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'Brummie' (sometimes 'Brummy') is a colloquial term for the inhabitants, accent and dialect of Birmingham, England, as well as being a general adjective used to denote a connection with the city, locally called ''Brum''. The terms are all derived from ''Brummagem'' or Bromwichham, historical variants or alternatives to 'Birmingham'.

Contents

Accent

Pronunciation

Stereotypes

Dialect

See also

External links

Accent

Brummie is a prominent example of a regional accent of English English.
Examples of celebrity speakers include comedian Jasper Carrott, historian and broadcaster Carl Chinn, BBC financial presenter Adrian Chiles, the Goodies actor and TV presenter Bill Oddie, rock musician Ozzy Osbourne, broadcaster Les Ross, politician Clare Short, and SAS soldier and author John "Brummie" Stokes.
It is not the only accent of the West Midlands, although the term, Brummie, is often, erroneously, used in referring to all accents of the region. It is quite distinct, for example, from the traditional accent of the adjacent Black Country, although modern-day population mobility has tended to blur the distinction. For instance, Dudley-born comedian Lenny Henry, Daniel Taylor, and Smethwick-born actress Julie Walters are sometimes mistaken for Brummie-speakers.
Many are of the opinion that the Southern part of Walsall has the same accent as Birmingham, to which it is adjacent.
Birmingham and Coventry accents are also quite distinct, despite the proximity of the cities. To the untrained ear, however, all of these accents may sound very similar, just as British English speakers can find it hard to distinguish between Canadian and USA accents, or Australian and New Zealand accents.
As with all English regional accents, the Brummie accent also grades into RP English. The accent of presenter Cat Deeley is listed by her voiceover agency, Curtis Brown, as "RP/Birmingham".

Pronunciation

Below are some common features of the Brummie accent (a given speaker may not necessarily use all, or use a feature consistently). The letters enclosed in square brackets — — use the International Phonetic Alphabet. The corresponding example texts enclosed in double quotes (") are spelt so that a reader using Received Pronunciation (RP) can approximate the sounds.

★ The vowel of ''mouth'' (RP ) can be .

★ The vowel of ''goat'' (RP ) can be close to (so to an RP speaker, ''goat'' may sound like "gout").

★ The vowel of ''kit'' (RP ) can be (so to an RP speaker, ''bit'' may sound like "beat").

★ Final unstressed , as in ''happy'', may be realised as , though this varies considerably between speakers.

★ The letters ''ng'' often represent where RP has just (e.g. ''singer'' as ). See ''Ng coalescence''.

★ Both the vowels of ''strut'' and ''foot'' as , as in northern England. See foot-strut split.

★ Short 'a', as opposed to in RP, in words like ''bath'', ''cast'' and ''chance'' (but ''aunt'' and ''laugh'' both have ). See trap-bath split.

★ Final unstressed may be realised as .

★ In a few cases, voicing of final (e.g. ''bus'' as ).

★ Some rolling of prevocalic (some speakers; e.g. in "crime").
Recordings of Brummie speakers with phonetic features described in SAMPA format can be found at the ''Collect Britain'' dialects site referenced below.
Rhymes and vocabulary in the works of William Shakespeare suggest that he used a local dialect (Birmingham and his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, are both in the English West Midland dialect area.)

Stereotypes

According to ''Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study'' (Steve Thorne, 2003), among UK listeners "Birmingham English in previous academic studies and opinion polls consistently fares as the most disfavoured variety of British English, yet with no satisfying account of the dislike".
Since, as he shows, overseas visitors in contrast find it "lilting and melodious", he argues that such dislike is driven by various linguistic myths and social factors peculiar to the UK ("social snobbery, negative media stereotyping, the poor public image of the City of Birmingham, and the north/south geographical and linguistic divide").
For instance, despite the city's cultural and innovative history, its industrial background (as depicted by the arm-and-hammer in Birmingham's coat of arms) has led to a muscular and unintelligent stereotype: a "Brummagem screwdriver" or "Brummie screwdriver" is UK slang for a hammer.
Steve Thorne also cites the mass media and entertainment industry where actors, usually non-Birmingham, have used inaccurate accents and/or portrayed negative roles. Examples include Benny from the soap Crossroads, a feckless character played by Paul Henry with a hybrid Birmingham-Worcester accent many viewers assumed to be Birmingham because of the setting, and characters played by Battersea-born actor Timothy Spall: for instance, the boring Barry Taylor in ''Auf Wiedersehen Pet'' (The character Taylor was actually supposed to be from Tipton, a Black Country town) and Andy, the sarcastic virtual reality attendant in the ''Red Dwarf'' episode "Back to Reality". The actor Mark Williams also specialises in amiable but stupid Birmingham characters. One of Harry Enfield's comedy characters, portrayed an exaggerated Brummie (actually "Yam Yam"), whose catchline was "we are considerably richer than yow".
Advertisements are another medium where many perceive stereotypes. Journalist Lydia Stockdale, writing in the Birmingham Post ("Pig ignorant about the Brummie accent", December 2, 2004), commented on advertisers' association of Birmingham accents with pigs: the pig in the ad for Colman's Potato Bakes, Nick Park's Hells Angel Pigs for British Gas and ITV's "Dave the window-cleaner pig" all had Brummie accents. More recently, a Halifax bank advertisement featuring Howard Brown, a Birmingham- born and based employee, was replaced by an animated version with an exaggerated comical accent overdubbed by a Cockney actor.

