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| Cumbrian dialect | |
|---|---|
| Native to | England |
| Region | Cumbria |
| Ethnicity | English |
Early forms | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| IETF | en-u-sd-gbcma |
 Cumbria within England | |
| Coordinates:54°30′N3°15′W / 54.500°N 3.250°W /54.500; -3.250 | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Cumbrian dialect orCumberland dialect is a localdialect of Northern England in decline, spoken inCumberland,Westmorland andLancashireNorth of the Sands. Some parts of Cumbria have a more North-East English sound to them. Whilst clearly spoken with a Northern English accent, the Cumbrian dialect shares much vocabulary withScots. ACumbrian Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore by William Rollinson exists, as well as a more contemporary and lightheartedCumbrian Dictionary and Phrase Book.[1]
As with other English dialects north of theHumber–Lune Line and the closely related Scots language, Cumbrian is descended from Northern Middle English and in turnNorthumbrian Old English. Old English was introduced to Cumbria fromNorthumbria, where it was initially spoken alongside the native Cumbric language.
Despite the modern county being created only in 1974 from the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and north Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire, Cumbria is an ancient division. Before the arrival of the Romans, the area was the home of theCarvetii tribe, which was later assimilated to the largerBrigantes tribe. These people would have spokenBrythonic, which developed intoOld Welsh, but around the 5th century AD, when Cumbria was the centre of the kingdom ofRheged, the language spoken in northern England and southern Scotland fromLancashire andYorkshire toStrathclyde had developed into a dialect of Brythonic known asCumbric (the scarcity of linguistic evidence, however, means that Cumbric's distinctness from Old Welsh is more deduced than proven). Remnants of Brythonic and Cumbric are most often seen in place names, in elements such ascaer 'fort' as inCarlisle,pen 'hill' as inPenrith,glinn 'valley' andredïn 'ferns, bracken' as inGlenridding, andcraig 'crag, rock' as inHigh Crag.
The most well known Celtic element in Cumbrian dialect is thesheep counting numerals which are still used in various forms by shepherds throughout the area, and apparently for knitting. The word 'Yan' (meaning 'one'), for example, is prevalent throughout Cumbria and is still often used, especially by non-speakers of 'received pronunciation' and children, e.g. "That yan owr there," or "Can I have yan of those?"
TheNorthern subject rule may be attributable to Celtic Influence.
Before the 8th century AD Cumbria was annexed to English Northumbria andOld English began to be spoken in parts, although evidence suggests Cumbric survived in central regions in some form until the 11th century.
A far stronger influence on the modern dialect wasOld Norse, spoken byNorse and/orNorse-Gael settlers who probably arrived on the coasts of Cumbria in the 10th century viaIreland and theIsle of Man. Many Cumbrian place names in or near coastal areas are of Norse origin, includingUlverston fromUlfrs tun ('Ulfr's farmstead'),Kendal fromKent dalr ('valley of the River Kent') andElterwater fromeltr vatn ('swan lake'). Many of the traditional dialect words are also remnants of Norse influence, includingbeck (bekkr, 'stream'),laik (leik, 'to play'),lowp (hlaupa, 'to jump') andglisky (gliskr, 'shimmering').
Once Cumbrians had assimilated to speaking Northumbrian English, there were few further influences on the dialect. In theMiddle Ages, much of Cumbria frequently swapped hands between England and Scotland but this had little effect on the language used. In the nineteenth century miners from Cornwall and Wales began relocating to Cumbria to take advantage of the work offered by new iron ore, copper and wadd mines but whilst they seem to have affected some local accents (notably Barrow-in-Furness) they don't seem to have contributed much to the vocabulary.
The earliest recordings of the dialect were in a book published byAgnes Wheeler in 1790.The Westmoreland dialect in three familiar dialogues, in which an attempt is made to illustrate the provincial idiom. There were four editions of the book. Her work was later used inSpecimens of the Westmorland Dialect published by the Revd Thomas Clarke in 1887.[2]
One of the lasting characteristics still found in the local dialect of Cumbria today isdefinite article reduction. Unlike the Lancashire dialect, where 'the' is abbreviated to 'th', in Cumbrian (as in Yorkshire and south Durham) the sound is harder and in sentences sounds as if it is attached to the previous word, for example "int" instead of "in the" "ont" instead of "on the".
