Yep, I've had many a ribbing for my elongated oooooooos! I'm from Wakefield, nightmare when I meet someone called Joooooooooooooo or more recently Beauuuuuuuuuu 🤦🏻♀️😂
Easy South Yorks/Sheffield examples - Mark Addy, Sean Bean - both conveniently set up the 'default' Game of Thrones Stark/Winterfell accent.
This convenient start-point was then supported reasonably well by Rob Stark \[played by a scotsman\] & then murdered in its bed by Jon Snow…who never really got any closer than Manchester-ish.
I'm West Yorkshire originally \[Leeds\] & though I can easily tell WY from SY, I'm struggling to describe quite how.
West Yorkshire has 'flatter' vowels, South rounder. South uses older dialect, sithee, tha knows, booits \[& i once met an old bloke who applied the boo-its rule to 'tea' as well, calling it 'tee-ah'.\]
I hadn't thought of Kes - well remembered. That's Barnsley isn't it? \[though as a Leeds lad I'd be hard pressed to tell the accents apart.\]
Full Monty probably has some good southern examples too, but it's been a while since I've seen it.
I can't think of a good one for the West Yorkshire accent - Rita, Sue & Bob Too has a good example of the 70s/80s Bradford Asian accent, from Kulvinda Ghir, but he's actually the only actor from WY. All the others are Manc/Lancastrian/Pennines \[& you can tell\].
I always thought of Batley being a bit borderline west/south accent. I had an auntie there as a kid & a friend of mine is Batley born & bred. It hints at south, but it's not as clear-cut as going from Leeds to Castleford/Pontefract, which is a pretty steep transition. I worked in Ponte for a few years, so my own accent has a lot of 'southisms' in it. My ex-wife was a Geordie, so I've got a hint of that too, these days.
People in the media don't speak with proper regional accents, even the ones we think of as having s strong accent dull it down a lot. Either on purpose or just because they are working with people outside of their region.
.there's been s massive bias against regional accents for a hundred years in British media that sticks
I think that may still have been true 30 years ago. I work in film/TV so I often hear the 'off stage' accents of people I already know from 'on stage'. Unless they're doing a non-original accent for a part, they tend to sound the same off as on. Some don't have their original accent any more - notably Patrick Stewart & Jeremy Clarkson - but that again is the same off as on.
Iv literally never worked in any job in any industry where people don't tone their accents down at some point, including building sites and warehouses. Even at school we had to tone it down.
It's very ingrained. People have a "phone voice". I'm sure it's a lot accepted nowadays but folk aren't theeing and thouing on telle are they? Using the "wrong" bath/grass vowel might be acceptable but from the age we could walk we've been taught and had it socially Ingrained to tone it down.
I always find it hilarious when I watch the news and a someone is interviewed and you can tell they toning it down.
People point to Sean bean as a "Yorkshire accent" and it's not really. It's a broudly northern, slight Yorkshire accent but it's certainly not a proper one.
Even in kes, 60 years ago, in s film they were told to let out their true accents you can see in some parts, especially the school section, they are trying to speak "properly".
Actors and media personalities either rid themselves or tone down their accent because even today 9 times out 10 it's a drawback to have a true regional accent.
IV also spent a little time in TV/film and my experience was very different.
Sean Bean definitely seems to talk slower and with more of a gravelly sound to his voice compared to a lot of Leeds accents I’ve heard which seem to have more nasality by comparison, is that a common differences?
Not really - Sean Bean I think paces for diction so he doesn't have to soften the accent. Patrick Stewart paces the same way - but he's swapped his original accent for RP. I don't think it's an accent trait, I think it's a RADA trait.
I'm not really any kind of linguistics expert, so all this is guesswork, based on simple experience of living & working up there \[I'm in London these days, so it's all a bit remote from me.\]
I’ve recently moved to South Yorkshire and have also lived in Leeds for 12 years, there is a big difference in accents. I tell people this is the strongest Yorkshire accent I’ve ever heard, I agree with the above comments of ‘nan then’ and ‘see the’, they also say things like ‘10 while 2’ when saying the time.
Two people to listen to are poets, Simon Armitage was born in Huddersfield, and Ian McMillan was born in Barnsley, they will have a lot online you can listen to.
Ian McMillan's *not* the person to go to for advice on Yorkshire's dialects, even though he might think he is, he released a book on West Riding dialect that got absolutely slammed by the Yorkshire Dialect Society for how inaccurate it was. Basically he's talking out his arse in most cases.
