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The Norfolk dialect, also known as Broad Norfolk, is a dialect spoken in the county of Norfolk in England which sits within the broader East Anglian English. While less widely and purely spoken than in its heyday, the dialect and vocabulary can still be heard across the county, with some variations. It employs distinctively unique pronunciations, especially of vowels; and consistent grammatical forms that differ markedly from standard English.

Norfolk dialect
Broad Norfolk
RegionNorfolk, England, United Kingdom
EthnicityEnglish people
Language family
Indo-European
  • Germanic
    • West Germanic
      • Ingvaeonic
        • Anglo-Frisian
          • Anglic
            • English
              • Southern English
                • East Anglian English
                  • Norfolk dialect
Writing system
English alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3
IETFen-u-sd-gbnfk
Location of Norfolk within the UK.

The Norfolk dialect is very different from the dialects on the other side of the Fens, such as in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. The Fens were traditionally an uninhabited area that was difficult to cross, so there was little dialect contact between the two sides of the Fens.[1]


Features



Accent



Principal characteristics

The Norfolk accent sounds very different from that of London and the Home Counties.[2] The main characteristics of the accent are set out below, usually with reference to the standard English accent known as Received Pronunciation (RP). Phonetic symbols (in square brackets) and phonemic symbols (in slant brackets) are used where they are needed to avoid ambiguity (brackets in IPA). Five characteristics are particularly important:

  1. The accent is generally non-rhotic, as is RP, so /r/ is only pronounced when a vowel follows it.
  2. Unlike many regional accents of England, Norfolk does not usually exhibit H-dropping. The phoneme /h/ is generally pronounced in 'hat', 'ahead' by most, though not all, Norfolk speakers.
  3. Norfolk speech has a distinctive rhythm due to some stressed vowels being longer than their equivalents in RP and some unstressed vowels being much shorter.
  4. The distinction between /ʊ/ and /ʌ/, often known as the foot–strut split[3] is developed; the quality of /ʌ/ ('strut') is more back and close than that of contemporary RP.[4] It can be described as a centralized mid back unrounded vowel [ɤ̞̈]. A similar vowel, though somewhat lower [ʌ̈] can be heard from older RP speakers.
  5. Yod-dropping is common between consonants and /uː,ʊ, u, ʊə/ resulting in pronunciations such as /muːzɪk/ for 'music' and /kuː/ for 'cue'.

Vowels


Consonants


Prosodic characteristics

There appears to be no agreed framework for describing the prosodic characteristics of different dialects (see Intonation). Writing in 1889, the phonetician Alexander John Ellis began his section on East Anglian speech with these comments:

Every one has heard of the [Norfolk] 'drant', or droning and drawling in speech, and the [Suffolk] 'whine,' but they are neither of them points which can be properly brought under consideration here, because intonation has been systematically neglected, as being impossible to symbolise satisfactorily, even in the rare cases where it could be studied.[14]

There does appear to be agreement that the Norfolk accent has a distinctive rhythm due to some stressed vowels being longer than their equivalents in RP and some unstressed vowels being much shorter.[11][15] Claims that Norfolk speech has intonation with a distinctive "lilt" lack robust empirical evidence.


Grammar



Phrases


Archaic combinations may be found, as in the double negative, "Oi hent nart gart none", i.e. "I haven't got any". Extra words may be inserted, e.g. "Do you go hoom", meaning "Go home". Also, "Go you arn alarng tergether", meaning, "Go along with you", where tergether (together) may be, seemingly redundant and used even in the singular case, (i.e. to a solitary person). The following exchange is a shibboleth for Broad Norfolk speakers.

Question : He yer fa got a dickey, bor? (Has your father got a donkey, boy?)
Required response : Yis, an' he want a fule ter roid 'im, will yew cum? (Yes, and he wants a fool to ride him, will you do it?)


Vocabulary



Dialect words and phrases


Accented pronunciation


Portrayal


Portrayal of the Norfolk dialect and accent in films and TV is often regarded[31] as poor. It is notoriously difficult for 'foreigners' to imitate, and even an actor of the distinction of Alan Bates did not adequately achieve an authentic Norfolk accent in his portrayal of the character Ted Burgess in the highly acclaimed film The Go-Between. The treatment of it in the television drama All the King's Men in 1999 in part prompted the foundation of the Friends of Norfolk Dialect (FOND), a group formed with the aim of preserving and promoting Broad Norfolk. The group campaigns for the recognition of Norfolk as a dialect, and for the teaching of "Norfolk" in schools. FOND aims to produce a digital archive of recordings of people speaking the dialect's traditional words. In July 2001 the group was awarded £4000 from the National Lottery in aid of recording equipment for this purpose.

