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Scouse




Scouse is the Accent and Dialect of English found in the northern English city of Liverpool and adjoining urban areas of Merseyside and northwestern Cheshire . The Liverpool accent is highly distinctive and sounds wholly different from the accents used in the neighbouring regions of Cheshire and rural Lancashire . Inhabitants of Liverpool are often called Scousers.

The word Scouse was originally a variation of Lobscouse (probably from the north German sailor's dish '' Labskaus ''), the name of a traditional dish of Mutton stew mixed with Hardtack eaten by sailors.

Lancashire has one of the most diverse selections of spoken accents of any English County or region. This is thought to be due to the large amount of Immigration into the Liverpool area from Ireland , Wales , the Isle Of Man , Scotland , other parts of northern England inland from it, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries . The influence of these speech patterns was strong in Liverpool, distinguishing the accent of its people from those of surrounding Lancashire and Cheshire.

Other Northern English dialects include



PHONOLOGY


The characteristic features of the accent of the region are discussed in section 4.4.10 of Wells (1982).


Consonants


A notable feature of Scouse is its tendency towards Lenition of Stop Consonants (Honeybone 2001, sections 4 and 5, Marotta and Barth 2005). In particular
  • The phoneme is often pronounced , especially at the end of a word, so that ''back'' sounds like German ''Bach'' and ''lock'' sounds like Scottish English ''loch''. In other positions may be realised as an Affricate .

  • There are several possibilities for the phoneme in Scouse. In some contexts, it may be realised as an Alveolar Slit Fricative , or as a similar affricate ; these sounds may sound like and respectively. The sounds and themselves may also be used. Hence ''right'' may be heard as ''rice'' or ''rights''.

  • In some words, for example ''but'' and ''what'', the final may be replaced by or a Flap , which may be heard as an .

  • More rarely, lenition can also affect , which may be realised as a Bilabial Fricative , and , which undergoes lenition similar to that of , producing a Voiced Slit Fricative or affricate . (Marotta and Barth 2005)


The ''th'' sounds may be pronounced as Dental . This feature is shared with Hiberno-English .

The velar nasal is usually followed by a hard sound in words where most other English accents have it at the end of a word or before a vowel, so that ''sing'' is as opposed to in Received Pronunciation . See ''Ng Coalescence'' .

The sound is often a tap , similar to Scots.


Vowels


Features of Scouse vowels include:

  • The Nurse-square Vowel Merger , so that ''fur'' and ''fair'' sound the same. Phonetically, the merged vowel is typically .

  • As elsewhere in the north of England, the accent does not use the Broad A , pronouncing words like ''bath'' with the of ''cat'', and the vowels ''put'' and ''putt'' are often the same.

  • Unlike most other northern English accents, the vowels of ''face'' and ''goat'' ( Received Pronunciation and ) are pronounced as diphthongs similar to those of RP.



OTHER FEATURES


Scouse is noted for a fast, highly Accented manner of speech, with a range of rising and falling tones not typical of most of northern England.

Irish influences include the pronunciation of the letter 'h' as 'haitch' and the plural of 'you' as 'youse'. There are also Idiom s shared with Hiberno-English , such as "I know where you're at" ( Standard English : "I know who you are").

Expressions include 'lah' or 'lid', as an abbreviation of lad, used to mean mate or pal, e.g. "alright lid!"


SCOUSE-SPEAKING CELEBRITIES

Scouse can be heard from:


SEE ALSO




REFERENCES

  • Honeybone, P. (2001), Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English, ''English Language and Linguistics'' 5.2, pp213-249.

  • Marotta, G. and Barth, M., Acoustic and sociolingustic aspects of lenition in Liverpool English, ''Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online'' 3.2, pp377-413. Available online (including sound files).

  • Wells, J. C. (1982). ''Accents of English 2: The British Isles''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521285402.



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