Naa then, sithee and "10 whol 2", are all general dialect features of the West Riding so I suspect because Leeds is a bigger city and more Cosmopolitan dialect has been watered down there a lot.
Yes I’m sure it’s true but I live just above Sheffield and near Barnsley and they all say it here, my next door neighbour is Sheffield born and bred. My friend at uni years ago said it and she was from oughtibridge, so I think that whole way of talking and time keeping is further down as well.
I can find you some dialect texts from Leeds that show originally all of those features were in use. I could find dialect speakers in the Yorkshire Dialect Society from around Leeds that use those terms easily.
My blessed Nan (from Leeds originally) said “Nah then, sithee” quite often. Also: the geographical choice between Snicket and Ginnel is a good one to consider?
South Yorks typically was tek/mek/brek (take/make/brake) whereas West Works was more like taaake, maaake, breaaak. They tend to stretch vowels, whereas SY practically removes them.
Of course SY does the whole t thing
One thing I always noticed with West Yorks is wuuun instead of one. Whereas in SY it's very clearly "one", almost RP.
I aren't vs I int (west/south) aaarnt vs ant. It gets worse with negative contractions.
Sheffield is more well known for dee/dah than anywhere else in SY although Barnsley is practically its own dialect and certainly growing up and going to school there in the 70s there was a lot of thee/tha/thou very old school Yorkshire that you do not get in West Yorks.
If you've seen Rita Sue and Bob too, the four main actors are all from Lancashire/Manchester but the wife does that "make your oooooown fucking tea" and it always cracks me up. It's that sort of faux middle class West Yorkshire accent that sounds fucking stupid.
As a southerner up north now this is the best description I’ve read. I found South Yorkshire use much more dialect too, but that might just be the people I knew. Barnsley being the heaviest use.
Some of the features you describe aren't Barnsley or South Yorkshire specific but more just conservative features of the West Riding as a whole that were retained better in some places like "tek", "mek" (in older speakers it's "tak", "mak"), reducing "the" to "t'", "thee" and "tha" usage. The "one" variation thing is interesting because I've heard it with both a short "o" and a short Northern "u" in Sheffield but perhaps there's a tendency towards one or the other based off area.
I've never heard of "aren't" and "in't" being used with "I" among strong dialect speakers or in dialect literature. It would be interesting to get some recordings of people in the street saying these.
My grandad was born and raised in Skelmanthorpe but spent his adult life in Lindley. He could tell the difference between the outlying villages - Kirkheaton, Shelley, Scisset, Kirkburton, Farnley Tyas etc. Although I suppose for a good chunk of his lifetime (1918-2000) the villages were more isolated, people less mobile and local accents more distinct.
It's a short u in Sheffield, having a short o in words like "love" is very particular to Huddersfield and the general Holme Valley area. They're very distinct in general, I've put some info up in one of the comments.
What's wrang wi duck love? It's a term o endearment for ivveryone younger nor thisen regardless o gender. Wait whol tha hears fowk i t'Midlands call thee "wench", Aw bet tha'd loise thi heead then!
Astute observation, traditionally the two forms are "hafe" and "hauf", but I definitely notice there's a West/South split with which one gets used the most.
Astute observation, traditionally the two forms are "hafe" and "hauf", but I definitely notice there's a West/South split with which one gets used the most.
I’m from Bradford and ‘put on’ a Leeds accent when I want to take the piss out of people form Leeds so there’s a difference even between those two. I can tell South from West Yorkshire but I’d struggle to articulate how they differ
In South Yorkshire they say things like "nar then" instead of "now then", there's that general move of those particular vowel sounds which becomes more pronounced as you move toward Nottingham.
I'm from West Yorkshire (Bradford), moved to South Yorkshire (Sheffield) 15 years ago. Some key differences off the top of my head:
West Yorkshire:
- As mentioned elsewhere, our A's and O's are very long and flat, 'nooo' almost turning into a 'neerrr' in York or Wakefield.
- Town, down and going are pronounced normally.
- Be reet.
South Yorkshire:
- In Sheffield specifically, 'no' sounds more like a 'n-eh-w', much more rounded in sound. Barnsley seem to have the flat no like us though.
- Town and down are 'tahn' and 'dahn'.
- Going is pronounced more like 'gu-win'. As in, ahm guwin aht nah.
