Category Archives: Dialects

19th century sound change in Kent: PRICE

Posted on 2016/11/19 by swphonetics

The distribution of PRICE pronunciations by the seven informants. All but one had acquired the new pronunciation [ai] (N). The informant from Appledore in the south east still had the earlier pronunciation [ʌi] (O). The earlier 19th century popular pronunciation … Continue reading →

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19th century sound change in Kent: FACE

Posted on 2016/11/16 by swphonetics

Figure 1. The distribution of FACE pronunciations. All the informants had acquired the new [ɛi]-like FACE diphthong, indicating this is the earliest of the 19th century sound changes in Kent. All the informants have [ɛi], a new sound change that … Continue reading →

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19th century sound change in Kent

Posted on 2016/11/15 by swphonetics

This page traces ten sound changes that completely changed the character of the regional accent spoken in 19th century Kent Rural locations and years of birth of the seven SED Kentish informants and H G Wells (each in bold italics), … Continue reading →

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Kent Accent in the 19th Century: BATH

Posted on 2015/07/24 by swphonetics

Throughout the 19th century, and presumably back to the time of the TRAP-BATH split, the timbre of the BATH vowel in Kent had been a bright [aː]-like quality, roughly in the vacant central open position on an IPA vowel diagram … Continue reading →

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Halfway to Estuary English: H G Wells

Posted on 2015/02/10 by swphonetics

Biologist, author, journalist, H. G. Wells was born in Bromley (Kent, U.K.) in 1866, the youngest son of a professional cricketer and a domestic servant. I’d half expected to hear an example of Estuary English partially modified towards RP, but … Continue reading →

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X-ray movie: uvular [ʀ]

Posted on 2014/12/31 by swphonetics

A short sequence from an X-ray motion film: Uvular [yʀa] This is a short sequence where a speaker of Southern Swedish is saying [ˈyʀa], broken out from a longer sequence, /ˈfy:ra/, [ˈfəyʀa], fyra, ‘four’. This example is illustrated with every … Continue reading →

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Said about Estuary English

Posted on 2014/10/27 by swphonetics

This turned up the other day Estuary English – the pride of Kent Susie Rushton’s Notebook: The Independent, Tuesday 7 June 2011 http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/columnists/susie-rushton-estuary-english-ndash-the-pride-of-kent-2293831.html “Let me make my own declamation of regional pride. Estuary is also the accent of people who, … Continue reading →

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Grandfather and Martha’s Vineyard

Posted on 2014/10/17 by swphonetics

xxx Map of Martha’s Vineyard. Source: Labov (1963) Martha’s Vineyard is an island off the Massachusetts coast SW of Cape Cod, and a popular resort for Bostonians. The permanent population are famous in various ways. Until not so very long … Continue reading →

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Remembering Gösta Bruce

Posted on 2014/06/03 by swphonetics

An international Symposium on Prosody to commemorate the life and work of the late Gösta Bruce (1947-2010) is being held at the Lund University Centre for Language and Literature on 2-3 June, 2014. The symposium web page is here. Photo: … Continue reading →

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Southern British English 3

Posted on 2014/03/03 by swphonetics

Home Counties SBE vowel formants This page continues from Part 2, that introduced a spectrographic study of the monophthong vowels of five speakers of RP. A similar study for five speakers of home counties SBE is presented now. The home … Continue reading →

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