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Scouse

[skous]

Scouse is the accent and dialect of English found in the city of Liverpool, and in some adjoining urban areas of Merseyside, mainly The Wirral but also in the new town areas of Runcorn Southport and Skelmersdale. The Scouse accent is highly distinctive and sounds wholly different from the accents used in the neighbouring regions of Cheshire and rural Lancashire. Inhabitants of Liverpool are called Liverpudlians, but are more often described by the colloquialism Scousers.

History of the Term 'Scouse'

The word Scouse was originally a variation of "lobscouse, the name of a traditional dish of Scouse made with lamb stew mixed with hardtack eaten by sailors. Alternative recipes have included beef and thickened with the gelatin sauce found in cowheel or pig trotter in addition to various root vegetables. The word "lobscouse" may be of Norwegian origin ("lapskaus" in Norwegian), which is possible, considering the Viking background of the area, illustrated by the number of Merseyside place-names ending in "-by" (city in Scandinavian)(Formby, Crosby, Kirkby, Greasby, Pensby, Roby). Various spellings can still be traced, including "lobscows" from Wales, and some families refer to this stew as "lobby" rather than scouse, as in the Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent), where a 'bowl of lobby' is a welcome meal on a cold winter's night. In Leigh, between Liverpool and Manchester, there is even a "Lobby shop". The dish was traditionally the fare of the poor people, using the cheapest cuts of meat available, and indeed when no meat at all was available scouse was still made, but this "vegetarian" version was known as "blind scouse". The term remained a purely local word until its popularisation in the sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, which some also believe to have introduced stereotypes about Liverpudlians. It is also thought that there may once have been a giant man that came from the area called "Jon Scouse

History of the Accent

The roots of the accent can be traced back to the large numbers of immigrants into Liverpool in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries including those from the Isle of Man, Wales, Scotland and, most substantially, Ireland. The influence of these different speech patterns became apparent in Liverpool, distinguishing the accent of its people from those of the surrounding Lancashire and Cheshire areas. It is only recently that Scouse has been treated as a cohesive accent/dialect; for many years, Liverpool was simply seen as a melting pot of different accents with no one to call its own. The Survey of English Dialects ignored Liverpool completely, and the dialect researcher Ellis said that Liverpool [and Birkenhead] had "no dialect proper".

Other northern English dialects include

Geordie (spoken in Newcastle upon Tyne)
Pitmatic (spoken in Durham and Northumberland)
Tyke (spoken in Yorkshire)
Mackem (spoken in Sunderland)
Mancunian (spoken in Manchester)
Lancashire dialect and accent, which varies across the county.

Phonological features

Scouse is noted for a fast, highly accented manner of speech, with a range of rising and falling tones not typical of most of northern England.

Irish influences include the pronunciation of the letter 'h' as /heɪtʃ/ and the 2nd Person plural (you) as 'youse/yous' /juːz/.

There are variations on the Scouse accent, with the south side of the city adopting a softer, lyrical tone, and the north a rougher, more gritty accent. These differences, though not universal, can be seen in the pronunciation of the vowels. The northern half of the city more frequently pronounce the words 'book', 'cook' differently (as in many Scottish and Northern Irish but also Lancashire and Stoke-on-Trent accents). The southern half of the city is closer to the RP English pronunciation of these words. This way of pronouncing was a feature of Early Modern English, and is not unique to Scouse dialect

RP English	Scouse
[ʊ] as in 'book'	[uː]
[ʊ] as in 'cook'	[uː]

The Scouse accent of the early 21st century is markedly different in certain respects to that of earlier decades.. The Liverpool accent of the 1950's and before was more a Lancashire-Irish hybrid. But since then, as with most accents and dialects, Scouse has been subject to phonemic evolution and change. Over the last few decades the accent is no longer a melange but has started to develop further. One could compare the way George Harrison and John Lennon spoke in the old Beatles films such as Hard Day's Night and compare with modern Scousers such as Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher. Harrison pronounced the word 'fair' more like the standard English 'fur' - as Cilla Black does still. This is a pure Lancashire trait but modern Scousers do it the other way round pronouncing 'fur' like 'fair'. Huge changes have taken place in Scouse vowels which show astonishing length and exaggeration at times in words like 'read' but conversely shorter than standard in a word like 'sleep'. A final 'er' is a sound whilst pronounced 'schwa' in surrounding Lancashire and Cheshire is emphasised strongly as the 'e' in 'pet' /pɛt/. In a strong Scouse accent, the phoneme /k/ in all positions of a word except the beginning can be realised as /x/ or sometimes /kx/.

RP English	Old Scouse	Modern Scouse
[ɜː] as in 'fur'	[ɜː]	[ɛː]
[ɛə] as in 'square'	[ɜː]	[ɛː]
[riːd] as in 'read'	[iː]	[iːː]
[sliːp] as in 'sleep'	[iː]	[iː]
[bʌtə] as in 'butter'	[bʊtə]	[bʊtɛ]
[fɔːk] as in 'fork'	[fɔːx]	[fɔːx]

Grammatical Features

Rhoticity was not transferred through the immigration of the distinctly rhotic Irish accents, and therefore one can class Scouse as a non-rhotic accent. This means that /r/ in a word is only pronounced if it is followed by a vowel sound.

Rhotic Accent	Scouse
[flɔːr] as in 'floor'	[flɔː]
[wɝd] as in 'word'	[wɛːd]

The use of the glottal stop as an allophone of /t/ can occur in various positions, including after a stressed syllable. This is called T-glottalisation, and is particulary common amongst the younger speakers of the Scouse accent. /t/ may also be flapped intervocalically.

The loss of dental fricatives was commonly attributed as being present due to Irish English influence. The phonemes /ð/ and /θ/ were realised as /d/ and /t/ respectively. However in the younger generation, this feature is being outnumbered by those who realise them as voiced and voiceless labiodental fricatives, see below.

/θ/ becomes [f] in all environments. [θɪnk] becomes [fɪnk] for "think"
/ð/ becomes [v] in all environments except word-initially when it is [d]. [dɪðə] becomes [dɪvɛ] for "dither," [ðəʊ] becomes [dəʊ] for "though."

The use of me instead of my was also attributed to Irish English influence, for example, "Dat's me book you've got dere" for "That's my book you've got there". Cannot be used when "my" is emphasised, i.e., "Dat's my book you got dere" (and not "his").

Scouse-speaking personalities

References

Black, William. (2005). The Land that Thyme Forgot. Bantam. ISBN 0593 053621. p. 348
Honeybone, P. (2001), Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English, English Language and Linguistics 5.2, pp213-249.
Marotta, G. and Barth, M., Acoustic and sociolingustic aspects of lenition in Liverpool English, Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online 3.2, pp377-413. (including sound files).

External Links

Accent example: A working-class woman from Speke, Liverpool in Merseyside, being interviewed about her life for the British Museum's Collect Britain website. (Requires Windows Media player).
Sounds Familiar? Listen to examples of Scouse and other regional accents and dialects of the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
English Accents and Dialects, British Library Collect Britain website features samples of Liverpool speech (wma format, with annotations on phonology, lexis and grammar):
BBC - Liverpool Local History - Learn to speak Scouse!
A. B. Z. of Scouse (Lern Yerself Scouse) (ISBN 0-901367-03-6)
IANA registration form for the en-scouse tag
IETF RFC 4646 - Tags for Identifying Languages (2006)
Dialect Poems from the English regions
MERSEYTALK
Visit Liverpool The official tourist board website to Liverpool