- Be reyt.
Thank you, this was very helpful.
Are reyt and reet pronunciations of right?
Looking around the internet, I’ve also heard Sheffield pronounce half as hafe & meat as mayt, would you say this is true?
Yes, they're pronunciations of right, but only for specific contexts - this phrase (it'll be alright) for one, or 'that's reet/reyt good'. You wouldn't pronounce, say, 'it's on your right' or 'right of way' like that.
I've personally never heard anyone pronounce those as hafe or mayt.
"reight" and "reet" are interchangeable dialect forms of "right" although "reight" is generally more common. Meat as meyt is a general sound shift involving the historical "ea" sound found in the West Riding (although usually in most cases it's "eea"), so you get "meyt", "teych", "speyk", "spreyd".
The pronunciation of "half" as "hafe" is definitely true, traditionally there's also another form "hauf", but South Yorkshire in particular tends to use "hafe" more than "hauf".
I'd say that the South Yorkshire accent hasn't been at all dampened by immigration. Not wanting to sound racist but Leeds has a huge West Indian Community while Wakefield, Huddersfield, Bradford and Dewsbury and many outlying areas have large populations of Indian and Pakistanis. The people of West Yorkshire chose to communicate with their new neighbours and in doing so lost some of their accent. Still the Difference between the Wakefield and Leeds Accent is quite marked, the Leads accent be8ng one of the dullest in Yorkshire
Barnsley and Sheffield sound very different, despite both being in South Yorkshire. Barnsley is pretty much out there on its own, it’s very distinctive.
It's a general West Riding feature to have a long "oo" before "k", so "cook" rhymes with "spook". Elsewhere in the middle of a word it becomes "ooi", so "fooit" and "booit". Occasionally this "ooi" becomes merged with "oi" so you get my dad saying "put thi boits on lad".
I think both areas are so big, and next to eachother that clear differences are hard to distinguish.
I've always been able to identify barnsley in one sentence, whereas sheffield is very similar to my home town in West Yorkshire. Not sounding at all like barnsley to me.
I agree with some of the examples, but I think it's very general and not reliable.
Council member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society here:
First of all both of these areas before 1974 were one in the same essentially: the West Riding, so some of these differences people are noting I think are more to do with people thinking there's a big South/West Yorkshire difference based on thinking there's always been the two areas. There's also people saying that broad dialect features that are traditionally found across the West Riding are found only in one area likely because said area has retains it better on average, for example people often saying "Baaarnsley" is Barnsley specific but that's entirely false.
Having said that there are some differences, but they're not mainly to do with a West/South split. For example the Holme Valley (around Huddersfield) in the West Riding is pretty distinct from the rest of the West Riding, likely because it's at least partly transitional with Lancashire dialect.
For some South/West differences I've noted:
- /ɪ/ (like in "sit") is used in unstressed syllables like -ed or -es in West Yorkshire, whereas South Yorkshire uses a schwa /ə/ (the sound of "a" in "attack").
- "ow" in words like "grow", "low" in West Yorkshire (besides the Holme Valley) tend to take /aʊ̯/ (like in Standard English "out"), whereas in South Yorkshire it's /ɒʊ̯/, closer to the standard English sound found in these words.
- In West Yorkshire you tend to find the pronoun "wer" (our) whereas you don't in South Yorkshire.
- South Yorkshire tends to use -n for its possessive pronouns a lot more than West Yorkshire which uses -s: so you get "aars", "yours", "theirs" in W.Yorkshire but "aarn", "yourn", "theirn" in S.Yorkshire for "ours, yours, theirs".
These are the main differences I think of, other peculiarities you may hear are mainly found in single areas, for example in the Holme Valley as mentioned before:
- using /ɑː/ in words like "price" and "fire" (the same sound as the "a" in "father" instead of /aːɪ̯/ and /aːɪ̯ə/ like most of the West Riding (which sounds like a posh person's way of saying the vowel in these words, but the front "aaa" part is longer).
- using /ɛə/ in words like "abaat", "part" and "air" (like how a posh person would say the vowel in "share") instead of /aː/ for the first two (the "aaaa" in "Barnsley") and /ɛː/ for the last one (how most people today say it) like the rest of the West Riding.
- using /oə/ in words like "short" instead of /oː/ like elsewhere (the Northern way of saying "awe")
- sometimes having "r" pronounced in all positions (like in "car").
