Lancashire Dialect and Accent refers to the vernacular speech in the historic county of Lancashire excluding that of Liverpool. Simon Elmes' book Talking for Britain said that Lancashire dialect is now much less common than it once was, but it is not yet extinct. Not to be confused with 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. ... Lancashire is a county in North West England, bounded to the west by the Irish Sea. ... Liverpool skyline. ...

As in all counties, there is a drift within local speech that shifts towards different borders. For example,

• In those parts of Lancashire that border with Yorkshire, similarities with Yorkshire arise. Words are shortened such as with to wi, in to i, etc.
• In north Lancashire, speech sounds more similar to Cumbria. H-dropping is less frequent, and face, space words are said with an /e:/ rather than an /E:/.
• Towards the Cheshire border (including central Manchester) and in north Lancashire the 'ow' sound is very round. Imagine the northern 'a' sound of apple and then put a 'w' after it. However in Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham (an area covering over a million people) the sound is like the 'e' in 'pet' followed by a 'w'. Good examples of this are Peter Kay, singer/actor Bernard Wrigley, singer Lisa Stansfield and broadcaster Stuart Maconie.

This shift also occurs in other counties. Therefore, the western parts of Yorkshire have some Lancastrian features such as rhoticity. In Halifax words such as fur and fair will often be pronounced the same (see below) although the border with West Yorkshire marks the two distinctive 'oo' sounds in words like blue and shoe. In every corner of Lancashire this sound is pronounced like the the German 'ü' or like the 'u' in the French tu; whereas West Yorkshire speech only uses the rounder 'oo' as in the French 'vous'. Look up Yorkshire in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Cheshire Plain - photo taken adjacent to Beeston Castle The Cheshire Plain - photo taken towards Merseyside The Cheshire Plain panorama - photo taken from Mid-Cheshire Ridge Cattle farming in the county Black-and-white timbered buildings on Nantwich High Street Cheshire (or, archaically, the County of Chester)[1] is a... This page is about the City of Manchester in England. ... Wigan is a town in Greater Manchester, North West England. ... Bolton is a large town in the north-west of England. ... Statistics Population: 60,718 Ordnance Survey OS grid reference: SD805105 Administration Metropolitan borough: Bury Metropolitan county: Greater Manchester Region: North West England Constituent country: England Sovereign state: United Kingdom Other Ceremonial county: Greater Manchester Historic county: Lancashire Services Police force: Greater Manchester Police Fire and rescue: {{{Fire}}} Ambulance: North West... For the larger local government district, see Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale. ... For the larger local government district, see Metropolitan Borough of Oldham. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Bernard Wrigley is a singer, actor and comedian from Bolton, England. ... Lisa Stansfield on the cover of her debut album Affection Lisa Jane Stansfield (born on April 11, 1966) is an English R&B/Soul/House music singer from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. ... Stuart Maconie (b. ... English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the letter r (equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ... Halifax can refer to any of several things: // Australia Halifax Bay, North Queensland Canada Halifax Regional Municipality City of Halifax (dissolved city) Halifax County, Nova Scotia (dissolved county) Halifax (electoral district) Halifax International Airport Namibia Halifax Island United Kingdom Halifax, West Yorkshire Halifax (UK Parliament constituency) Halifax bank (formerly building...

