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Sylvia Bailey
Born: 31 December 1926
Lives: Bonymaen, Swansea
Time lived in area: All my life
Occupation: Retired sales assistant
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The group focuses on the word 'tidy' for meaning good and how the invention of electricity was greeted by one Welsh grandmother.
Language of interview: English
Duration: 01:10 (mins/secs)
The participants were asked to describe how they spoke in their own words.
How do you describe your accent: "South Wales Welsh."
Have there been other influences on the way you speak: Not Given
Do you have skills in languages other than English?: Yes
Other languages: Welsh
BETTY: Something that I find is amusing, and I still find myself using it, if something is, if somebody tells you something and it's like a good thing, your happy and you turn round and you say, tidy. ALL: Mmm, yes. NATALIE: Or the tidy like. SYLVIA: My Grandmother, um, was, was came into the house when there was no electric. and when we had electric put in the house then, she always said, 'Put the electrif out, electrif, put the electrif out.' Because she couldn't say electric, and she was thinking of the candle and the paraffin lamps that we used to have then you see, put the electrif out, she used to say, to my mother. And my mother used to say it's only a switch on the wall, I'm not touching that switch, she said - it's dangerous, she said. I'm not touching that and when my mother'd come back in the night then after she'd been out for the evening she'd be sitting in the dark. She wouldn't put the light on, she'd be frightened. No, I'm not touching that, she used to say, yeah, yeah.
Jonnie Robinson, Curator, English accents and dialects, British Library Sound Archive, writes
A characteristic feature of many speakers of Welsh English is the absence in certain words of what linguists call yod - the sound at the start of a word or between the consonant and vowel sound in words such as huge and few. Listen carefully to the way Sylvia pronounces the words amusing, using and used to here. This phenomenon probably arises from the fact that the Welsh language does not permit the sequence plus , whereas there exists a phonetically similar diphthong . Many speakers in Wales therefore use this for words in this set - a pronunciation dating from a time when English was very much a second language for most speakers.
There are also a couple of interesting non-standard grammatical features Sylvia uses here. Her use of did in the statement when my mother did come back in the night is a traditional feature of speech in parts of Wales and the English West Country. It's perhaps no longer as common among younger speakers, although it rather accurately expresses the idea of repeated or habitual action - something someone does on a regular basis.
Finally the use of the tag-question isn't it in the statement you turn round and you say, "Tidy", isn't it is particularly interesting. We use tag-questions, such as don't you, couldn't he, wasn't it and so on, at the end of statements to confirm that a listener has understood what we're talking about or to invite them to confirm or dispute something we've just said. In Standard English, however, a tag-question refers back to the subject of the previous clause and thus this statement would be rendered you turn round and you say, "Tidy", don't you. Many speakers in Wales and again in the English West Country, however, frequently use an unmodified all-purpose tag-question, isn't it - in much the same way as French speakers use n'est-ce pas, for instance, without having to adapt the construction. Indeed many younger speakers throughout the UK use a similar variant, innit, that has been variously ascribed to use among the British Caribbean community or the British Asian community, albeit with a very different pronunciation from the one Sylvia uses here. Perhaps the apparently rapid spread of this feature could in part at least be attributed to the fact that it's also part of a more native British tradition, as evidenced by Sylvia here.
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