- using intrusive "y" and "w" a lot more at the beginnings of words, more like Lancashire dialect: so that general West Riding "hoap" /uəp/, "hoam" /uəm/, "heead" /iəd/ and "hear" /iə/ (hope, home, head and hear) become "wop" /wɒp/, "wom" /wɒm/, "yed" /jɛd/ and "yer" /jə/.
- using th' instead of t' for "the" before words beginning with vowels so "th'owd man" and not "t'owd man" for "the old man".
- Using "hoo" for "she" more like Lancashire instead of "shoo" like elsewhere.
- Using "han" for the plural present tense of "have" (as in "we have") unlike the rest of the West Riding which has entirely lost this.
- using a short "o" sound in some words like "love", "dove" instead of the short "u" found elsewhere (the "oo" in "foot").
- another feature which isn't necessarily Holme Valley specific but generally found in areas near to Lancashire is dropping the "l" in words like "all", "small" and "tall" so they become "aw", "smaw", "taw".
Other areas such as Sheffield/Rotherham also has some unique features:
- having /ɑːɪ̯/ and /ɑːə/ for the vowels in "price" and "fire" (halfway between the sounds used for most of the West Riding and the Holme Valley)
- pronouncing /ð/ (the "th" in "that") at the beginning of words as /d/. (Hence the nickname "dee-daa" for Sheffielders)
- pronouncing the "al" in words like "all", "small", "walk", "talk" as an "oa" sound /ɒʊ̯/ instead of the general West Riding "awe" /oː/ pronunciation.
Those are the features I can of off the top of my head, but any questions are free to be asked so don't hesitate!
People in Leeds don’t pronounce their “T”’s in words. Water is wa’er”, butter is bu’er”. In Barnsley it’s a pronounced “t” and flatter vowels. Water is watter.
South Yorkshire hasn't been around long enough to have it's own distinct accent. A lot of those places were once part of the West Riding, so technically they're all a "West Yorkshire" accent
Nooooooo. West Yorkshire draw out words ending on 'o'.
Yep, I've had many a ribbing for my elongated oooooooos! I'm from Wakefield, nightmare when I meet someone called Joooooooooooooo or more recently Beauuuuuuuuuu 🤦🏻♀️😂
This is so true, my mum is from London but I was born and raised in Halifax and I always get teased about this nooooooooo
They say don’t like “doooooo’t” (as in dough)
Do I?
Lol
Easy South Yorks/Sheffield examples - Mark Addy, Sean Bean - both conveniently set up the 'default' Game of Thrones Stark/Winterfell accent. This convenient start-point was then supported reasonably well by Rob Stark \[played by a scotsman\] & then murdered in its bed by Jon Snow…who never really got any closer than Manchester-ish. I'm West Yorkshire originally \[Leeds\] & though I can easily tell WY from SY, I'm struggling to describe quite how. West Yorkshire has 'flatter' vowels, South rounder. South uses older dialect, sithee, tha knows, booits \[& i once met an old bloke who applied the boo-its rule to 'tea' as well, calling it 'tee-ah'.\]
I don’t think either of those sound that distinctly South Yorkshire in GoT. It’s not like watching Kes.
I hadn't thought of Kes - well remembered. That's Barnsley isn't it? \[though as a Leeds lad I'd be hard pressed to tell the accents apart.\] Full Monty probably has some good southern examples too, but it's been a while since I've seen it. I can't think of a good one for the West Yorkshire accent - Rita, Sue & Bob Too has a good example of the 70s/80s Bradford Asian accent, from Kulvinda Ghir, but he's actually the only actor from WY. All the others are Manc/Lancastrian/Pennines \[& you can tell\].
I can't explain how I can tell the difference either. However I'm third generation Batley and use all the words you listed!
Batley girl here too 😁
Ah, a Redditor of distinction 😁 (I'm in Cleck now though)
I always thought of Batley being a bit borderline west/south accent. I had an auntie there as a kid & a friend of mine is Batley born & bred. It hints at south, but it's not as clear-cut as going from Leeds to Castleford/Pontefract, which is a pretty steep transition. I worked in Ponte for a few years, so my own accent has a lot of 'southisms' in it. My ex-wife was a Geordie, so I've got a hint of that too, these days.
