West Country English
Native to	England
Region	West Country
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic West Saxon West Country English
Early forms	Old English West Saxon Old English Middle English Early Modern English
Dialects	Cornish Dorset
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
The official region ofSouth West England, approximately co-extensive with the areas where "West Country" varieties are spoken.
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.

Speech example

An example of a female with a mostly rhotic accent fromBristol (Sophie Anderson).

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Speech example

An example of a working-class female with a rhotic accent from Bristol (Julie Burchill).

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Speech example

An example of a male with a partially rhotic accent fromDevon (Martin Turner).

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West Country English is a group ofEnglishlanguage varieties andaccents used by much of the native population of theWest Country, an area found in the southwest of England.^[1]

The West Country is often defined as encompassing the officialregion ofSouth West England:Cornwall,Devon,Dorset,Somerset,Wiltshire,Bristol andGloucestershire. However, the exact northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define. In the adjacent counties ofHerefordshire,Worcestershire,Hampshire,Berkshire andOxfordshire, it is possible to encounter similar accents and indeed, much the same distinct dialect, albeit with some similarities to others in neighbouring regions.^{[citation needed]} Although natives of all these locations, especially in rural parts, often still have West Country influences in their speech, their increased mobility andurbanisation has meant that in the more populous of these counties the dialect itself, as opposed to the people's various localaccents, is becoming increasingly rare.

Academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectal forms. TheSurvey of English Dialects captured manners of speech across the South West region that were just as different from Standard English as any from the far North of England. There is some influence from theWelsh andCornish languages depending on the specific location.

In literary contexts, most of the usage has been in either poetry or dialogue, to add local colour. It has rarely been used for serious prose in recent times but was used much more extensively until the 19th century. West Country dialects are commonly represented as "Mummerset", a kind of catch-all southernrural accent invented for broadcasting.

• TheLate West Saxon dialect was the standard literary language of laterAnglo-Saxon England, and consequently the majority ofAnglo-Saxon literature, including the epic poemBeowulf and the poetic Biblical paraphraseJudith, is preserved in West Saxon dialect, though not all of it was originally written in West Saxon.
• In themedieval period,Sumer is icumen in (13th century) is a notable example of a work in Wessex dialect.
• TheCornish language (andBreton) descended from the ancientBritish language (Brythonic/Brittonic) that was spoken all over what is now the West Country until the West Saxons conquered and settled most of the area. The Cornish language throughout much of the High Middle Ages was not just the vernacular but the prestigious language in Cornwall among all classes, but was also spoken in large areas of Devon well after the Norman conquest. Cornish began to decline after the Late Middle Ages with English expanding westwards, and after thePrayer Book Rebellion, suffered terminal decline, dying out in the 18th century. (Its existence today is arevival).

• InKing Lear, Edgar speaks in the West Country dialect, as one of his various personae.
• BothSir Francis Drake andSir Walter Raleigh were noted at the Court ofQueen Elizabeth for their strong Devon accents.

• Tom Jones (1749) byHenry Fielding, set inSomerset, again mainly dialogue. Considered one of the first true English novels.^[2]

• William Barnes' Dorset dialect poetry (1801–1886).
• Walter Hawken Tregellas (1831–1894), author of many stories written in the local dialect of the county of Cornwall and a number of other works.
• Anthony Trollope's (1815–1882) series of booksChronicles of Barsetshire (1855–1867) also use some dialect in dialogue.
• The novels ofThomas Hardy (1840–1928) often use the dialect in dialogue, notablyTess of the D'Urbervilles (1891).
• Wiltshire Rhymes and Tales in the Wiltshire Dialect (1894) and other works byEdward Slow.^[3]
• TheGilbert and Sullivan operettaThe Sorcerer is set in the fictional village of Ploverleigh in Somerset. Some dialogue and song lyrics, especially for the chorus, are a phonetic approximation of West Country speech.The Pirates of Penzance andRuddigore are both set in Cornwall.
• John Davey, a farmer fromZennor, records the native Cornish languageCranken Rhyme.
• R. D. Blackmore'sLorna Doone. According to Blackmore, he relied on a "phonogogic" style for his characters' speech, emphasizing their accents and word formation.^[4] He expended great effort, in all of his novels, on his characters' dialogues and dialects, striving to recount realistically not only the ways, but also the tones and accents, in which thoughts and utterances were formed by the various sorts of people who lived in theExmoor district.

