Bristol is a city in south west England. As the largest city in the region it is a centre for the arts and sport. The region has a distinct dialect. Bristol is a city, unitary authority and ceremonial county in South West England. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my [birth]right) Englands location (dark green) within the British Isles Languages English (de facto) Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ...

Sport

The city has two significant football clubs: Bristol City F.C. who play in Football League One and Bristol Rovers F.C. who play in Football League Two. The city is also home to a Rugby Union club known as Bristol Rugby, who have won promotion to the Guinness Premiership, and a first-class cricket side, Gloucestershire C.C.C. Football (soccer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Bristol City is a football club in Bristol, England, which plays in Football League One. ... Football League One (often referred to as League One for short or Coca-Cola Football League 1 for sponsorship reasons) is the second-highest division of The Football League and third-highest division overall in the English football league system. ... Bristol Rovers Football Club is the oldest professional football team in Bristol, England. ... Football League Two (often referred to as League Two for short or Coca-Cola Football League 2 for sponsorship reasons) is the third-highest division of The Football League and fourth-highest division overall in the English football league system. ... Image from a test-match between Ireland and the New Zealand All Blacks. ... Bristol Rugby are the first class rugby club in Bristol, England. ... First-class cricket matches are those of at least three days length in which both teams have two innings each, and which involve either international teams or the highest division of domestic competition. ... For the insect, see Cricket (insect). ... Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is a county cricket club based at County Cricket Ground, Nevil Road, Bristol BS7 9EJ. Some home games are also played at Gloucester and Cheltenham College. ...

Events

In summer the grounds of Ashton Court to the west of the city play host to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, a major event for hot-air ballooning in Britain. The Fiesta draws a substantial crowd even for the early morning lift that typically begins at about 6.30 am. Events and a fairground entertain the crowds during the day. A second mass ascent is then made in the early evening, again taking advantage of lower wind speeds. Ashton Court is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. ...

Ashton Court also plays host to the Ashton Court festival each summer, an outdoors music festival which used to be known as the Bristol Community Festival. The annual Bristol Harbour Festival features displays of ships and musical performances. Ashton Court is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. ... The Ashton Court festival is an outdoors music festival held annually in the grounds of Ashton Court, just outside Bristol, in mid July. ...

Theatre

The city's principal theatre company, the Bristol Old Vic, was founded in 1946 as an offshoot of the Old Vic company in London. Its premises on King Street consist of the 1766 Theatre Royal (400 seats), a modern studio theatre called the New Vic (150 seats), and foyer and bar areas in the adjacent Coopers' Hall (built 1743). The Theatre Royal is a grade I listed building and the oldest continuously-operating theatre in England. The Bristol Old Vic also runs a prominent Theatre School. The Bristol Hippodrome is a larger theatre (1981 seats) which hosts national touring productions, while the 2000-seat Colston Hall, named after Edward Colston, is the city's main concert venue. The Coopers Hall (right) became the theatre foyer in the 1970s. ... The Old Vic is a theatre in the Waterloo area of London. ... Buckingham Palace, a Grade I listed building. ... The Bristol Hippodrome is a theatre in the city centre of Bristol with a capacity of nearly 2000. ... Edward Colston (2 November 1636 – 11 October 1721) was a Bristol-born English merchant and philanthropist. ...

Music

The music scene is thriving and significant. From the late 1970's onwards it was home to a crop of cultish bands combining punk, funk, dub and political consciousness, the most celebrated being The Pop Group. Ten years later, Bristol was the birthplace of a type of English hip-hop music called trip hop or the Bristol Sound, epitomised in the work of artists such as Tricky, Portishead, Smith & Mighty and Massive Attack. It is also a stronghold of drum n bass with notable bands like the Mercury Prize winning Roni Size/Reprazent and Kosheen as well as the pioneering DJ Krust and More Rockers. This music is part of the wider Bristol Urban Culture scene which received international media attention in the 1990s and still thrives today. Hip hop music (also referred to as rap or rap music) is a style of popular music. ... Trip hop (also known as the Bristol sound) is a term coined by United Kingdom dance magazine Mixmag, to describe a musical trend in the mid-1990s; trip hop is downtempo electronic music that grew out of Englands hip hop and house scenes. ... Adrian Thaws (born January 27, 1968), better known as Tricky, is an English rapper and musician important in the trip hop and British music scene (despite loathing the trip hop tag). ... Beth Gibbons, Portishead For the town, see Portishead, Somerset. ... Smith & Mighty are a Drum & Bass band from Bristol, consisting of Rob Smith and Ray Mighty. ... Massive Attack is a band from Bristol, England. ... Drum and bass (drum n bass, DnB) is an electronic music style. ... Roni Size, real name Ryan Williams, is a well known Bristol-based drum and bass producer. ... Reprazent is a British drum and bass act formed by Roni Size. ... Kosheen is a UK trip hop, drum and bass musical group which consists of two producers, Markee Substance and Darren Decoder (real name Darren Beale), and singer Sian Evans. ... Krust (or DJ Krust) is part of the Bristol based Reprazent collective. ... Rob Smith is a DJ, musician and remixer from Bristol, UK. He is currently on the Grand Central Records independent record label, playing breakbeat hip-hop, dub and reggae-influenced music. ... The city of Bristol in the UK has spawned various musicians and artists, and is typified by its Urban Culture. ...