Perhaps the most famous Lancashire accent in popular culture is that of Peter Kay, who comes from Bolton. His comedy has parodied several features of Lancashire speech such as definite article reduction and the habit of using one's hands to illustrate what one means. The latter habit is said to originate from the Lancashire textile mills, where machinery was so loud that mill workers needed to use their hands to communicate. The folk singer/actor Bernard Wrigley is also from Bolton, and has a much "rural" Bolton accent than Peter Kay's more modern urban Bolton accent. Films from the early part of the 20th century often contain Lancashire dialect: the film-makers George Formby, Gracie Fields and Frank Randle are notable examples. The 1990s sitcom Dinnerladies used Lancashire accents, and the actress Mina Anwar portrayed the Lancastrian police officer Habeeb in The Thin Blue Line. The two main characters in Rita, Sue and Bob Too had accents from the south-east of Lancashire; however, the film was actually set in Bradford, and the most of the cast spoke with Bradford accents. Popular culture, sometimes called pop culture, (literally: the culture of the people) consists of widespread cultural elements in any given society. ... Comedy has a classical meaning (comical theatre) and a popular one (the use of humour with an intent to provoke[[ laughter in general). ... Definite Article Reduction (DAR) is the term used in recent linguistic work to refer to the use of vowel-less forms of the definite article in northern dialects of England. ... The cotton mill is a type of factory that was created to house spinning and weaving machinery. ... “Folk song” redirects here. ... Sign in a rural area in Dalarna, Sweden Qichun, a rural town in Hubei province, China An artists rendering of an aerial view of the Maryland countryside: Jane Frank (Jane Schenthal Frank, 1918-1986), Aerial Series: Ploughed Fields, Maryland, 1974, acrylic and mixed materials on apertured double canvas, 52... George Formby (May 26, 1904 – March 6, 1961) was an English singer and comedian who became a major star of both cinema and music hall. ... Dame Gracie Fields, DBE (9 January 1898–27 September 1979), born Grace Stansfield, was an English singer and comedian who became one of the greatest stars of both cinema and music hall. ... Frank Randle (Born Arthur Hughes, also known as Arthur McEvoy) (January 30, 1901 - July 15, 1957) was a British comedian. ... dinnerladies was a British sitcom written and co-produced by and starring Victoria Wood. ... Mina Anwar (born September 20, 1969) is a British actress who played Constable Maggie Habib in the London police station sitcom The Thin Blue Line which was shown on BBC 2. ... The Thin Blue Line is a British sitcom set in a police station in the imaginary town of Gasforth. ... Rita, Sue and Bob Too is a British film directed by Alan Clarke about two Yorkshire schoolgirls who have a sexual fling with a married man. ... The larger City of Bradford Metropolitan District includes other settlements in the surrounding area. ...

The folk song "Poverty Knock[1]" is written to the tune of a Lancashire accent. It is one of the most famous dialect songs in Britain, and describes life in a textile mill. The song "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" is associated with Yorkshire, but, having been written by natives of Halifax, contains dialect that would be just as typical of Lancashire, including eyt for "eat" and etten for "eaten". On Ilkley Moor Baht at is a popular song in the English county of Yorkshire. ...

Key features include:

• Definite article reduction. The is shortened to t or glottalled.
• Words such as face, place, space, etc. are usually said with an /E:/ sound. The wait-weight split exists in Lancashire.
• "Oh no", "don't know" sounds are often /o:/, but parts of south Lancashire use /O:/
• Rhoticity is a key feature of a Lancashire accent, and is often more trilled than in the West Country. The closer that one gets to Manchester, rhoticity dies out.
• Vowel-lengthening is common, but generally less so than in Yorkshire. In some words with RP /əʊ/, a sound more like [ɔɪ] may be used, for example, "hole" is pronounced (in IPA) [hɔɪl], "hoil". "There" and "where" rhyme with "here". This lengthening also extends to make "chair" and "cheer" homophones or "stair" and "steer" homophones. In Yorkshire, it is only the there/where pair that are lengthened.
• Words that end -ight often change so that they end -eet. For example light, night, right, sight become leet, neet, reet, seet.
• An oo in words such as book, look, hook can be pronounced with a long sound similar to the ue in R.P. blue.
• In days gone by "open" would have become "oppen", "spoken" becomes "spokken", "broken" becomes "brokken", etc but these are now uncommon amongst younger generations. They are still fairly common in West Yorkshire.
• Traditionally, a /t/ was replaced with an /r/; for example, "I'm gerring berrer", "a lorra laughs". This is now confined to the more rural parts of Lancashire. Around Manchester and Salford, a glottal stop is much more common for /t/.
• Merger of the vowels of nurse and square. For example 'fair' sounds like 'fur' whereas in Liverpool 'fur' is pronounced 'fair'
• Rather than a mixed use of was and were such as occurs in Standard English, Lancashire dialects tend to only use one of the words and employ it in all cases. The west coast of Lancashire always uses was whilst the rest of the county always uses were.
• Use of a "z" sound for an "s" as in "bus" pronounced "buzz" for example in Darwen or even as far south as Oldham.
• In North Lancashire, words such as "mouth, down, about", etc. have an /a:/ sound: they sound like maath, daan, abaat.
• The Bolton area would say mehth, dehn, abeht.
• The word "self" is reduced to "sen" or "sel", depending on the part of Lancashire.

