Talk:West Midlands English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is requested that a map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality. Wikipedians in England may be able to help!

See Talk:Midlands English for previous discussion

Er... The Black Country accent is not "Yam Yam". Supposedly, that is given from the way Brummies say "You are" (Which is changed to You am, and further curtailed to Y'am). The Black Country accent's version is a shortened version of "Yow am", more specifically "Yow'm" Worley-d 18:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed These Statements

I had to remove these statements from the article:

"Midlands English is much more naturalistic, especially the Black Country variety which has frozen in time."

"Naturalistic" is completely meaningless in a linguistic context. The archaic quality has been previously described in the article, and it's not actually "frozen in time" just more conservative.

"Some New World dialects borrow some of the Old World characteristics of this dialect."

This is a fascinating subject but needs an explanation of what dialects (with references).

[edit] Removed This Sociological Content

I removed these two paragraphs as they are dealing with sociological subject matter. These points should appear in the Black Country and Birmingham articles instead.

This article should be just on the linguistic characteristics of West Midlands English.

"Inhabitants are proud to be known as Black Country "folk" and resist hints at any relationship to people living in Birmingham, calling Birmingham "Brum-a-jum" (Birmingham's colloquial name is Brummagem). Residents of Birmingham (Brummies) meanwhile often refer to their Black Country neighbours as "Yam Yams", a reference to the use of "Yow am" instead of "You are".

"This often good natured exchange has been reciprocated in latter years with the Brummie "Yo Am" for "You Are" being used as a countermeasure with the jocular retort "YoYo" used when referring to the Brummies"

'