Black Country dialect

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Speech example

An example of a male speaker from West Bromwich (Frank Skinner).

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The Black Country dialect is spoken by many people in the Black Country, a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton.^[1] The traditional dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English^[2] and may be unintelligible for outsiders. This dialect is distinct from and maintains more traditional characteristics than the dialect of Birmingham, which has been more influenced by standard English due to having been urban for a longer time. It has also influenced the accents of the towns and villages in the counties to the north, south and west of the region.