Mancunian - Manchester Accent

Manchester Accent

The Manchester accent, or Mancunian as it is called is the dialect of english spoken by people from manchester and surrounding parts of northern england. Historically this accent originally developed from the vast influx of immigrants, particularly Irish, introduced to the city during the industrial revolution.

A major feature of the Mancunian accent is the over-enunciation of vowel sounds.This is also noticeable with words ending in such as tenner. The dipthong in words like kite and ride is lengthened so that kite can become something like IPA ka:ɪt (i.e. it sounds a bit like “kaaaait”)

SOUNDS

/‘ʊ’ and ‘ʌ’ /

For many Manchester speakers words such as put, could, foot, hut, cud, putt all have a vowel between ‘ʊ’ and ‘ʌ’ [pic 1][pic 2][pic 3][pic 4]

• The vowels in foot and could are pronounced with the same sound as in strut and fudge.

 /ʊə/

This vowel historically is merging with the /ɔː/. It might still be found for some speakers in a few words, possibly, for example:

sure,cure

tour

poor

between /a and ʌ/

cat bath clap grass mad ask, last, that, manchester, family

ham castle man after maths branch gas dance thank answer lamp example

laugh draughts aunt

/ɑː/

car palm father start calm rather garden half tomato

heart

clerk sergeant

sharp farm party

banana

/ɒ/

lot one stop nothing doll none off once gone

swan sausage was cauliflower what wash want squabble salt

/uː/

tune blue rude true huge clue rule

soon moon cool food loop room

do group new to wound few who flew crew

/ɒʊ/ dipthong

In Aussie tongue ‘ow’ at the end of meadow for example we use the diphthong əʊ (vowel in ‘home’). Manc people will use ɒʊ instead.

e.g. mellow, fellow, cello

/əi/ dipthong

This sound replaces the aɪ (buy) sound Aussies pronounce with Mancy ‘əi’. Its placement is at the back of the mouth (as is a lot of the placement for speaking this accent, think yodelling!)

e.g. kind, blind

/ɛː/

This sound replaces ‘ei’ (bay) which we pronounce to ɛː (behhhht)

greater, bait, wasted —> grɛːtə, bɛːt, wɛːstət

Stressed and unstressed vowels:

In unstressed prefixes such as con- (com-), ex- and ad-, a full rather than a reduced vowel would tend to be used:

/ɒ/ (rather than /ə/) in computer, confirm /e/ (rather than /ɪ/) in examine, experiment /a/ (rather than /ə/) in advantage, advice

unstressed final /ɪ/:

An /ɪ/ is used in words ending in (or ), where the

vowel is unstressed and with no consonant following.

E.g. lovely, busy, coffee and the ‘-ly’ suffix in happily

CONSONANTS

• Dark L sound e.g. galoshes         
• there may be no /h/ phoneme, so that words such as hat, happy, hear, hurriedly, have no /h/ at the start i.e. hanging —> ‘angin'
• "g" at the ends of words isn't pronounced i.e. hanging becomes ‘angin’

• The sequence of letters would for Aussie speakers often or always represent /ŋ/ in words e.g. sing, rang, song, singer, singing, humming.

    In Mancunian this sound is /ŋg/

/sɪŋɡ/

/raŋɡ/

/sɒŋɡ/

/sɪŋɡə/

/sɪŋɡɪŋɡ / (or /sɪŋɡɪn/) /hʊmɪŋɡ/(or/ʊmɪn/)

This may also be the case before another consonant sound: thus ‘sings’ may be /sɪŋɡz/ or /sɪŋz/.

GLOTTAL REINFORCEMENTS

The Manchester area is known for glottal reinforcement of the consonants /k/, /p/ and /t/. Voiced consonants change into voiceless consonants in words such as Bradford /ˈbratfəd/, subcommittee /sʊpkəˈmɪtɪ/ and frogspawn /ˈfrɒkspɔːn/.

• The sound of "th" is often pronounced "f" or "v" since it's faster and easier.

• ’t' is not pronounced at the ends of words (‘about’ becomes ‘abao’).

• ’t' s in the middle of words are pronounced with a glottal stop (‘letter’ becomes le'ah). A glottal stop is performed by stopping the the airflow in the back of your mouth which creates the same sound as "uh-oh!" when something bad is going to happen e.g. water —> wa’uh

• Non-rhoticity, the "r" at the ends of words isn't pronounced (a tenner becomes a tennah’).

Mancunian accent example:

...