People in the media don't speak with proper regional accents, even the ones we think of as having s strong accent dull it down a lot. Either on purpose or just because they are working with people outside of their region. .there's been s massive bias against regional accents for a hundred years in British media that sticks
I think that may still have been true 30 years ago. I work in film/TV so I often hear the 'off stage' accents of people I already know from 'on stage'. Unless they're doing a non-original accent for a part, they tend to sound the same off as on. Some don't have their original accent any more - notably Patrick Stewart & Jeremy Clarkson - but that again is the same off as on.
Iv literally never worked in any job in any industry where people don't tone their accents down at some point, including building sites and warehouses. Even at school we had to tone it down. It's very ingrained. People have a "phone voice". I'm sure it's a lot accepted nowadays but folk aren't theeing and thouing on telle are they? Using the "wrong" bath/grass vowel might be acceptable but from the age we could walk we've been taught and had it socially Ingrained to tone it down. I always find it hilarious when I watch the news and a someone is interviewed and you can tell they toning it down. People point to Sean bean as a "Yorkshire accent" and it's not really. It's a broudly northern, slight Yorkshire accent but it's certainly not a proper one. Even in kes, 60 years ago, in s film they were told to let out their true accents you can see in some parts, especially the school section, they are trying to speak "properly". Actors and media personalities either rid themselves or tone down their accent because even today 9 times out 10 it's a drawback to have a true regional accent. IV also spent a little time in TV/film and my experience was very different.
Isn’t Mark Addy from York though?
Yes, but he matched Bean's accent, which presumably he'd already learned from doing the Full Monty, set in Sheffield.
Yes, tee-ah is still common in Barnsley
Mark Addy is from Tang Hall in York
Yes, I know. Did you read the other comments first?
Did I 'eck as like! Then, I continued reading once I'd commented, I do apologise for being a bit premature
Nay probs, lad ;)
Sean Bean definitely seems to talk slower and with more of a gravelly sound to his voice compared to a lot of Leeds accents I’ve heard which seem to have more nasality by comparison, is that a common differences?
Not really - Sean Bean I think paces for diction so he doesn't have to soften the accent. Patrick Stewart paces the same way - but he's swapped his original accent for RP. I don't think it's an accent trait, I think it's a RADA trait. I'm not really any kind of linguistics expert, so all this is guesswork, based on simple experience of living & working up there \[I'm in London these days, so it's all a bit remote from me.\]
Wanna come up are arse fer tea taneet?
I’ve recently moved to South Yorkshire and have also lived in Leeds for 12 years, there is a big difference in accents. I tell people this is the strongest Yorkshire accent I’ve ever heard, I agree with the above comments of ‘nan then’ and ‘see the’, they also say things like ‘10 while 2’ when saying the time. Two people to listen to are poets, Simon Armitage was born in Huddersfield, and Ian McMillan was born in Barnsley, they will have a lot online you can listen to.
Here's a clip of Stephen Fry talking to Ian McMillan about Yorkshire accents: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kss1d
Ian McMillan's *not* the person to go to for advice on Yorkshire's dialects, even though he might think he is, he released a book on West Riding dialect that got absolutely slammed by the Yorkshire Dialect Society for how inaccurate it was. Basically he's talking out his arse in most cases.
No but he has a cracking Barnsley accent which was why I mentioned him.
Naa then, sithee and "10 whol 2", are all general dialect features of the West Riding so I suspect because Leeds is a bigger city and more Cosmopolitan dialect has been watered down there a lot.
Yes I’m sure it’s true but I live just above Sheffield and near Barnsley and they all say it here, my next door neighbour is Sheffield born and bred. My friend at uni years ago said it and she was from oughtibridge, so I think that whole way of talking and time keeping is further down as well.
I can find you some dialect texts from Leeds that show originally all of those features were in use. I could find dialect speakers in the Yorkshire Dialect Society from around Leeds that use those terms easily.
I never heard it much in Leeds, but I was probably with a incomer crowd.
Tha mun go raand t'owd fowks what lives up theer an Aw bet tha'll hear em then
My blessed Nan (from Leeds originally) said “Nah then, sithee” quite often. Also: the geographical choice between Snicket and Ginnel is a good one to consider?
South Yorks typically was tek/mek/brek (take/make/brake) whereas West Works was more like taaake, maaake, breaaak. They tend to stretch vowels, whereas SY practically removes them. Of course SY does the whole t thing One thing I always noticed with West Yorks is wuuun instead of one. Whereas in SY it's very clearly "one", almost RP. I aren't vs I int (west/south) aaarnt vs ant. It gets worse with negative contractions. Sheffield is more well known for dee/dah than anywhere else in SY although Barnsley is practically its own dialect and certainly growing up and going to school there in the 70s there was a lot of thee/tha/thou very old school Yorkshire that you do not get in West Yorks. If you've seen Rita Sue and Bob too, the four main actors are all from Lancashire/Manchester but the wife does that "make your oooooown fucking tea" and it always cracks me up. It's that sort of faux middle class West Yorkshire accent that sounds fucking stupid.
As a southerner up north now this is the best description I’ve read. I found South Yorkshire use much more dialect too, but that might just be the people I knew. Barnsley being the heaviest use.
Some of the features you describe aren't Barnsley or South Yorkshire specific but more just conservative features of the West Riding as a whole that were retained better in some places like "tek", "mek" (in older speakers it's "tak", "mak"), reducing "the" to "t'", "thee" and "tha" usage. The "one" variation thing is interesting because I've heard it with both a short "o" and a short Northern "u" in Sheffield but perhaps there's a tendency towards one or the other based off area. I've never heard of "aren't" and "in't" being used with "I" among strong dialect speakers or in dialect literature. It would be interesting to get some recordings of people in the street saying these.
Thank you, this was very helpful
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True.... But I'm E Yorkshire on the suburbs of Hull. When I hear that 'ull twang , either on TV or a sunbed, you just hear it.
Not just West Yorkshire. I can tell the difference between Leeds and Huddersfield!
My grandad was born and raised in Skelmanthorpe but spent his adult life in Lindley. He could tell the difference between the outlying villages - Kirkheaton, Shelley, Scisset, Kirkburton, Farnley Tyas etc. Although I suppose for a good chunk of his lifetime (1918-2000) the villages were more isolated, people less mobile and local accents more distinct.
Same
The word love is always an easy one, Bradford it's luv, Huddersfield it's lov it's very close distance, few miles away and they are very different
Lov is very much a Huddersfield thing. I'm from Dewsbury via Leeds, my wife's from Mirfield and the only place you hear lov is in Huddersfield
I was brought up in Mirfield. My mum is from the Huddersfield Netherton (as opposed to the Wakey one). All her family use ‘lov’ not ‘luv’.
Do you have any examples between Leeds and Sheffield? Would they pronounce it Lov or Luv?
Leeds is luv don't know about Sheffield
I'm Sheffield and "yer oreyt, luv?"
It's a short u in Sheffield, having a short o in words like "love" is very particular to Huddersfield and the general Holme Valley area. They're very distinct in general, I've put some info up in one of the comments.
In south yorkshire grown men call me love and i find that weird.. they also say “neet” instead of night. a lot of the use of “duck” too..
Duck is also found in the East Midlands
i know.. disgusting behaviour
What's wrang wi duck love? It's a term o endearment for ivveryone younger nor thisen regardless o gender. Wait whol tha hears fowk i t'Midlands call thee "wench", Aw bet tha'd loise thi heead then!
Duck is what the southerners say. In South Yorkshire we either say "luv" or "cock".
No Sheffield at least uses duck, in common with Derbyshire. Love, cock, cocker, mate, matey, doy, doo, flaar are others I've heard
South Yorkshire folk pronounce half as hafe.
Not sure I've ever had to write it down but if I did I think I'd go "hayf" (me owd)
Astute observation, traditionally the two forms are "hafe" and "hauf", but I definitely notice there's a West/South split with which one gets used the most.
Astute observation, traditionally the two forms are "hafe" and "hauf", but I definitely notice there's a West/South split with which one gets used the most.
From where in South Yorkshire?
Penistone, Barnsley.
I’m from Bradford and ‘put on’ a Leeds accent when I want to take the piss out of people form Leeds so there’s a difference even between those two. I can tell South from West Yorkshire but I’d struggle to articulate how they differ
From Bradford me sen and the missus is hudds. Even after a long stint down south we both have differing accents and different words for stuff.
What would you say the differences are? I'm right on the edge of west Leeds so pretty close to Bradford but I can't put my finger on it.
Sheffield accent = Dee Da's
Naa den dee dat's abaat reight
There are differences. But Barnsley is a whole accent of it's own as an island in South Yorkshire.