Cumbria is a large area with several relatively isolated districts, so there is quite a large variation in accent, especially between north and south or the coastal towns. There are some uniform features that should be taken into account when pronouncing dialect words.
| RP English | Cumbrian |
|---|---|
| /æ/ as in 'bad' | [a] |
| /ɑː/ as in 'bard' | [aː] |
| /aʊ/ as in 'house' | [uː] (North only) |
| /eɪ/ as in 'bay' | [ɪə] in the North-East, and[eː] elsewhere |
| /eə/ as in 'bear' | [ɛː] |
| /aɪ/ as in 'bide' | [ɐː] (South),[eɪ] (North) |
| /əʊ/ as in 'boat' | [oː] |
| /ʌ/ as in 'bud' | [ʊ] |
| /uː/ as in 'boo' | [əu],[ɪu] or[uː] |
When certain vowels are followed by/l/, anepentheticschwa[ə] is often pronounced between them, creating two distinct syllables:
The pronunciation ofmoor andpoor is a traditional feature of Received Pronunciation but is now associated withsome old-fashioned speakers. It is generally more common in the north of England than in the south. The wordscure, pure, sure may be pronounced with a triphthong[ɪuə].
Most consonants are pronounced as they are in other parts of the English speaking world. A few exceptions follow:
⟨g⟩ and⟨k⟩ have a tendency to be dropped or unreleased in thecoda (word- or syllable-finally). This can sometimes[3] occur in the onset as well in words such asfinger.
⟨h⟩ is realised in various ways throughout the county. When William Barrow Kendall wrote his Furness Wordbook in 1867, he wrote that⟨h⟩ 'should never be dropped',[4] suggesting the practice had already become conspicuous. It seems the elision of both⟨h⟩ and⟨t⟩ began in the industrial towns and slowly spread out. In the south, it is now very common.
⟨l⟩ in the word final position may be dropped or realised as[w]:woowool[ˈwəw];powpole[ˈpɒw].
⟨r⟩ is realised as[ɾ] following consonants and in word-initial position but is often elided in the coda, unless a following word begins with a vowel:ross[ˈɾɒs];gimmer[ˈɡɪmə];gimmer hogg[ˈɡɪməɾ‿ɒɡ].
⟨t⟩ is traditionally always pronounced as a voiceless alveolar plosive, although in many places it has been replaced by the glottal stop[ʔ] now common throughout Britain.
⟨y⟩ may be consonantal[j] as inyamhome[ˈjam]. As the adjectival or adverbial suffix-y it may be[ɪ] or[iː] as inclarty (muddy)[ˈklaːtɪ]. Medially and, in some cases, finally it is[ɐː] as inThorfinsty (a place)[ˈθɔːfɪnstɐː].
Finally, in some parts of the county, there is a tendency to palatalize the consonant cluster⟨cl⟩ in word-initial and medial position, thereby rendering it as something more closely approaching [tl]. As a result, some speakers pronounceclarty (muddy) as[ˈtlaːtɪ], "clean" as[ˈtliːn], and "likely" and "lightly" may be indistinguishable.
Stress is usually placed on the initial syllable:yakeren "acorn"[ˈjakɜɾən].
Unstressed initial vowels are usually fully realised, whilst those in final syllables are usually reduced to schwa[ə].
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The Cumbrian numbers, often called 'sheep counting numerals' because of their (declining) use by shepherds to this very day, show clear signs that they may well have their origins inCumbric. The table below shows the variation of the numbers throughout Cumbria, as well as the relevant cognate in Welsh, Cornish and Breton, which are the three geographically closest British languages to Cumbric, for comparison.
| Keswick | Westmorland | Eskdale | Millom | High Furness | Welsh | Cornish | Breton | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | yan | yan | yaena | aina | yan | un | onan/unn | unan/un |
| 2 | tyan | tyan | taena | peina | taen | dau/dwy | dew/diw | daou/div |
| 3 | tethera | tetherie | teddera | para | tedderte | tri/tair | tri/teyr | tri/teir |
| 4 | methera | peddera | meddera | pedera | medderte | pedwar/pedair | peswar/peder | pevar/peder |
| 5 | peen | pip | pimp | pimp | pimp | pump | pymp | pemp |
| 6 | sethera | teezie | hofa | ithy | haata | chwe(ch) | whegh | c'hwec'h |
| 7 | lethera | mithy | lofa | mithy | slaata | saith | seyth | seizh |
| 8 | hovera | katra | seckera | owera | lowera | wyth | eth | eizh |
| 9 | dovera | hornie | leckera | lowera | dowera | naw | naw | nav |
| 10 | dick | dick | dec | dig | dick | deg | dek | dek |
| 15 | bumfit | bumfit | bumfit | bumfit | mimph | pymtheg | pymthek | pemzek |
| 20 | giggot | - | - | - | - | ugain | ugens | ugent |
NB: when these numerals were used for counting sheep, repeatedly, the shepherd would count to fifteen or twenty and then move a small stone from one of his pockets to the other before beginning again, thus keeping score. Numbers eleven, twelve etc. would have been 'yandick, tyandick', while sixteen and seventeen would have been 'yan-bumfit, tyan-bumfit' etc.
