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Black Country English
The Black Country dialect is spoken by many people in the Black Country, a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. It also influences the accents of towns and villages in the rural counties to the north, south and west of the region. It is distinct from the Brummie dialect, which originates from the neighbouring city of Birmingham. Description In general, the Black Country dialect has resisted many of the changes from Middle English that are seen in other dialects of British English, resembling particularly Northern English and West Country English. * There is no trap-bath split, so there is no /ɑː/ in words like ''bath'', ''grass'', etc., so to rhyme with ''math(s)'', ''gas'', etc. *Like most British accents (except Queen's English), there are glottal stops. * /æ/ is uniformly pronounced as * There is no foot-strut split, so that ''cut'' rhymes with ''put'', and both use /ʊ/. * There is no ''NG-coalesc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West Midlands metropolitan county, and approximately 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area. It is the largest UK metropolitan area outside of London. Birmingham is known as the second city of the United Kingdom. Located in the West Midlands region of England, approximately from London, Birmingham is considered to be the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands. Distinctively, Birmingham only has small rivers flowing through it, mainly the River Tame and its tributaries River Rea and River Cole – one of the closest main rivers is the Severn, approximately west of the city centre. Historically a market town in Warwickshire in the medieval period, Birmingham grew during the 18th century during the Midla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have been undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to History of local government in Yorkshire, periodic reform. Throughout these changes, Yorkshire has continued to be recognised as a geographic territory and cultural region. The name is familiar and well understood across the United Kingdom and is in common use in the media and the Yorkshire Regiment, military, and also features in the titles of current areas of civil administration such as North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Within the borders of the historic county of Yorkshire are large stretches of countryside, including the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors and Peak District nationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the north-west, West Yorkshire to the north, South Yorkshire to the north-east, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the west and south-west and Cheshire to the west. Kinder Scout, at , is the highest point and Trent Meadows, where the River Trent leaves Derbyshire, the lowest at . The north–south River Derwent is the longest river at . In 2003, the Ordnance Survey named Church Flatts Farm at Coton in the Elms, near Swadlincote, as Britain's furthest point from the sea. Derby is a unitary authority area, but remains part of the ceremonial county. The county was a lot larger than its present coverage, it once extended to the boundaries of the City of Sheffield district in South Yorkshire where it cov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guardian Unlimited
TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service. As of November 2014, it was the second most popular online newspaper in the UK with over 17 million readers per month; with over 21 million monthly readers, Mail Online was the most popular. The site is made up of a core news site, with niche sections and subsections covering subjects including sport, business, environment, technology, arts and media, and lifestyle. TheGuardian.com is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and, more recently, a network of weblogs. Its seven blogs were joined on 14 March 2006, by a new comment section, "Comment is free", which has since merged into its Opinion secti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, as in ''rain'', ''reign'', and ''rein''. The term ''homophone'' may also apply to units longer or shorter than words, for example a phrase, letter, or groups of letters which are pronounced the same as another phrase, letter, or group of letters. Any unit with this property is said to be ''homophonous'' (). Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms, e.g. the word ''read'', as in "He is well ''read''" (he is very learned) vs. the sentence "I ''read'' that book" (I have finished reading that book). Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs, e.g. ''to'', ''too'', and ''two''. Etymology "Homophone" derives from Greek ''homo-'' (ὁμο ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhotic And Non-rhotic Accents
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic varieties, the historical English sound is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic varieties, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments—that is, when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words ''hard'' and ''butter'' as and , whereas a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound, pronouncing them as and . When an ''r'' is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "bette''r a''pples", most non-rhotic speakers will pronounce the in that position (the linking R), since it is followed by a vowel in this case. The rhotic varieties of English include the dialects of South West E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonological History Of English Consonants
This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of the English language which concern consonants. Consonant clusters H-cluster reductions * Reduction of /hw/ – to /h/ in a few words (such as ''who''), but usually to , for the great majority of English speakers (so that ''whine'' comes to be pronounced the same as ''wine''). * Reduction of /hl/, /hr/ and /hn/, with the loss of the initial in Middle English. * Reduction of /hj/ to /j/ in a few American and Irish dialects (so that ''hew'' is pronounced like ''yew''). Y-cluster reductions * Yod-dropping – the elision of in certain clusters, depending on dialect (for example, RP has /j/ in ''new'', while General American and Cockney do not). * Yod-coalescence, whereby the clusters , , and become , , and respectively (for example, ''education'' is often pronounced as if it began "edge"). Other initial cluster reductions * Reduction of /wr/ to /r/, in words like ''wrap'', around the 17th century (there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonological History Of English High Back Vowels
Most dialects of modern English have two close back vowels: the near-close near-back rounded vowel found in words like ''foot'', and the close back rounded vowel (realized as central in many dialects) found in words like ''goose''. The vowel , which historically was back, is often central as well. This article discusses the history of these vowels in various dialects of English, focusing in particular on phonemic splits and mergers involving these sounds. Historical development The Old English vowels included a pair of short and long close back vowels, and , both written (the longer vowel is often distinguished as in modern editions of Old English texts). There was also a pair of back vowels of mid-height, and , both of which were written (the longer vowel is often in modern editions). The same four vowels existed in the Middle English system. The short vowels were still written and , but long came to be spelt as , and as . Generally, the Middle English vowels des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with a low rate and sudden drop in intensity. Features Features of the glottal stop: * It has no phonation, as there is no airflow through the glottis. It is voiceless, however, in the sense that it is produced without vibration of the vocal cords. Writing In the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the apostrophe or the symbol ʾ, which is the source of the IPA character . In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a rotated apostrophe, (called '' ‘okina'' in Hawaiian and Sam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been argument over such questions as the definition of RP, whether it is geographically neutral, how many speakers there are, whether sub-varieties exist, how appropriate a choice it is as a standard and how the accent has changed over time. The name itself is controversial. RP is an accent, so the study of RP is concerned only with matters of pronunciation; other areas relevant to the study of language standards such as vocabulary, grammar and Style (sociolinguistics), style are not considered. History RP has most in common with the dialects of South East Midlands, namely London, Oxford and Cambridge. By the end of the 15th century, "Standard English" was established in the City of London, though it did not begin to resemble RP until the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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