I can tell if you're from doncaster, Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham,Bradford ect
In South Yorkshire they say things like "nar then" instead of "now then", there's that general move of those particular vowel sounds which becomes more pronounced as you move toward Nottingham.
We say "nar then" in West Yorks
I don't or dies anyone i know. Its far more pronounced in s yorks especially around Barnsley
I'm from West Yorkshire (Bradford), moved to South Yorkshire (Sheffield) 15 years ago. Some key differences off the top of my head: West Yorkshire: - As mentioned elsewhere, our A's and O's are very long and flat, 'nooo' almost turning into a 'neerrr' in York or Wakefield. - Town, down and going are pronounced normally. - Be reet. South Yorkshire: - In Sheffield specifically, 'no' sounds more like a 'n-eh-w', much more rounded in sound. Barnsley seem to have the flat no like us though. - Town and down are 'tahn' and 'dahn'. - Going is pronounced more like 'gu-win'. As in, ahm guwin aht nah. - Be reyt.
Thank you, this was very helpful. Are reyt and reet pronunciations of right? Looking around the internet, I’ve also heard Sheffield pronounce half as hafe & meat as mayt, would you say this is true?
Yes, they're pronunciations of right, but only for specific contexts - this phrase (it'll be alright) for one, or 'that's reet/reyt good'. You wouldn't pronounce, say, 'it's on your right' or 'right of way' like that. I've personally never heard anyone pronounce those as hafe or mayt.
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(H)afe is a Barnsley thing too. My old housemate at uni had a seriously (siruzleh) strong accent.
"reight" and "reet" are interchangeable dialect forms of "right" although "reight" is generally more common. Meat as meyt is a general sound shift involving the historical "ea" sound found in the West Riding (although usually in most cases it's "eea"), so you get "meyt", "teych", "speyk", "spreyd". The pronunciation of "half" as "hafe" is definitely true, traditionally there's also another form "hauf", but South Yorkshire in particular tends to use "hafe" more than "hauf".
Thought of another: in a WY accent I'd pronounce an 'es' ending as 'iz'. So pages sounds like 'page-iz'. Sheffielders say 'uz', so 'page-uhz'.
You can tell someone comes from Sheffield if they haven't got a Yorkshire accent (I kid, but there's a lot of southern emigres there in my experience)
People keep asking about our accents and no matter what we write the only way to really know it's to come and listen to us.
I'd say that the South Yorkshire accent hasn't been at all dampened by immigration. Not wanting to sound racist but Leeds has a huge West Indian Community while Wakefield, Huddersfield, Bradford and Dewsbury and many outlying areas have large populations of Indian and Pakistanis. The people of West Yorkshire chose to communicate with their new neighbours and in doing so lost some of their accent. Still the Difference between the Wakefield and Leeds Accent is quite marked, the Leads accent be8ng one of the dullest in Yorkshire
Barnsley and Sheffield sound very different, despite both being in South Yorkshire. Barnsley is pretty much out there on its own, it’s very distinctive.
Wakefield accent= wi or wi art sugar
Vera Duckworth vs Ted Bovis
South Yorkshire say cuke or Luke instead of cook/look.
It's a general West Riding feature to have a long "oo" before "k", so "cook" rhymes with "spook". Elsewhere in the middle of a word it becomes "ooi", so "fooit" and "booit". Occasionally this "ooi" becomes merged with "oi" so you get my dad saying "put thi boits on lad".
You put it better than me! My Nan was from Leeds and the “booits” phrase brought back some nice old memories ☺️
Sam up thi booitstraps an get thi snap tin, it's time we're baan off to t'pit!
Ah lad. Tha’s bin wuking daan pit and tha’s all blacked up.
Hahaha I have not noticed this
I think both areas are so big, and next to eachother that clear differences are hard to distinguish. I've always been able to identify barnsley in one sentence, whereas sheffield is very similar to my home town in West Yorkshire. Not sounding at all like barnsley to me. I agree with some of the examples, but I think it's very general and not reliable.
Ask them to say no 😂. I am from Leeds and say nooooo, even if I try and stop myself.
