English language in Northern England

This article is about the varieties of English spoken in the northern part of England, and focuses on accents and dialects. For varieties spoken in other regions of the United Kingdom and Ireland, see English language § Britain and Ireland.

Northern England English
Northern English
RegionNorthern England
English alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottolognort3299
A map of England, with isoglosses showing how different regions pronounce "sun"
How the vowel sound in sun varies across England. The thick lines are isoglosses. Northern English dialects have not undergone the FOOT–STRUT split, distinguishing them from Southern English and Scottish dialects.[1]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The spoken English language in Northern England has been shaped by the region's history of settlement and migration, and today encompasses a group of related accents and dialects known as Northern England English or Northern English.[2][3]

The strongest influence on modern varieties of Northern English was the Northumbrian dialect of Middle English. Additional influences came from contact with Old Norse during the Viking Age; with Irish English following the Great Famine, particularly in Lancashire and the south of Yorkshire; and with Midlands dialects since the Industrial Revolution. All these produced new and distinctive styles of speech.[2]

Traditional dialects are associated with many of the historic counties of England, and include those of Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumbria, and Yorkshire. Following urbanisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, distinctive dialects arose in many urban centres in Northern England, with English spoken using a variety of distinctive pronunciations, terms, and expressions.[4]: 16–18  Northern English accents are often stigmatized,[5] and some native speakers modify their Northern speech characteristics in corporate and professional environments.[6][7]

There is some debate about how spoken varieties of English have impacted written English in Northern England;[8] furthermore, representing a dialect or accent in writing is not straightforward.[9]

  1. ^ Upton, Clive; Widdowson, John David Allison (2006). An Atlas of English Dialects. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-869274-4.
  2. ^ a b Robinson, Jonnie (1 April 2007). "Regional voices: the north-south divide". British Library. Archived from the original on 21 October 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
  3. ^ Filppula, Markku; Klemola, Juhani (27 August 2020). "External Influences in the History of English". External Influences in the History of English. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.284. ISBN 978-0-199-38465-5. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
  4. ^ Hickey, Raymond (2015). "The North of England and Northern English". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Researching Northern English. Varieties of English Around the World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 1–24. doi:10.1075/veaw.g55. ISBN 978-9-027-24915-9. LCCN 2015033286. OCLC 1020144729.
  5. ^ "New research reveals prejudice against people with Northern English accents". Northumbria University. 15 June 2022. Archived from the original on 12 November 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
  6. ^ Strycharczuk, Patrycja; López-Ibáñez, Manuel; Brown, Georgina; Leemann, Adrian (15 July 2020). "General Northern English. Exploring Regional Variation in the North of England With Machine Learning". Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. 3 (48): 48. doi:10.3389/frai.2020.00048. ISSN 2624-8212. PMC 7861339. PMID 33733165. p. 16: Our interest was in evaluating the hypothesis that dialect leveling in middle-class Northern English speakers has led to convergence toward a pan-regional General Northern English. We do find some evidence of such convergence, although some accents cluster in this respect (Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield), whereas others remain more distinct (Liverpool, Newcastle).
  7. ^ "Accents in Britain: General Northern English (GNE)". Accent Bias Britain. Queen Mary University of London. Archived from the original on 9 November 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024. General Northern English (GNE) functions as a 'regional standard' accent in the North of England, and is used there mainly by middle-class speakers. While it is still recognisably northern, speakers of GNE can be very hard to locate geographically more precisely than this.
  8. ^ Ruano-García, Javier; Sánchez-García, Pilar; F. García-Bermejo Giner, María (2015). "Northern English: Historical lexis and spelling". In Hickey, Raymond (ed.). Researching Northern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 131–157. doi:10.1075/veaw.g55.06rua. ISBN 978-9-027-24915-9. LCCN 2015033286. OCLC 1020144729.
  9. ^ Honeybone, Patrick; Maguire, Warren (2020). "Chapter 1: Introduction". In Honeybone, Patrick; Maguire, Warren (eds.). Dialect Writing and the North of England. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474442565.003.0001. ISBN 978-1-474-44256-5. OCLC 1117545825. p. 6: The issues of the 'accuracy' and 'authenticity' of the representation of a dialect in dialect writing are complicated ones to negotiate, and need to be seen in the light of what a writer intends for a text.