Although yan is still widely used, wan is starting to creep into somesociolects of the area.
There were several villages in Cumbria that were used during theSurvey of English Dialects to minutely detail localised dialects. At the time, Cumbria did not exist as a unit of local government; there were 12 sites within modern Cumbria spread across four different counties:
There were several among the well-educated in the 18th century who used dialect in their poetry. One of the earliest was the Rev.Josiah Relph, whose imitations of TheocritanPastorals self-consciously introduce the demotic for local colour. Although written about 1735, they were not published until after the author's death inA Miscellany of Poems (Wigton, 1747),[7] followed by two further editions in 1797 and 1805. The Rev. Robert Nelson followed him in the same tradition withA choice collection of poems in Cumberland dialect (Sunderland, 1780).[8] Ewan Clark, a contemporary of Nelson's, also wrote a handful of dialect imitations that were included in hisMiscellaneous Poems (Whitehaven 1779). Female members of the gentry writing in dialect at this time includedSusanna Blamire and her companion Catherine Gilpin. Miss Blamire had written songs in Scots that were set to music byJoseph Haydn. Her work in Cumbrian dialect was less well known and remained uncollected until the publication ofThe Muse of Cumberland in 1842. This was followed bySongs and Poems, edited by Sidney Gilpin in 1866, in which Miss Gilpin's work also appeared.
In the 19th century appeared a few poems in dialect in theMiscellaneous Poems ofJohn Stagg (Workington, 1804, second edition the following year). Known as 'the Cumbrian Minstrel', he too wrote in Scots and these poems appeared in the new editions of his poems published from Wigton in 1807 and 1808. What seems to have lifted use of Cumbrian dialect from a passing curiosity to a demonstration of regional pride in the hands oflabouring class poets was the vogue ofRobert Burns, among whose disciples thecalico workerRobert Anderson counted himself. HisBallads in the Cumberland Dialect were published from Carlisle in 1805 and were reprinted in several different formats over the following decades. Some of these publications also incorporated the work of his precursors and a few other contemporaries, such as Ewan Clark and Mark Lonsdale. One such collection wasBallads in the Cumberland dialect, chiefly by R. Anderson (1808, second edition 1815, Wigton),[9] and a third from Carlisle in 1823.
A more ambitious anthology of dialect verse,Dialogues, poems, songs, and ballads, by various writers, in the Westmoreland and Cumberland dialects, followed from London in 1839.[10] This contained work by all the poets mentioned already, with the addition of some songs by John Rayson that were later to be included in hisMiscellaneous Poems and Ballads (London, 1858). Another anthology of regional writing, Sidney Gilpin'sThe Songs and Ballads of Cumberland (London, 1866), collects together work in both standard English and dialect by all the poets mentioned so far, as well as Border Ballads, poems byWilliam Wordsworth and family, and other verse of regional interest. Some later poets include John Sewart (Rhymes in the Westmoreland Dialect, Settle, 1869) and Gwordie Greenup (the pseudonym of Stanley Martin), who published short collections in prose and verse during the 1860s and 1870s. A more recent anthology,Oor mak o' toak: an anthology of Lakeland dialect poems, 1747-1946, was published from Carlisle in 1946 by the Lakeland Dialect Society.[11]
Barrow-in-Furness is unique within Cumbria and the local dialect tends to be moreLancashire orientated. LikeLiverpool this is down to the large numbers of settlers from various regions (including predominantlyScotland, elsewhere inEngland andIreland amongst other locations). In general theBarrovian dialect tends to drop certain letters (includingh andt) for example holiday would be pronounced as 'oliday, and with the drop of theh there is more emphasis on the lettero. The indefinite article used would be 'an'. 'A hospital' becomes an 'ospital. Another example is with the lettert where twenty is often pronounced twen'y (again an emphasis on then could occur) or twe'y (realised as /ˈtwɛ.ʔɪ/).
Books:
