Have you got an accent?

Some people are convinced that they don’t speak with a regional accent, that they speak normally and it’s people from other areas who have accents. In fact, we all have a speech pattern that is influenced by our family and our local groupings. Even what we used to call ‘Queen’s English’ is itself an accent. Regional differences may have become ‘fudged around the edges’ due to wider travel and national television, but regional accents persist and, what’s more, they fascinate me. 

I love the poetic lilt of Wales. Their accent always makes me think of the TV programme ‘Ivor the Engine’. I could listen all day to the Liverpool scouse accent. It reminds me of 1960s Beatles mania, my favourite era. I love the Scottish accent which, when spoken slowly has a gentle lilt, but when spoken rapidly is, to my ear, incomprehensible in a way that makes me giggle – apologies to any Scottish visitors to this blog. 

For a comparatively small nation there are a surprisingly large number of regional variations. The Yorkshire and Lancashire accent each have their own distinctive sound, as do Devon and Cornwall. But it’s the East Midlands accent that I know best. I’ve lived all my life in Leicester and, although my parents were cockneys, I never picked up their lingo. ‘Ey up me duck’ might sound like a cliché but I grew up hearing that kind of talk, especially on Leicester Market where Mum and Dad had a stall and I spent a lot of time wandering round.

I’ve written a piece called ‘Me an’ me sis’. It’s not quite accurate in that neither of us actually spoke to the tramps but it’s the kind of thing I believe they would have said had we spoken to them, and in my memory there was a tramp in every doorway in 1950s Leicester. I hope you can manage to read it because I’ve tried to portray the language as we spoke it when we were young. Just in case you’re confused, frit means frightened and oakie is an ice cream.

Me an’ me sis

It were 1955 or thereabouts. Our mam would send us up town, me an’ me sis, runnin’ errands... or gerrin’ us out from under ‘er feet more like. She’d wave a finger at us an’ she’d say, ‘Now don’t you talk to no tramps!’ Our mam were frit o’ tramps but we weren’t frit. Them tramps were ok, just down on their luck like Old Stinky wi’ wild ‘air and dirty coat, a belt made o’ string tied round ‘is waist. Sometimes we’d stop and ‘ave a chat wi’ ‘im and ‘e’d tell us ‘ow he once fought in the war, 'ow ‘e’d ‘ad a gun, 'ow ‘e’d seen men die, just like the cowboys at the Pictures. Our mam gev us money for stuff like potatoes off the market, King Edwards cause they were the best, and she’d give us an extra sixpence for an oakey from the oakey man. We’d share it, taking it in turns to ‘ave a lick except me sis’d ‘ave the crunchy bit at the bottom, cause she were older 'an me.

Is there a regional phrase typical of where you live?