Culture of Bristol - Dialect

Dialect

Older Bristolians and those that live in areas which have had less influence from students and immigration, such as Southmead and Hartcliffe, speak a distinctive dialect of English (known colloquially as Brizzle or Bristle). Uniquely for a large city in England, this is a rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car is pronounced. It is perhaps this element of the dialect which has led outsiders to dub it "farmer speech".

The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in a letter a. Additionally, -al is drawn out as -awl, and an l may be added within a word with an aw. Thus "area" becomes "areawl", "cereal" becomes "cereawl", "drawing" becomes "drawling" etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in "Bristle" sound identical. Other examples include 'Americawl' and 'Canadawl', and, when unsure, the answer 'I have no ideal'. In the same way, the Swedish Ikea is known by some as "Ikeawl", and Asda supermarket as "Asdawl". This is how the city's name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final 'L' sound: Bristol.

Another feature is the addition of S to verbs in the first and third person. Just as he goes, in Bristle I goes and they goes. As with other west country accents, H is often dropped from the start of words, th may become f, and -ing become -en. Bristolians often add a redundant "mind", "look" or "see" to the end of sentences: "I'm not doing that, mind." A redundant "like" may be placed in the middle of a sentence, a feature that has become more common throughout the country. Another Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of a superfluous "to" in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, "Where’s that?" would be phrased as "Where’s that to?" and "Where’s the park?" would become "Where’s the park to?". Interestingly, this speech feature is very predominant in Newfoundland English, where many of that island's early European inhabitants originated from Bristol and other West Country ports. They lived on the island in relative isolation in the centuries to follow, maintaining this feature. These linguistic features can also be heard in Cardiff.

A (slightly tongue in cheek) guide to Bristol's dialect is at http://www.thatbebristle.co.uk/ The linguist John C Wells codified the differences between a Bristol accent and Received Pronunciation in his Accents of English series in the following way. It is much more similar to General American than most other accents in Britain.