• 'Zummerzet speech' is discussed inThe Somerset Coast (1909) byCharles George Harper.^[5]
• Songs of the Soil by Percy G Stone, verse in Isle of Wight dialect, rendered phonetically, showing similarities with 'core' West Country dialects.^[6]
• A Glastonbury Romance (1933) byJohn Cowper Powys (1872–1963) contains dialogue written in imitation of the local Somerset dialect.
• Albert John Coles (1876–1965), writing asJan Stewer, wrote 3,000 short stories in the Devonshire dialect for local Devon newspapers, and published collections of them, as well as performing them widely on stage, film, and broadcast.
• David Foot (1929–2021) wrote often about the West Country.Footsteps from East Coker was about his childhood village and beyond.
• Laurie Lee's (1914–1997) works such asCider with Rosie (1959) portray a somewhat idealisedGloucestershire childhood in theFive Valleys area.
• John Fowles'sDaniel Martin features the title character's girlfriend's dialect.
• Dennis Potter'sBlue Remembered Hills is a television play about children in theForest of Dean during the Second World War. The dialogue is written in the style of the Forest dialect.
• The songs ofAdge Cutler (fromNailsea, died 1974) were famous for their West Country dialect, sung in a strongSomerset accent. His legacy lives on in the present dayWurzels and other so-called "Scrumpy and Western" artists.^[7]
• The folk groupThe Yetties perform songs composed in the dialect of Dorset (they originate fromYetminster).
• Andy Partridge, lead singer with the groupXTC, has a pronouncedWiltshire accent. Although more noticeable in his speech, his accent may also be heard in some of his singing.
• J. K. Rowling'sHarry Potterfantasy novels featureHagrid, a character who has a West Country accent.^[8]
• Berk, the central monster character fromThe Trap Door, is voiced by actor and comedianWillie Rushton.
• ArchaeologistPhil Harding from Channel 4'sTime Team speaks with a strong Wiltshire accent.

Until the 19th century, theWest Country and its dialects were largely protected from outside influences, due to its relative geographical isolation. While standard English derives from theOld EnglishMercian dialects, the West Country dialects derive from theWest Saxon dialect,^[which?] which formed the earliest English language standard.Thomas Spencer Baynes claimed in 1856 that, due to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in the Somerset dialect.^[9]

The dialects have their origins in the expansion of Old English into the west of modern-day England, where the kingdom ofWessex (West-Saxons) had been founded in the 6th century. As theKings of Wessex became more powerful they enlarged their kingdom westwards and north-westwards by taking territory from the British kingdoms in those districts. From Wessex, the Anglo-Saxons spread into the Celtic regions of present-dayDevon, Somerset and Gloucestershire, bringing their language with them. At a later period,Cornwall came underWessex influence, which appears to become more extensive after the time ofAthelstan in the 10th century. However, the spread of the English language took much longer here than elsewhere.

Outside Cornwall, it is believed that the various local dialects reflect the territories of various West Saxon tribes, who had their own dialects^[10]which fused together into a national language in the later Anglo-Saxon period.^[11]

As Lt-Col. J. A. Garton observed in 1971,^[12] traditional Somerset English has a venerable and respectable origin, and is not a mere "debasement" of Standard English:

The dialect is not, as some people suppose, English spoken in a slovenly and ignorant way. It is the remains of a language—the court language ofKing Alfred. Many words, thought to be wrongly pronounced by the countryman, are actually correct, and it is the accepted pronunciation which is wrong. English pronounces W-A-R-M worm, and W-O-R-M wyrm; in the dialect W-A-R-M is pronounced as it is spelt, Anglo-Saxon W-E-A-R-M. The Anglo-Saxon for worm is W-Y-R-M. Polite English pronounces W-A-S-P wosp; the Anglo-Saxon word is W-O-P-S and a Somerset man still says WOPSE. The verb To Be is used in the old form, I be, Thee bist, He be, We be, Thee 'rt, They be. 'Had I known I wouldn't have gone', is 'If I'd a-know'd I 'ooden never a-went'; 'A' is the old way of denoting the past participle, and went is from the verb to wend (Anglo-Saxon wendan).

In some cases, many of these forms are closer tomodern Saxon (commonly called Low German/Low Saxon) than Standard British English is, e.g.

The use of masculine and sometimes feminine, rather than neuter, pronouns with non-animate referents also parallels Low German, which unlike English retains grammatical genders. The pronunciation of "s" as "z" is also similar to Low German. However,recent research proposes that some syntactical features of English, including the unique forms of the verbto be, originate rather with theBrythonic languages. (SeeCeltic language influence below.)