Arnold Wesker's 1958 play Roots makes use of a "genuine Norfolk" dialect.[32]

During the 1960s, Anglia Television produced a soap opera called "Weavers Green" which used local characters making extensive use of Norfolk dialect. The programme was filmed at the "cul-de-sac" village of Heydon north of Reepham in mid Norfolk.

An example of the Norfolk accent and vocabulary can be heard in the songs by Allan Smethurst, aka The Singing Postman. Smethurst's undisputed Norfolk accent is well known from his releases of the 1960s, such as "Hev Yew Gotta Loight Bor?". The Boy John Letters of Sidney Grapes, which were originally published in the Eastern Daily Press, are another valid example of the Norfolk dialect. Beyond simply portrayers of speech and idiom however, Smethurst, and more especially Grapes, record their authentic understanding of mid-twentieth-century Norfolk village life. Grapes' characters, the Boy John, Aunt Agatha, Granfar, and Ole Missus W, perform a literary operetta celebrating down-to-earth ordinariness over bourgeois affectation and pretence; their values and enduring habits instantly familiar to Norfolk people.

Charles Dickens undoubtedly had some grasp of the Norfolk accent which he utilised in the speech of the Yarmouth fishermen, Ham and Daniel Peggoty in David Copperfield. Patricia Poussa analyses the speech of these characters in her article Dickens as Sociolinguist.[33] She makes connections between Scandinavian languages and the particular variant of Norfolk dialect spoken in the Flegg area around Great Yarmouth, a place of known Viking settlement. Significantly, the use of 'that' meaning 'it', described in the grammar section below, is used as an example of this apparent connection.

The publication in 2006 by Ethel George (with Carole and Michael Blackwell) of The Seventeenth Child provides a written record of spoken dialect, though in this case of a person brought up inside the city of Norwich. Ethel George was born in 1914, and in 2006 provided the Blackwells with extensive tape-recorded recollections of her childhood as the seventeenth offspring of a relatively poor Norwich family. Carole Blackwell has reproduced a highly literal written rendering of this, such that anyone familiar with the dialect can recognise an authentic Norfolk/Norwich voice speaking to them from the page.[34]

An erudite and comprehensive study of the dialect, by Norfolk speaker and Professor of Sociolinguistics, Peter Trudgill can be found in the latter's book 'The Norfolk Dialect' (2003), published as part of the 'Norfolk Origins' series by Poppyland Publishing, Cromer.


Notable speakers


Writers and entertainers

See also



Notes


  1. Trudgill, Peter; Fisiak, Jacek (2001). East Anglian English. Boydell & Brewer. p. 220. ISBN 9780859915717.
  2. Wells 1982, p. 337.
  3. Wells 1982, pp. 335–6.
  4. Lodge 2009, p. 168.
  5. Lodge 2009, pp. 167–8.
  6. Trudgill 2003, pp. 80–1.
  7. Wells 1982, pp. 238–242.
  8. Wells 1982, p. 339.
  9. Wells 1982, pp. 338–9.
  10. Trudgill 2003, p. 78.
  11. Wells 1982, p. 341.
  12. Trudgill 2003, p. 86.
  13. Trudgill 2003, p. 84.
  14. page 260 of On Early English Pronunciation, Part V. The existing phonology of English dialects compared with that of West Saxon speech, A.J. Ellis, Truebner & Co, London, 1889 https://archive.org/stream/onearlyenglishpr00elliuoft#page/260/mode/2up/search/whine
  15. Trudgill 2003, p. 82.
  16. "Speaking the Norfolk dialect: Advanced Level". Archived from the original on 19 December 2009. Retrieved 18 July 2009.
  17. see George 2006, p. 97.
  18. George 2006, p. 155.
  19. George 2006, p. 190.
  20. George 2006, p. 189.
  21. George 2006, p. 94.
  22. George 2006, p. 129.
  23. see George 2006, p. 75.
  24. "'Bootiful' dialect to be saved", BBC News, 3 July 2001
  25. see George 2006, p. 74.
  26. George 2006, p. 76.
  27. George 2006, p. 142.
  28. George 2006, p. 102.
  29. George 2006, p. 113.
  30. "donkey". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  31. See for example "Television Diary: A broad question of a proper accent", The Stage and Television Today, 28 February 1991
  32. "Review: Roots". BBC News. 21 May 2007. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
  33. Writing in Non-Standard English, eds. Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers and Paivi Pahta (Philadelphia 1999) pp. 27–44
  34. George 2006.
  35. Robert Southey The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson p205
  36. Martin Robson A History of the Royal Navy: Napoleonic Wars p34

References



Further reading



На других языках


- [en] Norfolk dialect

[ru] Норфолкский диалект английского языка

Норфолкский диалект, также известен как широкий норфолкский — диалект английского языка, на котором говорят в округе Норфолк на востоке Англии. Он характеризуется уникальным произношением, особенно гласных, и грамматическими формами, которые заметно отличаются от стандартного английского.



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