Brummie (sometimes Brummy) is a colloquial term for the inhabitants, accent and dialect of Birmingham, England, as well as being a general adjective used to denote a connection with the city, locally called Brum. The terms are all derived from Brummagem or Bromwichham, historical variants or alternatives to 'Birmingham'. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ... This article is about the British city. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... Brum is a common colloquial name for the city of Birmingham in England. ... Brummagem (and historically also Bromichan, Bremicham and many similar variants, all essentially Bromwich·ham) is a local dialect name for the city of Birmingham, UK. It gave rise to the terms Brum (a generally affectionate local term for the city) and Brummie (inhabitants of the city, their accent and dialect...

Accent

Brummie is a prominent example of a regional accent of English English. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... English English is a term that has been applied to the English language as spoken in England. ...

Examples of celebrity speakers include comedian Jasper Carrott, historian and broadcaster Carl Chinn, BBC financial presenter Adrian Chiles, the Goodies actor and TV presenter Bill Oddie, rock musician Ozzy Osbourne, broadcaster Les Ross, politician Clare Short, and SAS soldier and author John "Brummie" Stokes. Jasper Carrott OBE (born Robert Davis, March 14, 1945) is an English comedian (declaring himself world famous in Birmingham). // Born in Acocks Green, Birmingham, he was educated at Moseley Grammar School and later attended Aston University in the heart of Birmingham. ... Professor Carl Stephen Alfred Chinn MBE (born 6 September 1956) is a historian, writer, radio presenter, magazine editor, newspaper columnist, media personality, local celebrity, and famous Brummie, whose working life has been devoted to the study and popularisation of the city of Birmingham in England. ... For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... Adrian Chiles (born 21 March 1967 in Birmingham, England) is a British television and radio presenter. ... This article discusses the Goodies trio and the origins of their comedy TV series For information about the television series, see The Goodies (TV series) The Goodies are a trio of British comedians (Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie), who created, wrote, and starred in a surreal British... William Edgar (Bill) Oddie, OBE (born 7 July 1941 in Rochdale, Lancashire), is a British comedy writer and performer, author, composer and musician. ... Ozzy redirects here. ... Birmingham born Les Ross always wanted to become a DJ so at the age of 11, he wrote to the general manager of Radio Luxembourg. ... Clare Short (born 15 February 1946) is a British politician and a member of the British Labour Party. ... See also Australian Special Air Service Regiment and New Zealand Special Air Service: The Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) is the principal special forces unit of the British Army. ...

It is not the only accent of the West Midlands, although the term, Brummie, is often, erroneously, used in referring to all accents of the region. It is quite distinct, for example, from the traditional accent of the adjacent Black Country, although modern-day population mobility has tended to blur the distinction. For instance, Dudley-born comedian Lenny Henry, Daniel Taylor, and Smethwick-born actress Julie Walters are sometimes mistaken for Brummie-speakers^{[citation needed]}. The County of West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a population of around 2,600,000 people. ... The Black Country is a loosely-defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton, around the South Staffordshire coalfield. ... Map sources for Dudley at grid reference SO9390 Dudley is a town in the West Midlands, England. ... Lenworth George Henry CBE, BA (Hons) English Literature (born 29 August 1958), better known as that black guy on the telly whos married to the fat one, is an English writer, comedian and actor. ... Daniel Taylor (born January 9, 1887, Durban, Natal, died January 24, 1957, Durban]], Natal) was a South African cricketer who played in 2 Tests in 1914 Categories: | | | | ... For the former parliamentary constituency, see Smethwick (UK Parliament constituency). ... Julia Mary Walters, OBE (born February 22, 1950) is an English Golden Globe-winning actress. ...

Many^{[attribution needed]} are of the opinion that the Southern part of Walsall has the same accent as Birmingham, to which it is adjacent. , Walsall is a large industrial town in the West Midlands of England. ...

