The English West Midlands: phonology

Introduction

Today, the term West Midlands (WM) is generally used to refer to the conurbation that includes Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Walsall, West Bromwich and Coventry, and can also be used to refer to speech associated with the modern urban area, although the historical Middle English WM dialect covered a much wider area. Within the modern urban area at least two main dialect types can be identified: those of Birmingham, and those of the Black Country to the west.

The Black Country dialect – currently the focus of a research project, the Black Country Dialect Project (BCDP) at the University of Wolverhampton – is often considered to be particularly distinctive. Wells (1982: 364) explains that the variety is linguistically notable for its retention of traditional dialect forms such as have disappeared from the rest of the Midlands. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 25) define the Black Country dialect as “a working class dialect spoken in the South Staffordshire area of the English Midlands”, and similarly note that it has “retained many of its distinctive lexico-grammatical features” (Chinn and Thorne 2001: 30). At the present state of BCDP research, it is as yet unclear how many of these forms may survive in widespread use, in the Black Country at least.

It is also unclear whether and if so to what degree the dialect of the large but geographically distinct city of Coventry may differ from other West Midlands varieties. Therefore, while some data are also available from Cannock (Heath 1980), which is technically just outside the West Midlands administrative area, the term West Midlands will be taken to refer to Birmingham and the wider Black Country, unless explicitly stated otherwise. The wider Black Country here is taken to include Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.

According to Todd and Ellis (1992b), the Midland group of Middle English (ME) dialects can be considered to have had clearly defined boundaries: north of the Thames, south of a line from the rivers Humber to Lune, and with the Pennines subdividing the area into East and West Midlands sub-areas. Brook (1972: 68) maintains that the WM dialect of ME was intermediate between the East Midlands and South-Western dialects, with its southern part most resembling the latter. During the Old English period the region had been part of the Mercian dialect area, but following the Danish wars it came under the West-Saxon-speaking kingdom of Wessex, and it retained a closer connection with Wessex than the South-west, even after the unification of England. The result is that the ME dialect resembles the East Midlands in terms of early dialect characteristics, and the South-west in terms of later ones.

Todd and Ellis (1992b) say some dialectologists consider the ME dialect boundaries as still significant in contemporary dialect research, but others maintain that the post-industrial urban dialects of cities like Birmingham and Wolverhampton now exert greater influence than those of rural areas.

Chinn and Thorne (2001) suggest that Birmingham was clearly within the ME West Midlands dialect area: “Beginning as a place of some importance in 1166 when it first had a market, it was a town that was clearly embedded within its rural hinterland. For centuries it drew most of its people from the surrounding villages” (Chinn and Thorne 2001: 14–19). They cite evidence regarding the origins of 700 people who came to live in Birmingham between 1686 and 1726, to the effect that more than 90% came from within 20 miles of Birmingham; of these, more than 200 had migrated from within Warwickshire and a similar number from Staffordshire; almost 100 came from Worcestershire and some 40 from Shropshire. Of the remainder, about 60 came cumulatively from Leicester, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Middlesex, and another 50 from other parts of Britain. For Chinn and Thorne, it is not surprising that Birmingham speech should have evolved from the dialect of north Warwickshire, south Staffordshire and north-eastern Worcestershire – essentially encompassing the ME West Mercian dialect area. In the 19th century Birmingham attracted people from further afield (including Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy and the Jewish pale of settlement in Tsarist Russia), but Chinn and Thorne (2001: 19) maintain that “local migrants continued to form the great majority of newcomers, and as late as 1951, 71% of Birmingham’s citizens had been born in Warwickshire”.

Biddulph (1986: 1) similarly suggests that the conurbation of the Black Country was populated largely from the surrounding farming counties of Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Shropshire.

The Black Country is a relatively small area, centring on the major towns of Dudley and Walsall, and probably including Wolverhampton, plus surrounding areas. One reason given for the distinctiveness of the Black Country dialect is its relative geographical isolation. The local area is essentially an 800ft plateau without a major river or Roman road passing through it, so it was only when the Industrial Revolution got into full swing in the 19^th century that the area ceased to be relatively isolated from other developments in the country. During the Industrial Revolution, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Walsall grew into large manufacturing towns, separated from the centre of the plateau by belts of open land which provided raw materials – iron and coal – for the heavy industries of the towns. Today’s urban areas were originally small villages which developed with the growing industries, and with the exception of Birmingham these still have relatively small populations. Again with the exception of Birmingham, development in the region was relatively slow and the population remained relatively stable. Until the 1960s, there was no sudden influx of workers, immigrant or otherwise, who might have significantly altered the character of the area. Similarly, there was little out-migration, as the Black Country generally remained prosperous. As a result, there was little alteration in the population, and communities remained close-knit and generally introspective. Consequently, although the dialect is usually classed synchronically as an urban dialect, it has strong links with a recent, rural past and with traditional dialects. Indeed, the Survey of English Dialects (SED, Orton 1962-1971), a project which concentrates on the traditional dialect typical of rural areas, nevertheless includes the Black Country village of Himley among the Staffordshire localities covered. Data sources comprise:

(1) For the WM dialect generally:

a. Ongoing work for the BCDP. The corpus used here comprises mainly younger and young middle-class speakers, especially from the Black Country;

b. Wells (1982);

c. Lass (1987);

d. Hughes and Trudgill (1996);

e. Todd and Ellis (1992a, 1992b);

f. Material in Chinn and Thorne (2001).

(2) For Black Country specifically:

a. Mathisen (1999): the most extensive study accessed to date. Based on 30 hours of data from 57 informants, collected in Sandwell (Wednesbury, Tipton and Rowley Regis), 1984;

b. Painter (1963): Data from three speakers in Rowley Regis, analysed in detail.. Note that Painter analyses Black Country in terms of a dialect-specific phonemic system; hence, his citations include both phonemic and phonetic forms;

c. SED traditional dialect data for Himley (south Staffordshire), from non-mobile older rural males, collected in the 1960s;

d. Biddulph (1986): a semi-professional analysis of the Black Country dialect writing material in Fletcher (1975). This includes an attempt at phonological analysis based on an interpretation of Fletcher’s respelling rules, combined with Birmingham-born Biddulph’s own claimed insights into WM accents. The particular variety represented by Fletcher is intended to be that of Bilston;

e. Dialect writing material from the Black Country Bugle, the Walsall Observe, Chitham (1972), Parsons (1977), Solomon (2000), and various websites on the internet.

(3) For Cannock (south Staffordshire): Heath (1980). Cannock is some nine miles north-east of Wolverhampton, eight miles north-west of Walsall, and according to Heath (1980: 1) “just outside the Black Country”.

(4) For Middle English dialects of the West Midlands, Kristensson (1987; analysis based on place-name data).

(5) For etymological analyses: Oxford English Dictionarly (OED).

Caution has to be exercised with the dialect writing material, since it may contain inaccuracies, sometimes due to archaizing; that is, such forms often reflect canonical forms for dialect writers, which may in turn reflect traditional dialect forms that are now highly recessive or obsolete in terms of contemporary usage. Some distinctive forms, which may indeed be obsolete or recessive, act fairly clearly as identity markers within the Black Country at least: e.g.  dead,  laugh, [saft] soft ‘stupid’,  years.