Mid Ulster English

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Green: Irish Gaelic,
Orange: Ulster Scots,
White: Mid Ulster English,
Light Blue: South Ulster English,
Light Yellow: Hiberno-English

Mid Ulster English is the dialect of most people in the traditional province of Ulster in Ireland, including those in the two main cities. It represents a cross-over area between Ulster Scots and Hiberno-English (southern Irish dialects). Varieties phonologically influenced by Scots, found in districts in counties Antrim, Londonderry, Donegal and Down, sound similar to Scottish English, and middle-class speakers from these areas in particular are sometimes mistaken by outsiders for Scots.

Despite its name, the term Mid-Ulster English is commonly used to describe the dialect of Ulster in general, not simply County Tyrone (where the geographical centre of the province lies). Before English came, all of Ireland, the Isle of Man and most of Scotland spoke Gaelic, and as there was a dialect continuum of understanding, in that dialects gradually changed from region to region. Ulster lay at the heart of this, and thus Ulster Irish is linguistically said to be midway between southern Irish Gaelic dialects and northern Scottish Gaelic dialects. This mirrors the modern day linguistic reality of the province, which now is almost entirely English-speaking. The accent of much of Cavan (in southwestern Ulster) is largely southern in character, and little distinction can be drawn between it and Leitrim, Roscommon or Sligo. Whilst the accent in north Antrim (in the northeast of the province) sounds much more akin to lowlands Scots. The rest of the province uses "Mid-Ulster English" in differing varieties usually distinguished with reference to the county of origin of the speaker.

The vocabulary of the dialect has been greatly influenced by Ulster Gaelic, but also profoundly by the languages/dialects of the 17th century settlers who came to Ireland from Britain; Scottish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and the West Midlands accent in England. The use of Scots and Irish Gaelic has diminished greatly since the 18th century, but both have impacted on the syntax, grammar and vocabulary of modern Mid-Ulster English.

[edit] Phonology

Main article: phonemic differentiation.

Phonetics are in IPA.

[edit] Vowels

• Vowels have phonemic vowel length, with one set of lexically long and one of lexically short phonemes. This may be variously influenced by the Scots system. It is considerably less phonemic than Received Pronunciation, and in vernacular Belfast speech vowel length may vary depending on stress.
• /a/ in after /w/, e.g. want, what, quality.
• /ɑ/ and /ɔː/ distinction in cot, body and caught, bawdy. Some varieties neutralise the distinction in long environments, e.g. don = dawn and pod = pawed.
• like, light, meat and beard also with /e/ [lek], [let], [met], [berd]
• /e/ may occur in such words as beat, decent, leave, Jesus, etc.
• Lagan Valley /ɛ/ before /k/ in take and make, etc.
• /ɛ/ before velars in sack, bag, and bang, etc.
• Merger of /a/ - /aː/ in all monosyllables, e.g. Sam and psalm [sɑːm].
• /i/ may occur before palatalized consonants, e.g. king, fish , condition, brick and sick.
• /ɑ/ may occur before /p/ and /t/ in tap and top, etc.
• /ʉ/ before /r/ in floor, whore, door, board, etc.
• Vowel opositions before /r/, e.g. /ɛrn/ earn, /fɔr/ for and /for/ four.

[edit] Consonants

• Rhoticity, that is, retention of /r/ in all positions.
• Palatalisation of /k, ɡ, ŋ/ in the environment of front vowels.
• /l/ not vocalised, except historically; generally "dark" as in Scottish English rather than "slender" as in Hiberno-English.
• /b/ for /p/ in words such as pepper.
• /d/ for /t/ in words such as butter.
• /ɡ/ for /k/ in words such as packet.
• /ʍ/ - /w/ contrast in which - witch. This feature is recessive, particularly in vernacular Belfast speech.
• Dental realisations of /t, d, n, l/ may occur through Irish influence before /r/, e.g. ladder, matter, dinner and pillar, etc.
• Elision of /d/ in hand [hɑːn], candle /'kanl/ and old [əʉl], etc.
• Elision of /b, ɡ/ in lamb [lam] and sing [sɪŋ], thimble, finger etc.
• /θ/ and /ð/ for th.
• /x/ for gh is retained in proper names and a few dialect words or pronunciations, e.g. lough, trough and sheugh.

[edit] Ulster English by region

[edit] Belfast and Environs

The urban Belfast dialect is not limited to the city itself but also takes in neighbouring urban areas in the local vicinity (such as Lisburn, Larne, Carrickfergus and Newtownards), as well as towns whose inhabitants originally came from Belfast (such as Craigavon). It is generally perceived as being associated with economically disadvantaged areas, and with youth culture. This however is not the dialect used in the media (even those outlets which are based in Belfast). Features of the accent include several vowel shifts, including one from /æ/ to /ɛ/ (/bɛɡ/ for "bag"). The accent is also arguably more nasal compared with the rest of Ulster^[1].

