788 



DIALECT 



house, which is not found at all in the other 

 midland counties, but is an old form now character- 

 istic of northern speech. In the western midland, 

 inid and south Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, 

 one of the most striking pronunciations arises from 

 the treatment of ow, which is pronounced ou in the 

 south only, at the south-east of Lancashire and 

 north-west of Derby, becoming the prolongation of 

 a in bat, cat in the south-west of Lancashire, of a 

 in father in the south of Yorkshire, and south Derby, 

 and like eye nearly in Cheshire and north Stafford- 

 shire. The word for she is hoo in south Lancashire, 

 north Derby, and Cheshire, and shoo in south York- 

 shire. The definite article south of Cheshire, 

 Derby, and Nottingham has the usual English 

 form, but in Cheshire, north Derby, and Lancashire 

 becomes the th in oath without any vowel, 

 though often assimilated to a preceding t, and in 

 south Yorkshire is reduced to a simple f without 

 any vowel. In construction the most remarkable 

 feature is the verbal plural in -en in the present 

 tense, often singularly contracted. Thus an yo? 

 is have-n you? dun they (with the peculiar u) is 

 do-en, ' do they ; ' they known, they know-en, ' they 

 know,' and so on. This prevails in Lancashire, 

 Cheshire, Derbyshire, and the parts of Yorkshire 

 adjoining, but is lost in most of south Yorkshire. 

 It has disappeared recently in Nottinghamshire, 

 is rare in the south midland, and practically dis- 

 appears in Leicester. / am is used in this region, 

 in contrast to the southern / be. The r is very light 

 and quite different from the southern reverted r and 

 the Scotch strongly trilled r. 



(5) Northern extends from the northern boundaiy 

 of the midland to Scotland. Here ow becomes oo 

 completely in most of Yorkshire, but remains in 

 the first stage of transition from oo to ow in 

 Cumberland and Westmoreland, The short u in 

 but, cut, is oo in foot. The vowels are much 

 fractured or divided throughout north Lancashire, 

 Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire, but 

 differently from the forms found in Lincolnshire, 

 the sound of ee or ea in beer, bear, being prefixed. 

 In the south-eastern part long i becomes a in father, 

 which is not the case in the south-western part. 

 The definite article becomes simple vowelless t' 

 ( being quite lost in Holderness, Yorkshire ) up to 

 a sinuous line through north Cumberland and south 

 Durham, after which the usual form the is resumed 

 and continued to the Scotch border. Instead of 

 / am, I is is regularly used, at least till the is 

 restored, and then generally / am is heard. In 

 Northumberland a transition occurs from the short 

 oo in foot in such words as cut, up, through a sound 

 more resembling German 6, and only slightly 

 different from midland short u, to the regular 

 southern and Scotch form which is established 

 about Wooler. But the great peculiarity of 

 Northumberland is the uvular (or as it is usually 

 called, guttural) pronunciation of r, almost as in 

 the north of France and Germany. This is 

 apparently of recent origin, and hardly overlaps 

 the county border on the south, while it is not 

 heard beyond Berwick on the north. The neigh- 

 bouring Scots cannot pronounce it. 



( 6 ) Lowland Scotch pervades all Scotland where 

 Gaelic is not the common language i. e. generally 

 the south and east, including the Orkneys and 

 Shetlands. Historically, the English language 

 was transplanted into Scotland from the east of 

 Yorkshire and Northumberland, but it now differs 

 materially from the speech there used. The speech 

 in the south of Scotland is probably the most 

 ancient form. (See Dr J. A. H. Murray's Dialect 

 of the Southern Counties of Scotland ( 1873), which 

 is the classical work on the subject. ) Phonetically, 

 tne southern form is remarkable for retaining ow 

 when not followed by a consonant, and using oo 



when a consonant follows, as cow, hoose, whereas 

 in the rest of Scotland they have coo, hoose, as 

 in Yorkshire. Grammatically, it is remarkable 

 for distinguishing the present participle from the 

 verbal noun, both confounded as -ing in modern 

 English, as ' dansun in dansin shoes.' As the 

 English proceeded north to Edinburgh and round 

 to the north of the Forth, this and other dis- 

 tinctions were lost. It is the middle Lowland 

 Scotch, which subsequently spread to the west 

 and south, that is usually known as Scotch by 

 Englishmen, through Burns and Scott in modern 

 times. It was a highly cultivated variety, but was 

 always considered to be English by its older writers. 

 North Lowland Scotch lies north of the Tay, and 

 has the well-known peculiarity of using f for wh, 

 and in Caithness there is the reduction of the 

 definite article to its vowel e alone. The Orkneys 

 and Shetlands are Lowland Scotch engrafted on 

 Norwegian, or Norn, as they term it i.e. old 

 Norse, which has occasioned many peculiarities 

 both of pronunciation and construction, of which 

 the general, but not universal, use of d, t, for the 

 two sounds of th in the, teeth, need only be men- 

 tioned. For the evidence on which the above divi- 

 sions are founded, with complete details and ex- 

 amples, the reader is referred to Alexander J. 

 Elhs's Existing Phonology of English Dialects 

 ( 1889), forming Part V. of his Early English Pro- 

 nunciation. 



The above remarks refer to the existing forms 

 of speech. Dr Morris in his prefaces to Hampole, 

 Alliterative Poems, Dan Michel, &c., has endea- 

 voured, from the MSS. , to determine the charac- 

 teristics of our dialects in the Early English 

 period. He admits only three southern, midland, 

 and northern, but divides the midland, ' which 

 presents us with no one typical form,' into west 

 and east midland. 



All languages present a variety of local forms, 

 which has just been partially illustrated for 

 English ; and in many of these the discrepancies 

 are much greater than in English. Prince Louis- 

 Lucien Bonaparte has done much not only with the 

 English, but with the Basque, French, and Italian 

 forms ; for the last, see also Papanti's collection, / 

 parlari Italiani in Certaldo (1875). The dialects 

 of Low German have been treated by J. Winkler 

 in his Dialektikon ( 1874). The Swedish dialects 

 are being especially studied now. The High Ger- 

 man and Swiss dialects have received much atten- 

 tion. Schmeller's Bavarian Dialects (Mundarten 

 Bayerns, 1821 ) is a remarkable work. And so on. 



Now to what end or purpose is this study of 

 dialects pursued ? They possess comparatively no 

 literature having any attraction in itself. The 

 modern forms are spoken only by the illiterate, 

 and sound uncouth and harsh to an educated ear. 

 They are not pursued for the ideas which they con- 

 vey, but for the manner in which they convey them. 

 They lead us to understand how a received or literary- 

 language was formed. They contain multitudes of 

 'missing links,' which serve to explain relations 

 which might otherwise entirely baflie the student 

 of language. Thus, there are two old forms, then 

 pronounced as the present long ee and oo, which 

 now appear as long i and ow. How did this come 

 about? It is evident that the people could not 

 have suddenly left off one and taken up another. 

 Now the actual transitional forms still exist, like 

 fossils, in dialectal speech. Modern philology 

 obliges us to leave the merely written forms arid 

 study living usages. This is only possible by study- 

 ing existent local forms of speech, in other words, 

 dialects. 



There is a considerable literature of modern 

 English dialects, but it labours under the dis- 

 advantage of generally not being genuine i.e. not 



