from native un- 

 educated peasants. The two other points to 

 which we must look for distinctions are vocabu- 

 lary and construction. Vocabulary is the point 

 most generally considered, but it is often delusive 

 as a means of separation, because it is so difficult 

 to trace the area over which certain words prevail 

 as distinct from those where they are not known. 

 The nature of the investigations and their difficulty 

 is well shown in Mr Thomas Hallam's ' Four Dialect 

 Words, Clem, Lake, Nesh, and Oss [ = to starve, 

 to play, tender, to otter], their modern dialectal 

 range, meaning, pronunciation, etymology, and 

 early or literary use' (English Dialect Society, 

 1SS.">). With unusual words, however, or words 

 with unusual significations, most glossarists con- 

 sider that they are chielly concerned, while at the 

 same time the difficulty the writers feel in express- 

 ing the sounds of the words i.e. properly speaking, 

 in actually conveying the words renders their 

 identification uncertain. This is different for 

 literary languages where there is a conventional 

 orthography and pronunciation. The last charac- 

 teristic mark of dialects is their grammatical con- 

 struction. It is surprising how little this point is 

 attended to in most glossaries, so that the reader 

 is generally left to discover the construction from 

 the examples, and these in many cases are not 

 sufficiently trustworthy for that purpose. It is the 

 more satisfactory, then, to refer to such glossaries as 

 Elworthy's West Somerset, with its separate gram- 

 mar ; Darlington's Folk-speech of South Cheshire ; 

 Miss Jackson's S/irn/mlu're Word-book; and Robin- 

 son's Mi<l -Yorkshire Glossary, in which pronun- 

 ciation and grammar are well attended to, and 

 examples are numerous and trustworthy. 



In making the above division of English dialect*, 

 considered as new local forms of speech referred to 

 one old local form, the Wessex, without any regard 

 to received speech or spelling, the following are the 

 principal distinctions relied upon, and the areas 

 over which they extend. 



( 1 ) Smithi-m 'takes in the whole south of England 

 from Cornwall to Kent, extending northwards on 

 the west to the north of Wort-enter, south of 

 Warwick and Northampton, eastwards to the 

 boundary of Oxford, and all south of the Thames. 

 The marked characters are found in the western 

 half, which die off eastwards, while westwards they 

 exhibit signs of Celtic influence. Wilts, Dorset, 

 Somerset, and Gloucester show this form in its 

 prime. These were the seat of the West Saxon 

 tribes, and best preserve the mark of their origin. 



The main character of all the <wiiitli>-in -lm-ii.il U 

 tin- pioiiiineiation of r, cM|M*;ially when- not before 

 a \os\el, an in there, rir ! The ton-m-, in ih- i.tin 

 cipal region, i reverted, that in, turned with iu 

 nn.lei-.idc to the hard palate, and it*, point directed 

 towards the throat, I'lii* j, the English form of 

 the (dilleient i glottal r of the LOM (ierinan 01-- 

 1 1 i- not only Miong in WiltM, Dontet, and Son.. 

 but also in I >evon (where French u rimy likewine 

 !>< heard ), though it dies out through Cornwall, and 

 in west Cornwall, which has comparatively recently 

 become English, has become that of received 

 speech. In Hampshire and eastward* it become* 

 milder, but on the whole it is Htill well marked 

 even in Kent. It is the parent of received EnglUh 

 r, which is little different from an imperfect r/ when 

 it does not become a simple vowel or is lost. Initial 

 /and * in Saxon words MOOOM and z. In con- 

 struction the speech is peculiar in the general use 

 of / be for / am, and ice am, you am, for we are, you 

 are; in the general prefix of a to the pat participle 

 as I've a-done; the periphrastic form of the 

 present tense, us I do go for simple / go, without 

 any implied emphasis; the use of the accusative en, 

 from Wessex June, which is replaced by the dative 

 him in literary speech ; and in one part of Somerset 

 (near to, but west of, Yeovil) the use of uti-h for 

 the first personal pronoun /. In the east of Sussex 

 and in Kent de, dts, dat, &c. may be still heard 

 for the, this, that, &c., but this is a comparative 

 modernism. 



(2) Western comprises most of Monmouth, Here- 

 ford, and Shropshire, and shows the influence of 

 the Welsh, which in early times prevailed over 

 them ; and Shropshire especially preserves a trilled 

 Welsh r which is in remarkable contrast to the 

 southern and midland r. 



( 3) Eastern extends over the whole of the counties 

 lying north of the Thames but east of Oxford and 

 Leicester and south of Lincoln, embracing also the 

 East Anglian peninsula of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 which two counties generally have a pronunciation 

 of to, do, soon, as if the vowel were nearly French /, 

 much the same as in Devonshire. But this doea 

 not extend to the rest of the eastern, which beats 

 a remarkable resemblance to received speech, 

 being indeed that part of the country from which 

 it originated. Essex is especially remarkable for 

 pronouncing paper like piper, a practice which of 

 late years (sul>c<|uently to the time of Dickens and 

 Thackeray ) has crept into London, and may be heard 

 from most newsboys. Over Kent, Essex. Sutl'olk. 

 and Norfolk extends the land of Wee, where IT is 

 used for v, but not conversely, as trine for cine, tnm 

 (rhyming mutt ) for ran, and so on. 



(4) Midland occupies the whole middle region of 

 England from the north of the three last named to, 

 roughly speaking, a line drawn from Lancaster Hay 

 on the we>t to the Hnnilter on the east. The 

 speech of the large tract of country thus included 

 is by no means homogeneous. Hut the Southerner 

 is at once surprised by the difference in the pro- 

 nunciat ion of short o and u in cuinr, //, and similar 

 words, which in the greater part of this rrgion 

 resembles the (Jermnn or French , u \\ith a da-h 

 of oo in foot, being really a transitional form 

 bet \\een the well known southern ami Lowland 

 Scotch sound and the oo in foot. This last sound. 

 ho\\e\er, pre\ails in Lincolnshire and the MHith 

 of Yorkshire. Lincolnshire is remarkable for it* 

 fractured or divided voweU. which Ixird Tennyson 

 wiite- \\ith n, but which really sound to a Londoner, 

 and even to a native Lincolnshire man. Ixith of whom 

 vocalise their r, as if an r were annexed, as mir, 

 snirnt*, drerd, doarnt, for Lord Tennvson's *IM/. 

 ttiaints, dead, ifinmt ( = say, saints, dead, don't ), and 

 so on. In the extreme north of Lincolnshire oir is 

 pronounced oo, aa woo, coo, noote, for note, cow. 



