Web of dialect change

Date: 2004-02-12, Publication: The Journal

The Toon Army has changed its tune - along with much of the rest of the North-East, according to archive recordings on a new website.

The different sounds of the region are shown on the internet site, which holds regional accents recorded in the 1950s and those taken from 1998 and 1999.

More than 11 hours of interviews have been put on the internet for the first time and show how words and accents have changed in less than 50 years, and include explanations of terms used including "bleb", "bonny naught", "luck money" and "ruddle".

It also shows how the pronunciation of words such as "town", "house" and "cow", which were "toon", "hoose" and "coo" as far south as Yorkshire in the 1950s, has now become more restricted, surviving in some Scottish dialects and broad Newcastle accents.

Jonathan Robinson, curator of English Accents and Dialects at the British Library Sound Archive, said the common belief that regional accents were being lost was not the case.

He said: Newcastle United fans refer to their club as the Toon, but often it is used jocularly rather than in normal speech, but it does survive in Scotland.

There is still an incredible amount of regional diversity and the recordings on this website illustrate elements both of continuity and of change.

Among other major changes has been the virtual disappearance of the Northumbrian burr, the way of producing an initial r sound at the back of the throat, as in French, rather than the middle of the mouth.

Among the reasons Mr Robinson points to for the differences are greater social and geographical mobility and education.

But he said: I think Newcastle and Northumberland is an area where, because of its isolation and its sense of regional pride, it has retained a lot of its own dialect, he said.

The identity of Northumberland and Durham has been maintained and that isn't always true of other regions.

Even the topics show times have changed, with pig killing in Lowick and baking bread in Welwick, Yorkshire, among subjects chosen by 1950s speakers.

More modern speakers talk about a range of issues.

The earlier recordings were taken for the Survey of English Dialects, by Leeds University.

Among those recorded between 1950 and 1961 were George Sparks, a lead miner from Allendale, and Ned Keene, a retired carter from Haltwhistle.

BBC radio stations around the country recorded personal oral histories.

They show accents from Earsdon and Backworth, in North Tyneside, Holy Island and Otterburn and Rowlands Gill.

The later ones were recorded by the BBC for the Millennium Memory Bank in 1998 and 1999.

Visit www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects

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