Dialect

According to the PhD thesis of Steve Thorne at the University of Birmingham Department of English, Birmingham English is "a dialectal hybrid of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire speech", also with elements from the languages and dialects of its Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities.
Traditional expressions include:

★ "A bit black over Bill's mother's" ... Likely to rain soon (now widespread). [Commonly attributed to Black Country dialect: "Bill's mother's" features in a variety of forms - such as the reference to any obscure location being "the back of Bill's mothers".]

★ "Bab" ... Short for baby, but often also used to refer to a spouse or female.

★ "Bostin" ... Excellent, brilliant.[Commonly attributed to Black Country & North Staffs dialect]

★ "Face as long as Livery Street" ... Looking miserable.

★ "Go and play up your own end" ... Said to children from a different street making a nuisance. It has been used as the title of the autobiographical book and musical play about the Birmingham childhood of radio presenter and entertainer Malcolm Stent.

★ "Keep away from the 'oss road" / "mind the 'orse road"/ "Kip aert th'oss road" ... An admonition to travel safely, originally a warning to children in the days of horse-drawn traffic.["Th'oss road" may also have referred to the towpath alongside the canals found throughout the region - which presented the additional hazard to the unwary of falling into the canal. These expressions too, are commonly attributed to Black Country dialect rather than that from Birmingham.]

★ "Rock" ... a children's hard sweet (as in "give us a rock").

★ "Trap" ... to leave suddenly, or flee.

★ "Up the cut" ... Up the canal (not uniquely Birmingham).

★ "Yampy" (often "dead yampy") Mad, daft, barmy (also used is the word "Saft", as in "Yow big saft babbie") - All though many Black Country Folk belive yampy is a black country word originating from the Dudley/Tipton area and has been stolen and claimed as their own by both Birmingham and Coventry

See also

Other Midlands English dialects

★ Black Country

★ Potteries dialect (North Staffordshire)

External links

★ Talk Like A Brummie Day On 20th July.

★ Talk Like A Brummie - A wiki-based Birmingham dialect dictionary.

★ ebrummie.co.uk Dr Steve Thorne's website devoted to the study of Brummie, including a dictionary, MP3 speech samples, discussion of his research on stereotypes, etc. No Longer Online.

★ Birmingham English sample using a test paragraph including most English sounds: George Mason University Speech Accent Archive. Compare a Dudley (Black Country) sample.

★ Sounds Familiar? — Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website

★ English Accents and Dialects, British Library Collect Britain website features samples of Birmingham speech (wma format, with annotations on phonology, lexis and grammar): Sue Long, Aubrey Walton, Harry Phillips and Billy Lucas.

★ Why Brummies Why not Birmies? Etymological article by Dr Carl Chinn

★ Brummie and Black Country sayings

★ BBC guide to Brummie

★ Brummie is Beautiful! University of Birmingham press release about Dr Steve Thorne's PhD thesis, ''Birmingham English: A Sociolinguistic Study''.

★ Paul Henry on Benny's accent Noele Gordon and Crossroads Appreciation Society interview

★ Face of the Halifax given a makeover ... and a cockney's voiceover ''Guardian'' January 20, 2003

★ English Accents and Dialects, Warwickshire speakers - William Sewell of Hockley Heath, Mr Calcutt of Aston Cantlow, Mr Duckett of Lighthorne, and Harry Cook of Shipston-on-Stour - show progressive accent change moving south-east from Birmingham across isogloss.

★ Whoohoo Brummie translator