Several dialect words are also used. Traditional Lancashire dialect often related to the traditional industries of the area, and these words became redundant when those industries disappeared. There are still words that relate to everyday life that are in common use however. See the list of Northshireisms for examples. Words that are popularly associated with Lancashire include "gradely" for excellent and "harping" for talking in a mindless manner. The word "lunch", now in worldwide usage, actually originates from Lancashire. The term "moggy" for a cat, which has become a British national colloquialism, originates from Wigan and 'maiden' for 'clothes horse', which is used even by people who consider themselves too proper for dialect. Definite Article Reduction (DAR) is the term used in recent linguistic work to refer to the use of vowel-less forms of the definite article in northern dialects of England. ... // H-dropping is a colloquial term used to describe the omission of initial in words like house, heat, and hangover in many dialects of English, such as Cockney and Estuary English. ... The West Country is an informal term for the area of south-western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. ... Yorkshire, whilst also being the name of the largest county in England, is also the name of the distinct dialect spoken there. ... Wigan is a town in Greater Manchester, North West England. ...

The Survey of English Dialects took recordings from fourteen sites in Lancashire: The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken between 1950 and 1961 under the direction of Professor Harold Orton of the English department of the University of Leeds. ...

• Bickerstaffe, west Lancashire
• Cartmel, modern south Cumbria,
• Coniston, modern south Cumbria
• Dolphinholme, near Lancaster
• Eccleston. There are two villages in south Lancashire named "Eccleston", which are very close to each other. The one in the survey was slightly further north and closer to Chorley.
• Fleetwood
• Halewood, near Liverpool. Would usually be classified as Scouse rather than Lancastrian.
• Harwood, near Bolton
• Marshside, north of Liverpool
• Pilling, Fylde coast
• Read, near Burnley
• Ribchester, between Blackburn and Preston
• Thistleton, between Blackpool and Preston
• Yealand, near Chorley

Bickerstaffe is a village and civil parish in the West Lancashire district of Lancashire, England. ... Cartmel is a village in Cumbria several miles west of Grange-over-Sands. ... Coniston is a village in the region of Furness, the area of Lancashire that moved into the administrative county of Cumbria, in the United Kingdom. ... Dolphinholme is a village in Lancashire, North West England (53. ... Lancaster can refer to: Places In the United Kingdom: Lancaster, Lancashire The City of Lancaster, the local government district containing Lancaster In the United States: Lancaster, California Lancaster, Kansas Lancaster, Kentucky Lancaster, Massachusetts Lancaster, Minnesota Lancaster, Missouri Lancaster County, Nebraska Lancaster, New Hampshire Lancaster, New York: Lancaster (town), New York... Eccleston, Chorley, Lancashire Eccleston is a village located in Chorley Borough, Lancashire. ... Fleetwood is a town in Lancashire, England, lying at the northern end of the Fylde peninsula but part of the Wyre local authority area. ... Halewood is a town (population c 22,000) in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley, Merseyside, England, situated to the south-east of Liverpool. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Harwood can refer to: Basil Harwood (1859–1949), British organist and composer. ... Bolton is a large town in the north-west of England. ... Marshside was a detached settlement, on the northern fringe of what is now Southport,Merseyside. ... Liverpool skyline. ... Pilling is a village in Lancashire, in a part of the Fylde Coast known as Over Wyre. ... Image:Read - Lancashire dot. ... Burnley is a large market town in the north-east of Lancashire in north-west England with a population of 89,542[1] (2001 census). ... Ribchester is a village in the Ribble Valley district of Lancashire, England, near the towns of Blackburn and Preston. ... This article is about Blackburn in Lancashire, England. ... Preston is a city and local government district in North West England. ... Thistleton is a village in the county of Rutland in the East Midlands of England. ... It has been suggested that South Shore, Blackpool be merged into this article or section. ... {{infobox #REDIRECT [[UK place| |country = England |lat[[Media:Example. ...

References

• "Lancashire English", Fred Holcroft
• "Talking for Britain", Simon Elmes
• Survey of English Dialects. Recording online at http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects