English in Southern England - Southern Rural and West Country Accents

Southern Rural and West Country Accents

This family of similar strongly rhotic accents – now perceived as rural – originally extended across much of southern England south of the broad A isogloss, but are now most often, (but not always) found west of a line roughly from Shropshire to Hampshire via Oxfordshire. Their shared characteristics have been caricatured as Mummerset.

They persist most strongly in areas that remain largely rural with a largely indigenous population, particularly the West Country. In many other areas they are declining due to immigration by RP and Estuary speakers; for instance, strong Isle of Wight accents tend to be more prevalent in older speakers.

As well as rhoticity, common features of these accents include

• The diphthong /aɪ/ (as in price) realised as or, sounding more like the diphthong in Received Pronunciation choice.
• The diphthong /aʊ/ (as in mouth) realised as, with a starting point close to the vowel in Received Pronunciation dress.
• The vowel /ɒ/ (as in lot) realised as an unrounded vowel, as in many forms of American English.
• In traditional West Country accents, the voiceless fricatives /s/, /f/, /θ/, /ʃ/ (as in sat, farm, think, shed respectively) are often voiced to, giving pronunciations like "Zummerzet" for Somerset, "varm" for farm, "zhure" for sure, etc.
• In the Bristol area a vowel at the end of a word is often followed by an intrusive dark l, . Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle, and Normal (written Eva, Ida, and Norma). L is pronounced darkly where it is present, too, which means that in Bristolian rendering, 'idea' and 'ideal' are homophones.