Bristol's musical pioneering spirit continues as the home to one of the largest and most diverse DIY music communities in the UK. Artists such as Gravenhurst and Chikinki have revived popular interest over the past few years. Other highly influential cult acts include Wall Planner, Pricktaster, Snakes On A Plane and November's Ashes In The Rain. A dynamic community of bands, artists, promoters and music fans has developed around the Choke forum, named after a popular fanzine and club night which has championed underground music from Bristol and beyond since 2001. Gravenhurst (2001 population 10,899) is a town in the Muskoka Region of Ontario, Canada. ... Chikinki are an Electro-pop band from Bristol, United Kingdom. ...

Bristol is home to many live music venues, of which The Old Duke is perhaps the best known. Internationally recognised jazz and blues musicians active in Bristol include Eddie Martin, Jim Blomfield and Andy Sheppard. St George's Hall, on Brandon Hill, is notable for its classical, jazz and world music performances, and the Carling Academy is part of the national touring circuit for rock bands. The Old Duke is a famous Jazz and Blues venue and pub situated on King Street in the heart of Bristol, England. ... Classical music in its widest sense is held to refer to music deriving from learned traditions, taught through institutions either specifically devoted to music (e. ... Jazz is an original American musical art form originating around the early 1920s in New Orleans, rooted in Western music technique and theory, and is marked by the profound cultural contributions of African Americans. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Academy Music Group (or AMG) is a leading owner operator of music venues in the United Kingdom. ... Rock is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars, a bass guitar, and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, trumpet, and trombone are common in some styles, however, horns have been omitted from newer subgenres of rock music since...

Museums

The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery houses a collection of natural history, archaeology, local glassware, Chinese ceramics and art. The Bristol Industrial Museum, on the dockside, shows local industrial heritage and operates a steam railway, boat trips, and working dockside cranes. The City Museum also runs three preserved historic houses: the Tudor Red Lodge, the Georgian House, and Blaise Castle House. The Watershed Media Centre and Arnolfini gallery, both in disused dockside warehouses, exhibit contemporary art, photography and cinema. The museum building. ... Entrance to Watershed Media Centre in the Harbourside area The Watershed Media Centre opened in a disused warehouse in central Bristol in 1982, and claims to be the United Kingdoms first dedicated media centre. ... The Arnolfini is an art gallery in Bristol, England. ...

Media

Stop frame animation films and commercials painstakingly produced by Aardman Animations and high quality television series focusing on the natural world have also brought fame and artistic credit to the city. Bristol is where the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has its regional headquarters, and BBC Natural History Unit. Bristol is also the birthplace of the actor Cary Grant. Aardman Animations Ltd. ... The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is largest the publicly-funded radio and television broadcasting corporation of the United Kingdom (see British television). ... The BBC natural history unit is a department of the BBC, dedicated to making programmes with a natural history or wildlife theme. ... Cary Grant Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his screen name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American film actor. ...

Bristol is the home of a regional morning newspaper, the Western Daily Press, a local evening paper, the Evening Post and a weekly free newspaper, the Bristol Observer. A Bristol edition of Metro is distributed for free on buses in the area. The local listings magazine, Venue, is now published weekly after many years as a fortnightly publication and comprehensively covers the city's music, theatre and arts scenes. The Spark magazine (Since 1993) covers the surging interest in all things green, ethical and New Age. Bristol indymedia is a resource for Bristol's anarchist and activist community and is the sixth-ranked Google website associated with the city. Cover for an issue of the Metro newspaper, October 25th 2004. ...

The cockney rhyming slang term "Bristols" (Bristol City = titty), meaning breasts, was popularised in the Carry On series of films.

Dialect

A minority of Bristolians speak a distinctive dialect of English (known colloquially as Brizzle or Bristle). Uniquely for an urban area of England, this is a rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car is pronounced. It is perhaps this element of the dialect which has led outsiders to dub it "farmer speech". The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme (the letter r, equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ...

The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in a letter a. Thus "area" becomes "areal", etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in "Bristle" sound identical. Other examples include 'Americal' and 'Canadal', and, when unsure, the answer 'I have no ideal'. In the same way, the Swedish Ikea is known by some as 'Ikeal'. This is how the city's name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final 'L' sound: Bristol.

Another Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of a superfluous "to" in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, "Where’s that?" would be phrased as "Where’s that to?" and "Where’s the park?" would become "Where’s the park to?". Interestingly, this speech feature is very predominate in Newfoundland English, where many of that island's early European inhabitants originated from Bristol and other West Country ports. They lived on the island in relative isolation in the centuries to follow, maintaining this feature. Newfoundland English is a name for several dialects of English specific to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, distinct from Canadian English. ...

External links

• Bristol City Council: Leisure & Culture
• Ashton Court Festival
• Bristol Balloon Fiesta
• Bristol Harbour Festival