Birmingham and Coventry accents are also quite distinct, despite the proximity of the cities. To the untrained ear, however, all of these accents may sound very similar, just as British English speakers can find it hard to distinguish between Canadian and USA accents, or Australian and New Zealand accents. For other uses, see Coventry (disambiguation). ...

As with all English regional accents, the Brummie accent also grades into RP English. The accent of presenter Cat Deeley is listed by her voiceover agency, Curtis Brown, as "RP/Birmingham". Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Catherine Elizabeth Cat Deeley (born October 23, 1976) is a popular English disc jockey, television personality and former fashion model, who rose to fame at the age of 21, co-hosting the well-known childrens series SMTV Live, alongside Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. ...

Pronunciation

Below are some common features of the Brummie accent (a given speaker may not necessarily use all, or use a feature consistently). The letters enclosed in square brackets — [] — use the International Phonetic Alphabet. The corresponding example texts enclosed in double quotes (") are spelt so that a reader using Received Pronunciation (RP) can approximate the sounds. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

• The vowel of mouth (RP [aʊ]) can be [ɛʊ].
• The vowel of goat (RP [əʊ]) can be close to [ɑʊ] (so to an RP speaker, goat may sound like "gout").
• The vowel of kit (RP [ɪ]) can be [i] (so to an RP speaker, bit may sound like "beat").
• Final unstressed /i/, as in happy, may be realised as [əi], though this varies considerably between speakers.
• The letters ng often represent /ŋg/ where RP has just /ŋ/ (e.g. singer as [siŋgə]). See Ng coalescence.
• Both the vowels of strut and foot as [ʊ], as in northern England. See foot-strut split.
• Short 'a', [a] as opposed to [ɑː] in RP, in words like bath, cast and chance (but aunt and laugh both have [ɑː]). See trap-bath split.
• Final unstressed /ə/ may be realised as [a].
• In a few cases, voicing of final /s/ (e.g. bus as [bʊz]).
• Some rolling of prevocalic /r/ (some speakers; e.g. in "crime").

Recordings of Brummie speakers with phonetic features described in SAMPA format can be found at the Collect Britain dialects site referenced below. // H-cluster reductions The h-cluster reductions are various consonant clusters beginning with /h/ that have in the occurred in the history of English that have lost the /h/ in certain dialects. ... // Foot-goose merger The foot-goose merger is a phonemic merger of the vowels and found in distinct dialects of English. ... // Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation), in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened... The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). ...

Rhymes and vocabulary in the works of William Shakespeare suggest that he used a local dialect (Birmingham and his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, are both in the English West Midland dialect area.) Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon is a town in Warwickshire, England. ...

Stereotypes

According to Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study (Steve Thorne, 2003), among UK listeners "Birmingham English in previous academic studies and opinion polls consistently fares as the most disfavoured variety of British English, yet with no satisfying account of the dislike". Born in Birmingham, England, in 1967, Dr Steve Thorne BA (Hons) PhD Cert Ed graduated from The University of Birmingham with a First Class Honours degree in English in 2000 and a PhD in Linguistics in 2003. ...

Since, as he shows, overseas visitors in contrast find it "lilting and melodious", he argues that such dislike is driven by various linguistic myths and social factors peculiar to the UK ("social snobbery, negative media stereotyping, the poor public image of the City of Birmingham, and the north/south geographical and linguistic divide").

For instance, despite the city's cultural and innovative history, its industrial background (as depicted by the arm-and-hammer in Birmingham's coat of arms) has led to a muscular and unintelligent stereotype: a "Brummagem screwdriver" or "Brummie screwdriver" is UK slang for a hammer. Following the incorporation of Birmingham as a borough in 1838, the corporation approved the design of a seal comprising The Birmingham Arms, encircled with a wreath, with the motto Forward. The arms were those used circa 1413 - 1536 by the de Bermingham family, holders of the manor. ...