In more recent times, West Country dialects have been treated with some derision, which has led many local speakers to abandon them or water them down.^[13] In particular it is British comedy which has brought them to the fore outside their native regions, and paradoxically groups such asThe Wurzels, a comic North Somerset/Bristol band from whom the termScrumpy and Western music originated, have both popularised and made fun of them simultaneously. In an unusual regional breakout, the Wurzels' song "The Combine Harvester" reached the top of theUK charts in 1976, where it did nothing to dispel the "simple farmer" stereotype ofSomerset and West Country folk. It and all their songs are sung entirely in a local version of the dialect, which is somewhat exaggerated and distorted.^[14] Some words used aren't even typical of the local dialect. For instance, the word "nowt" is used in the song "Threshing Machine". This word is generally used in more northern parts of England, with the West Country equivalent being "nawt".

Although the English language gradually spread intoCornwall after approximately the 13th century, a complete language shift to English took centuries more. The frontier between English in the east and Cornish in the west shifted markedly in the county between 1300 and 1750 (see figure).

During thePrayer Book Rebellion of 1549, which centred onDevon andCornwall, many of the Cornish objected to theBook of Common Prayer, on the basis that many Cornish could not speak English. Cornish probably ceased to be spoken as a community language sometime around 1780, with the last monoglot Cornish speaker believed to beChesten Marchant, who died in 1676 atGwithian (Dolly Pentreath was bilingual). However, some people retained a fragmented knowledge and some words were adopted by dialect(s) in Cornwall.

In recent years, the traffic has reversed, with the revivedCornish language reclaiming Cornish words that had been preserved in the local dialect into its lexicon, and also (especially "Revived Late Cornish") borrowing other dialect words. However, there has been some controversy over whether all of these words are of native origin, as opposed to imported from parts of England, or theWelsh Marches. Some modern-day revived Cornish speakers have been known to use Cornish words within an English sentence, and even those who are not speakers of the language sometimes use words from the language in names.^[15]

Brythonic languages have also had a long-term influence on the West Country dialects beyond Cornwall, both as a substrate (certain West Country dialect words and possibly grammatical features) and languages of contact. Recent research on the roots of English proposes that the extent of Brythonic syntactic influence onOld English andMiddle English may have been underestimated, specifically citing the preponderance of forms of the verbsto be andto do in South West England and their grammatical similarity to theWelsh andCornish forms as opposed to the forms in other Germanic languages.^[16]

TheCornish dialect, or Anglo-Cornish (to avoid confusion with theCornish language), has the most substantial Celtic language influence because many western parts were non-English speaking even into the early modern period. In places such asMousehole,Newlyn andSt Ives, fragments of Cornish survived in English even into the 20th century, e.g. some numerals (especially for counting fish) and the Lord's Prayer were noted by W. D. Watson in 1925,^[17] Edwin Norris collected the Creed in 1860,^[17] and J. H. Nankivel also recorded numerals in 1865.^[17] The dialect ofWest Penwith is particularly distinctive, especially in terms of grammar.^[vague] This is most likely due to the late decay of the Cornish language in this area. In Cornwall the following places were included in theSurvey of English Dialects:Altarnun,Egloshayle,Gwinear,Kilkhampton,Mullion,St Buryan, andSt Ewe.

In other areas, Celtic vocabulary is less common; some possible examples of Brythonic words surviving in the Devon dialect include:

