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15 July 2009
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The Voices Recordings


About this interview
Two generations The Williams family, Garston, Merseyside discuss and debate swearing, family and local accents.

Interviewees:
Lynnie , John , Chamonix, Megan,

Click on names to find out more about the participants.

Relationship of interviewees: Husband, wife, daughter and daughter's friend

Where: Garston, Liverpool

Language of interview: English
About this interview
Voice clip 2
The family discuss the different areas of Liverpool and the local prejudices about them. Accents vary a lot even within the city, and they mimick different accents to demonstrate this.



Voice clip 3
A family discussion about bad language, and what linguists call 'gatekeeping' - what's acceptable language from the children, and words their parents tell them not to use.


This clip contains language which some may find offensive.


More clips from this interview

Chamonix, Student
Chamonix remembers singing for her school and being told by a teacher not to talk in her ordinary accent as it would lose marks for the school.
Interview's notes

Long description of interview: The group includes three members of the Williams family - husband and wife John and Lynnie and daughter Chamonix - and Chamonix's school friend Megan Roberts, at the Williams house in Garston. They warm to the discussion as the interview goes on, and the two generations have very different opinions about subjects such as swearing, family and local accents. All of them have a lot to say about how their accent influences people and how they may change their speech in different company.

Recorded by: Jodie Campbell, Radio Merseyside

Date of interview: 2005/03/01
Interview's notes

Jonnie Robinson, Curator, English accents and dialects, British Library Sound Archive, writes:


Scouse - the accent of the city of Liverpool is instantly recognisable and there are several features we immediately associate with speakers from Merseyside. Listen, for instance, to the characteristic sound these speakers use in the words like, take, took, walking, walked and talking. Also typical of many speakers on Merseyside is the use of a weak vowel in the final syllable of walking, talking and going and the distinctive pronunciation here of the word nothing. Of particular interest, though, is the vowel sound these speakers use on the words home, spoke, going and know - a pronunciation that's characteristic of female speech on Merseyside and elsewhere in the north-west, but not generally associated with male speakers with a strong localised accent.

Megan and Chamonix also use a number of non-standard grammatical features here. The statements they haven't took our name and we just stopped and was talking to the man and he give us all leaflets are examples of non-standard verbal constructions. The use of took here as a past participle in preference to Standard English taken is quite common among speakers in the north of England. The past tense was unmarked for person and the use of give unmarked for tense - Standard English would require were and gave here respectively - is a feature of popular speech throughout the UK and not necessarily regionally specific, just as the use of multiple negation in the statement we haven't done nothing is extremely widespread in a number of English dialects worldwide. The innovative use of a second person plural pronoun, yous, however, in the statement where are yous going is an increasingly common feature of the dialect of speakers on Merseyside and in the north-east of England and has long been associated with the English spoken in Scotland and Ireland.

Finally many people in Liverpool and perhaps elsewhere, too, will recognise the term busy to refer to a policeman, possibly originally an abbreviation of the term busy-body.


   

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