Steve Thorne also cites the mass media and entertainment industry where actors, usually non-Birmingham, have used inaccurate accents and/or portrayed negative roles. Examples include Benny from the soap Crossroads, a feckless character played by Paul Henry with a hybrid Birmingham-Worcester accent many viewers assumed to be Birmingham because of the setting, and characters played by Battersea-born actor Timothy Spall: for instance, the boring Barry Taylor in Auf Wiedersehen Pet (The character Taylor was actually supposed to be from Tipton, a Black Country town) and Andy, the sarcastic virtual reality attendant in the Red Dwarf episode "Back to Reality". The actor Mark Williams also specialises in amiable but stupid Birmingham characters. One of Harry Enfield's comedy characters, portrayed an exaggerated Brummie (actually "Yam Yam"), whose catchline was "we are considerably richer than yow". Born in Birmingham, England, in 1967, Dr Steve Thorne BA (Hons) PhD Cert Ed graduated from The University of Birmingham with a First Class Honours degree in English in 2000 and a PhD in Linguistics in 2003. ... Crossroads was a British television soap opera set in a motel near Birmingham, England. ... There are other people called Paul Henry Paul Henry, born 1947 in Birmingham, is a British actor whose best-known role was Benny Hawkins, a bumbling semi-rustic handyman he played from 1975 to 1988 in the soap opera Crossroads. ... This article is about the city of Worcester in England. ... Battersea is a place in the London Borough of Wandsworth. ... Timothy Leonard Spall OBE (born February 27, 1957) is an English BAFTA award-nominated film, stage and television actor. ... Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a popular British comedy-drama series created by Franc Roddam and mostly written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who had also written The Likely Lads, What Ever Happened to the Likely Lads? and Porridge. ... This article is about the simulation technology. ... For the type of star, see Red dwarf. ... Back to Reality was the sixth epsiode to air in the fifth series of Red Dwarf. ... For other persons named Mark Williams, see Mark Williams (disambiguation). ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Advertisements are another medium where many perceive stereotypes. Journalist Lydia Stockdale, writing in the Birmingham Post ("Pig ignorant about the Brummie accent", December 2, 2004), commented on advertisers' association of Birmingham accents with pigs: the pig in the ad for Colman's Potato Bakes, Nick Park's Hells Angel Pigs for British Gas and ITV's "Dave the window-cleaner pig" all had Brummie accents. More recently, a Halifax bank advertisement featuring Howard Brown, a Birmingham- born and based employee, was replaced by an animated version with an exaggerated comical accent overdubbed by a Cockney actor. The Birmingham Post was originally started under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. ... Nicholas Wulstan Park, CBE (b. ... Hells Angels logo (Smithsonian Institution) The Hells Angels (without an apostrophe), was formed in 1948 in Fontana, California (where the local chapter remains active), taking the name of the movie Hells Angels based on the Royal Flying Corps directed by Howard Hughes. ... Centrica plc (LSE: CNA) is a large multinational company, based in the United Kingdom but also with interests in North America and Europe. ... Independent Television (generally known as ITV, but also as ITV Network) is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up under the Independent Television Authority (ITA) to provide competition to the BBC. ITV is the oldest commercial television network in the UK. Since 1990 and the Broadcasting... Halifax is a commercial bank in the United Kingdom, one of the trading names of the Bank of Scotland plc which is part of the HBOS Group. ... Howard Sebastian Brown is a figurehead and employee of HBOS plc, who own both Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank (previously the Halifax Building Society) in the United Kingdom. ... St Mary-le-Bow The term cockney is often used to refer to working-class people of London, particularly east London, and the slang used by these people. ...

Dialect

According to the PhD thesis of Steve Thorne at the University of Birmingham Department of English, Birmingham English is "a dialectal hybrid of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire speech", also with elements from the languages and dialects of its Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. PhD usually refers to the academic title Doctor of Philosophy PhD can also refer to the manga Phantasy Degree This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... Born in Birmingham, England, in 1967, Dr Steve Thorne BA (Hons) PhD Cert Ed graduated from The University of Birmingham with a First Class Honours degree in English in 2000 and a PhD in Linguistics in 2003. ... Website http://www. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A detailed map Stratford-upon-Avon Kenilworth Castle Warwickshire (pronounced // or //) is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in central England. ... Staffordshire (abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. ... Worcestershire (pronounced ; abbreviated Worcs) is a county located in the West Midlands region of central England. ... The term British Asian is used to denote a person of Southern Asian ancestry or origin, or sometimes Western Asian origin, who was born in or was an immigrant to the United Kingdom. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Caribbean British. ...