• Goco — A bluebell
• Jonnick — Pleasant, agreeable

• West Country accents arerhotic like mostCanadian,American,Irish andScottish accents, meaning that the historical loss of syllable-final /r/ did not take place, in contrast to non-rhotic accents likeReceived Pronunciation. Often, this/r/ is specifically realised as theretroflex approximant[ɻ],^[18] which is typically lengthened at the ends of words. This rhoticity can be attributed to the relative isolation of theSouth West from the rest ofEngland.^[19] Rhoticity appears to be declining in bothreal andapparent time in some areas of the West Country, for exampleDorset.^[20]
• /aɪ/, as inguide orlife, more precisely approaches[ɒɪ],[ɑɪ], or[əɪ].^[21][18]
• /aʊ/, as inhouse orcow, more precisely approaches[æy] or[ɐʏ~ɐʊ],^[18] with even very front and unrounded variants such as[ɛɪ].^[21]
• Word-final "-ing"/ɪŋ/ in polysyllabic words is typically realised as[ɪn].
• /æ/, as intrap orcat, is often open[æ~a], the more open variant is fairly common in urban areas but especially common in rural areas.^[21]
  • TheTRAP–BATH split associated withLondon English may not exist for some speakers or may exist marginally based simply on a length difference. In other words, some may not have any contrast between/æ/ and/ɑː/, for example makingpalm andPamhomophones (though some pronounce the/l/ inpalm).^[22] For some West Country speakers, the vowel is even the same in theTRAP,BATH,PALM, andSTART word sets:[a].^[21] The split's "bath" vowel (appearing as the letter "a" in such other words asgrass,ask,path, etc.) can also be represented by the sounds[æː] or[aː] in different parts of the West Country (RP has[ɑː] in such words); the isoglosses in theLinguistic Atlas of England are not straightforward cases of clear borders. Short vowels have also been reported, e.g.,[a].^[21][23]
• h-dropping: initial/h/ can often be omitted so "hair" and "air" become homophones. This is common in working-class speech in most parts of England.
• t-glottalisation: use of the glottal stop[ʔ] as an allophone of/t/, generally when in any syllable-final position.
• The word-final letter "y" is pronounced[ei] or[ɪi];^[18] for example:party[ˈpʰäɻʔei],silly[ˈsɪlei] etc.
• TheSurvey of English Dialects found that Cornwall retained some older features of speech that are now considered "Northern" in England. For example, a close/ʊ/ insuck, but, cup, etc. and sometimes a short/a/ in words such asaunt.
• Initial fricative consonants can be voiced, particularly in more traditional and older speakers, so that "s" is pronounced asStandard English "z" and "f" asStandard English "v".^[18] This feature is now exceedingly rare.^[21]
• In words containing "r" before a vowel, there is frequentmetathesis – "gurt" (great), "Burdgwater" (Bridgwater) and "chillurn" (children)
• "l" sounds are vocalised (pronounced like "w") when not followed by a vowel, so "all old people" is[uːɫɔʊbpʰiːpʰu].
  • As a result, thefool-fall merger is common, with both pronounced/fuː(l)/.
• InBristol, a terminal "a" can be realised as the sound[ɔː] – e.g.cinema as "cinemaw" andAmerica as "Americaw" – which is often perceived by non-Bristolians to be an intrusive "l", known as the"Bristol l".^[24] Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle and Normal – i.e.: Eva, Ida, and Norma. The nameBristol itself (originallyBridgestowe orBristow) is often claimed to have originated from this local pronunciation, though this is contested.^[25]

For a list of words relating to West Country English, see theWest Country English category of words inWiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Some of the vocabulary used relates to English words of a bygone era, e.g. the verb "to hark" (as in "'ark a'ee"), "thee" (often abbreviated to "'ee"), the increased use of the infinitive form of the verb "to be" etc.

Some of these terms are obsolete, but some are in current use.

Some dialect words now appear mainly, or solely, in place names, such as "batch" (North Somerset, = hill but more commonly applied to Coalmine spoil heaps e.g. Camerton batch, Farrington batch, Braysdown batch), "tyning", "hoe" (a bay). The suffix "-coombe" is quite commonly used in West Country place names (not so much in Cornwall), and means "valley".

• The second person singularthee (orye) andthou forms used,thee oftencontracted to 'ee.
• Bist may be used instead ofare for the second person, e.g.:how bist? ("how are you?") This has its origins in theOld English – orAnglo-Saxon – language; compare the modern GermanWie bist du? (a literal translation of "How are you?", not used as a greeting).
• Use of masculine (rather than neuter) pronouns with non-animate referents, e.g.:put'ee over there ("put it over there") and'e's a nice scarf ("That's a nice scarf").
• Ana- prefix may be used to denote the past participle;a-went ("gone").
• Use ofthey in conjunction with plural nouns, where Standard English demandsthose e.g.:They shoes are mine ("Those shoes are mine" / "They are mine"). This is also used inModern Scots but differentiatedthae^[28] meaning those andthay the plural ofhe,sheandit, both from the Anglo-Saxonþā 'they/those', the plural form ofsē 'he/that',sēo 'she/that' andþæt 'it/that'.
• In other areas,be may be used exclusively in the present tense, often in the present continuous;Where be you going to? ("Where are you going?")
• The use ofto to denote location.Where's that to? ("Where's that [at]?"). This is something that can still be heard often, unlike many other characteristics. This former usage is common toNewfoundland English, where many of the island's modern-day descendants have West Country origins — particularly Bristol — as a result of the 17th–19th century migratory fishery.
• Use of the past tensewrit where Standard English useswrote. e.g.:I writ a letter ("I wrote a letter").
• Nominative pronouns as indirect objects. For instance,Don't tell I, tell'ee! ("Don't tell me, tell him!"), "'ey give I fifty quid and I zay no, giv'ee to charity inztead" ("They gave me £50 and I said no, give it to charity instead"). When in casual Standard English theoblique case is used, in the West Country dialect the object of many a verb takes thenominative case.