Other phonological features include the following:

• Long vowels are diphthongized in closed syllables, usually to /ɪə/. Hence "maid" is pronounced /mɛ:d/, while "made" is /mɪəd/.
• The /ɔ/ phoneme in "pot" and "paw" is better distinguished than other Ulster dialects, with short "o" often unrounded (i.e. "not" is /nat/, while "pawed" is /pɔ:d/ (see "Vowel Lengthening" above).
• The /au/ phoneme is typically pronounced /ɑʉ/. In strong dialects, the second vowel in this diphthong can become a rhotic consonant, so that "doubt" and "dart" are nearly merged to /dɑɺt/. ^[2]

Some of the vocabulary used among young people in Ulster, such as the word "spide", is of Belfast origin.

[edit] Ulster Scots Areas

This region is heavily influenced by the historic presence of Ulster Scots and covers areas such as northern and eastern County Antrim, the Ards Penninsula in County Down, the Lagan valley in County Down and northeastern County Londonderry. These districts are strongly Ulster Scots-influenced, and Scots pronunciation of words is often heard. People from here are often mistaken by outsiders as Scottish. This area includes the Glens of Antrim, where the last native Irish speakers of a dialect native to what is now Northern Ireland were to be found. It has been stated that, whilst in the written form, Gaelic of this area continued to use standardised Irish forms, the spoken dialect was inextricably Scottish, and was in effect no different to the Gaelic of Argyll, or Galloway (both in Scotland).

In the 1830s, Ordnance Survey memoirs came to the following conclusion about the dialect of the inhabitants of Carnmoney, east Antrim:

The results of a BBC sociolinguistic survey can be found here. ^[3]

[edit] Derry City and Surroundings

The accent of Derry City is actually that of western County Londonderry (including Dungiven and Limavady), northestern Donegal (including Inishowen), and northern Tyrone. There is a higher incidence of palatalisation after /k/ and its voiced equivalent /ɡ/^[4](eg. /kʲɑɹ/ "kyar" for "car"), perhaps through influence from Hiberno-English. However, the most noticeable difference is perhaps the intonation, which is unique to the Derry and Strabane area.

[edit] Mid-Ulster

The speech in counties southern and western Donegal, southern Tyrone, southern Londonderry, northern Fermanagh, north Armagh, northern Monaghan, southwestern Antrim and most of Down form a geographical band across the province from east to west. On the whole, these areas have much more in common with the Derry accent in the west and inner-city Belfast except in the east. This accent is often claimed as being the "standard" Northern Irish dialect as it is the most widely used, and it is the dialect of famous Irish writer Séamus Heaney.

[edit] Southern Ulster

Areas such as southern and western Armagh, central Monaghan, northern Cavan and southern Fermanagh is the hinterland of the larger Mid-Ulster dialect. The accent gradually shifts from village to village, forming part of the dialect continuum between areas to the North and South (as it once did in Gaelic). This accent is also used in north Louth (located in Leinster) and in north Leitrim (in Connacht). The last native Irish speakers in these areas were likewise midway between Ulster Gaelic and more southern dialects.

[edit] Hiberno-English

The Southern Irish dialect of English is to be heard in central and southern Cavan as well as southern Monaghan. Despite this, speakers of this dialect do still have traces of the Mid-Ulster dialect, which can be heard (albeit faintly) through certain words, and turns of phrase which would be more commonplace in Tyrone.

[edit] Vocabulary

Much non-standard vocabulary found in Mid Ulster English and many meanings of Standard English words peculiar to the dialect come from Scots and Irish. Some examples are shown in the table below. Many of these are also used in Hiberno-English, especially in the northern half of the island.

Furthermore, speakers of the dialect conjugate many verbs according to how they are formed in the most vernacular forms of Ulster Scots, e.g. driv instead of drove and driven as the past tense of drive, etc. (literary Scots druive, driven). Verbal syncretism is extremely widespread, as is the Northern subject rule, which has probably been reinforced by Irish, in which the verb-endings in any given tense remains the same in all persons (ie. you do, he does = déanann tú, déanann sé and also I am, you are, he is = Tá mé, tá tú tá sé).

[edit] See also

• Ulster Scots (linguistics)
• Hiberno-English
• Ulster Irish
• West Midlands dialect

[edit] References

1. ^  Here a film critic describes the nasal Belfast accent that American actress Gillian Anderson put on for the film The Mighty Celt as "nothing short of the real thing".
2. ^  From p 13 of Ulster-Scots: A Grammar of the Traditional Written and Spoken Language, by Robinson, Philip, published 1997.
3. ^  BBC Your Voice poll results
4. ^  Elmes, Simon Talking for Britain: A Journey Through the Nation's Dialects (2005) (ISBN 0-14-051562-3)
5. ^  See this lexicon of south-west Tyrone for examples
6. ^  See [5] for more information on the Belfast dialect.

[edit] External links

• A til Azed - a glossary of Mid-Ulster vocabulary at BBC Northern Ireland
• South West Tyrone Dialect