Traditional expressions include:

• "A bit black over Bill's mother's" ... Likely to rain soon (now widespread). [Commonly attributed to Black Country dialect: "Bill's mother's" features in a variety of forms - such as the reference to any obscure location being "the back of Bill's mothers".]

• "Bab" ... Short for baby, but often also used to refer to a spouse or female.

• "Bostin" ... Excellent, brilliant.[Commonly attributed to Black Country & North Staffs dialect.] "Bostin" is a now a registered Trademark of Bostin Group. Copyright © 2007 www.bostin.net

• "Face as long as Livery Street" ... Looking miserable.

• "Go and play up your own end" ... Said to children from a different street making a nuisance. It has been used as the title of the autobiographical book and musical play about the Birmingham childhood of radio presenter and entertainer Malcolm Stent.

• "Keep away from the 'oss road" / "mind the 'orse road"/ "Kip aert th'oss road" ... An admonition to travel safely, originally a warning to children in the days of horse-drawn traffic.["Th'oss road" may also have referred to the towpath alongside the canals found throughout the region - which presented the additional hazard to the unwary of falling into the canal. These expressions too, are commonly attributed to Black Country dialect rather than that from Birmingham.]

• "Rock" ... a children's hard sweet (as in "give us a rock").

• "Trap" ... to leave suddenly, or flee.

• "Up the cut" ... Up the canal (not uniquely Birmingham).

• "Yampy" (often "dead yampy") Mad, daft, barmy (also used is the word "Saft", as in "Yow big saft babbie") - Although, many Black Country Folk believe yampy is a black country word originating from the Dudley/Tipton area and has been stolen and claimed as their own by both Birmingham and Coventry

However, Ross Turner orignates from Birmingham, proving that all "Brums", as the name suggests, must infact be a waste of space.

See also

Other Midlands English dialects Midlands English is a group of dialects of the English language. ...

• Black Country
• Potteries dialect (North Staffordshire)

The Black Country is a loosely-defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton, around the South Staffordshire coalfield. ... The Potteries dialect is a dialect found in the North West Midlands of England, particularly in and around Stoke-on-Trent. ...

External links

• Talk Like A Brummie Day On 20th July.
• Talk Like A Brummie - A wiki-based Birmingham dialect dictionary.
• ebrummie.co.uk Dr Steve Thorne's website devoted to the study of Brummie, including a dictionary, MP3 speech samples, discussion of his research on stereotypes, etc. No Longer Online.
• Birmingham English sample using a test paragraph including most English sounds: George Mason University Speech Accent Archive. Compare a Dudley (Black Country) sample.
• Sounds Familiar? — Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
• English Accents and Dialects, British Library Collect Britain website features samples of Birmingham speech (wma format, with annotations on phonology, lexis and grammar): Sue Long, Aubrey Walton, Harry Phillips and Billy Lucas.
• Why Brummies Why not Birmies? Etymological article by Dr Carl Chinn
• Brummie and Black Country sayings
• BBC guide to Brummie
• Brummie is Beautiful! University of Birmingham press release about Dr Steve Thorne's PhD thesis, Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study.
• Paul Henry on Benny's accent Noele Gordon and Crossroads Appreciation Society interview
• Face of the Halifax given a makeover ... and a cockney's voiceover Guardian January 20, 2003
• English Accents and Dialects, Warwickshire speakers - William Sewell of Hockley Heath, Mr Calcutt of Aston Cantlow, Mr Duckett of Lighthorne, and Harry Cook of Shipston-on-Stour - show progressive accent change moving south-east from Birmingham across isogloss.
• Whoohoo Brummie translator