Owing to the West Country's agricultural history, the West Country accent has for centuries been associated with farming, and consequently with a lack of education and rustic simplicity. This can be seen in literature as early as the 18th century, for instance inRichard Brinsley Sheridan's playThe Rivals, set in the Somerset city ofBath.

As more and more of the English population moved into towns and cities during the 20th century, non-regional,Standard English accents increasingly became a marker of personal social mobility. Universal primary education was also an important factor as it made it possible for some to move out of their rural environments into situations where other modes of speech were current.

A West Country accent continues to be a reason for denigration and stereotype:^[29]

The people of the South West have long endured the cultural stereotype of 'ooh arr'ing carrot-crunching yokels, and Bristol in particular has fought hard to shake this image off

In the early part of the twentieth century, the journalist and writer Albert John Coles used the pseudonymJan Stewer (a character from the folk songWidecombe Fair) to pen a long-running series of humorous articles and correspondences in Devon dialect for theWestern Morning News. These now preserve a record of the dialect as recalled with affection in the period.^[30] The tales perpetuate – albeit sympathetically – the rustic uneducatedstereotype as the protagonist experiences the modern world.

There is a popular prejudice that stereotypes speakers as unsophisticated and even backward, due possibly to the deliberate and lengthened nature of the accent. This can work to the West Country speaker's advantage, however: recent studies of how trustworthy Britons find their fellows based on their regional accents put the West Country accent high up, under southernScottish English but a long way aboveCockney andScouse. Recent polls put the West Country accent as third and fifth most attractive in the British Isles respectively.^[31][32]

The West Country accent is probably most represented in film as "pirate speech" – that cartoon-like "Ooh arr, me 'earties! Sploice the mainbrace!" way of talking is very similar.^[33] This may be a result of the strong (both legal and outlawed)seafaring andfisherman tradition of the West Country. Edward Teach (Blackbeard) was a native of Bristol,^[34] andprivateer and English hero SirFrancis Drake hailed fromTavistock in Devon.Gilbert and Sullivan'soperettaThe Pirates of Penzance may also have added to the association. West Country nativeRobert Newton's performance in the 1950Disney filmTreasure Island is credited with popularising the stereotypical West Country "pirate voice".^[33][35] Newton's strong West Country accent also featured inBlackbeard the Pirate (1952).^[33]

• Bristolian dialect
• Cornish dialect
• Cornish language
• Dorset dialect
• History of the English language
• International Talk Like a Pirate Day
• Shakespeare In Original Pronunciation
• Janner
• Jan Stewer
• Late West Saxon
• List of Cornish dialect words
• Mummerset
• Newfoundland English
• South West England

• M. A. Courtney; T. Q. Couch:Glossary of Words in Use in Cornwall. West Cornwall, by M. A. Courtney; East Cornwall, by T. Q. Couch. London: published for the English Dialect Society, by Trübner & Co., 1880
• John Kjederqvist: "The Dialect of Pewsey (Wiltshire)",Transactions of the Philological Society 1903–1906
• Etsko Kruisinga:A Grammar of the Dialect of West Somerset, Bonn, 1905
• Clement Marten:The Devonshire Dialect, Exeter, 1974
• Clement Marten:Flibberts and Skriddicks: Stories and Poems in the Devon Dialect, Exeter, 1983
• Mrs. Palmer:A Devonshire Dialogue In Four Parts. To Which is added a Glossary for the most part by the late Rev. John Phillips. Edited by Mrs. Gwatkin. London and Plymouth, 1839.
• "A Lady":Mary Palmer:A Dialogue in the Devonshire Dialect (in three parts) by A Lady to which is added a Glossary by J. F. Palmer, London & Exeter, 1837
• Norman Rogers:Wessex Dialect, Bradford-on-Avon, 1979
• Bertil Widén:Studies in the Dorset Dialect, Lund, 1949

• Sounds Familiar? – Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
• Bristol
  • Bristol Dialect/Glossary. Archived fromthe original on 24 March 2016.
• Cornwall
  • Cornish Dialect Dictionary
  • Cornish Provincial Words, by "Uncle Jan Trenoodle", 1845?
  • Poetry from South West England, by "Les Merton", 2006
• Devon
  • A Devon Dialect Vocabulary
  • BBC Devon: Dialect (with pronunciation)
• Somerset
  • "A Somerset Dialect".{{cite web}}:|archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  • Somerset voices
  • Wadham Pigott Williams,A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire, Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1873
• Wessex
  • 1902 Wessex Dialect Glossary
  • Dialect Syntax in the South West of England (pdf)

• English language in England
• Languages of the United Kingdom
• Languages attested from the 6th century
• West Country

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