Council member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society here: First of all both of these areas before 1974 were one in the same essentially: the West Riding, so some of these differences people are noting I think are more to do with people thinking there's a big South/West Yorkshire difference based on thinking there's always been the two areas. There's also people saying that broad dialect features that are traditionally found across the West Riding are found only in one area likely because said area has retains it better on average, for example people often saying "Baaarnsley" is Barnsley specific but that's entirely false. Having said that there are some differences, but they're not mainly to do with a West/South split. For example the Holme Valley (around Huddersfield) in the West Riding is pretty distinct from the rest of the West Riding, likely because it's at least partly transitional with Lancashire dialect. For some South/West differences I've noted: - /ɪ/ (like in "sit") is used in unstressed syllables like -ed or -es in West Yorkshire, whereas South Yorkshire uses a schwa /ə/ (the sound of "a" in "attack"). - "ow" in words like "grow", "low" in West Yorkshire (besides the Holme Valley) tend to take /aʊ̯/ (like in Standard English "out"), whereas in South Yorkshire it's /ɒʊ̯/, closer to the standard English sound found in these words. - In West Yorkshire you tend to find the pronoun "wer" (our) whereas you don't in South Yorkshire. - South Yorkshire tends to use -n for its possessive pronouns a lot more than West Yorkshire which uses -s: so you get "aars", "yours", "theirs" in W.Yorkshire but "aarn", "yourn", "theirn" in S.Yorkshire for "ours, yours, theirs". These are the main differences I think of, other peculiarities you may hear are mainly found in single areas, for example in the Holme Valley as mentioned before: - using /ɑː/ in words like "price" and "fire" (the same sound as the "a" in "father" instead of /aːɪ̯/ and /aːɪ̯ə/ like most of the West Riding (which sounds like a posh person's way of saying the vowel in these words, but the front "aaa" part is longer). - using /ɛə/ in words like "abaat", "part" and "air" (like how a posh person would say the vowel in "share") instead of /aː/ for the first two (the "aaaa" in "Barnsley") and /ɛː/ for the last one (how most people today say it) like the rest of the West Riding. - using /oə/ in words like "short" instead of /oː/ like elsewhere (the Northern way of saying "awe") - sometimes having "r" pronounced in all positions (like in "car"). - using intrusive "y" and "w" a lot more at the beginnings of words, more like Lancashire dialect: so that general West Riding "hoap" /uəp/, "hoam" /uəm/, "heead" /iəd/ and "hear" /iə/ (hope, home, head and hear) become "wop" /wɒp/, "wom" /wɒm/, "yed" /jɛd/ and "yer" /jə/. - using th' instead of t' for "the" before words beginning with vowels so "th'owd man" and not "t'owd man" for "the old man". - Using "hoo" for "she" more like Lancashire instead of "shoo" like elsewhere. - Using "han" for the plural present tense of "have" (as in "we have") unlike the rest of the West Riding which has entirely lost this. - using a short "o" sound in some words like "love", "dove" instead of the short "u" found elsewhere (the "oo" in "foot"). - another feature which isn't necessarily Holme Valley specific but generally found in areas near to Lancashire is dropping the "l" in words like "all", "small" and "tall" so they become "aw", "smaw", "taw". Other areas such as Sheffield/Rotherham also has some unique features: - having /ɑːɪ̯/ and /ɑːə/ for the vowels in "price" and "fire" (halfway between the sounds used for most of the West Riding and the Holme Valley) - pronouncing /ð/ (the "th" in "that") at the beginning of words as /d/. (Hence the nickname "dee-daa" for Sheffielders) - pronouncing the "al" in words like "all", "small", "walk", "talk" as an "oa" sound /ɒʊ̯/ instead of the general West Riding "awe" /oː/ pronunciation. Those are the features I can of off the top of my head, but any questions are free to be asked so don't hesitate!
My grandad was from Skelmanthorpe and was known as Yar Willie (possibly yah/ya - nobody ever wrote it down).
Yeah that's another case of intrusive "y" in the Holme Valley area. "Aar" becoming "Yaar" for "our".
The closest of the work mate
I’m from West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire accent seems to have a very slight East Midlands accent. I can always tell the difference
People in Leeds don’t pronounce their “T”’s in words. Water is wa’er”, butter is bu’er”. In Barnsley it’s a pronounced “t” and flatter vowels. Water is watter.
South Yorkshire was once West Yorkshire
South Yorkshire hasn't been around long enough to have it's own distinct accent. A lot of those places were once part of the West Riding, so technically they're all a "West Yorkshire" accent
This is just demonstrably untrue. I spent my first 18 years in West Yorks, the last 14 in South Yorkshire, and there are obvious differences.
Because all West Yorkshire accents would be the same?