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Origins of the Brummie accent

  • Thread starter Thread starter Seabird
  • Start date Start date
DavidGrain said:
I had not heard the word snicket before. When I was describing the Back-to-backs to a friend from Liverpool she said 'so there's no ginnel behind them?'.

This is a quote from Wikipedia.
Informants from the north west of England speak up in favour of the snicket, a noun of uncertain origin first recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in a Victorian glossary of the dialect of the Lake District. Another term, ginnel, is also widely used in Greater Manchester and parts of Yorkshire.

I once lead a walk through what I have called the 'alleyway' and at the end of the walk, the walks programme organiser in thanking me said. 'We have walked through some narrow gullies and some long gullies but that was the longest, narrowest gulley we have been through'.

I shall copy this post to the Alleywaya thread
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"Ginnel" is used here in South Cheshire too.
Scousers I have known called a back alley a "Jigger".
I've never heard the word "Snicket" before either.
 
A late cousin from Malvern said Gullet. For a narrow passage. Lemony Snicket is a charachter in a childrens' book I think.
 
Booful on the mountain top Baz as Nan would have said. Even escaped the queues! I missed you too.
I just looked on a site by chance calle NY Times British Irish Dialect Quiz. Quite lengthy but it dedied that I come from Birmingham! After 2 attempts for it though. I think the 3 hairnets threw them. But..... one of the questions was What do I call a passage at the back of houses and one of the option was Snicket, but it doesn't tell you of course where it originates from.
 
Big Gee said:
Anyone who ever tried to wade through Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" in the original Middle English might be interested to know that according to some scholars this was essentially a West Midlands dialect. Chaucer could only approximate in the written word the pronunciation of the dialect he was writing. I did spend a couple of years at college studying English Literature, especially older literature, and our lecturer used to recite Chaucer in a distinctive Brummie accent, and it sounded great. How authentic this was, of course there's no way of knowing.

It always annoys me when non-Midlands people confuse the Brummie accent with Black Country, which as JohnO says is harsher than Brummie. I think that there is a distinctive difference in accents north and south of the Trent, which in earlier times was the effective border between Danish and English (Anglo Saxon) peoples. North of the Trent you feel like you're in Yorkshire (even though you might be in Nottinghamshire), whereas south of the Trent you know you're getting closer to home and Villa supporters.

Big Gee
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I have nothing to do with Birmingham but I absolutely concur with the north and south of the trent theory as someone who grew up in North Lincs, then Yorkshire and went to Uni in Leicester. While at Uni I worked Part-Time at McD's and I would get the mick taken out of me by the locals for how I pronounced my U's as hard U rather than a softer Uh in words like buns for example. When they first noticed they reacted like I'd grown up in a different Country and not 80 miles north!

Some of my local friends would even go as far as almost saying 'ah' instead of 'uh' in words like shut up (shaht-ahp) which having grown up around the time TOWIE came out it always made me think the Leicester accent was similar to the Essex accent. The best part of it all is that I'm originally from Portugal and came to the UK when I was 9, it was baffling to me that accents could be so different 80 miles apart
 
vilk95 said:
I have nothing to do with Birmingham but I absolutely concur with the north and south of the trent theory as someone who grew up in North Lincs, then Yorkshire and went to Uni in Leicester. While at Uni I worked Part-Time at McD's and I would get the mick taken out of me by the locals for how I pronounced my U's as hard U rather than a softer Uh in words like buns for example. When they first noticed they reacted like I'd grown up in a different Country and not 80 miles north!

Some of my local friends would even go as far as almost saying 'ah' instead of 'uh' in words like shut up (shaht-ahp) which having grown up around the time TOWIE came out it always made me think the Leicester accent was similar to the Essex accent. The best part of it all is that I'm originally from Portugal and came to the UK when I was 9, it was baffling to me that accents could be so different 80 miles apart
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A Sparks said:
Yes, it's amazing how our small island has so many different accents!
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I made a new friend last year who is Yorkshire born and bread. I was only in Birmingham for a matter of weeks and was raised in Coventry. He said, jokingly, that that Yorkshire people perceive Brummies to be thick, because of their accent. I replied that it's funny he should say that as we think Yorkshire people are thick for the same reason. My dad used to put on a Yorkshire accent and say Heh bah gum stick TH A Ar fingers up TH Ar tiddly um pum, to the tune of aint she sweet, when he heard a northern voice., My Dublin mate worked with a northern chap who liked to tell the tale, and his colleagues would imitate him, saying here he goes again the dee war brook out,,, but I do feel a slight inclination to wrongly judge people on their accents, I could name several. I hope you get the gist of this I have put some in caps as the Mac keeps amending the dialect. !!!
 
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