Brummie dialect

Speech example

An example of a male speaker from Moseley, Birmingham (Carl Chinn).

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Speech example

An example of a male speaker from Handsworth, Birmingham (Benjamin Zephaniah).

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The Brummie dialect, or more formally the Birmingham dialect, is spoken by many people in Birmingham, England, and some of its surrounding area. "Brummie" is also a demonym for people from Birmingham. It is often erroneously used in referring to all accents of the West Midlands,^[1] as it is markedly distinct from the traditional accent of the adjacent Black Country, but modern-day population mobility has tended to blur the distinction. Population mobility has meant that to a degree, the Brummie accent extends into some parts of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, but much of the accent within the borough might be considered to be closer to contemporary Received Pronunciation (RP).

The term Brummie derives from Brummagem or Bromwichham, which are historical variants of the name Birmingham.^[2]

The strength of a person's accent can vary greatly all across Birmingham.^[1] As with most cities, the local accent changes relative to the area of the city in question. A common misconception is that everyone in Birmingham speaks the same accent. It could be argued that Brummie is an accent rather than a dialect as opposed to Black Country speech, which is a dialect with unique words and phrases, such as "owamya?" for how are you, which, many comment, is not used in Brummie speech. Similarly, Brummies generally use the word I while pronouncing it as 'oy', whereas Black Country natives instead use the dialectal term 'Ah', as in 'Ah bin', meaning I have been.

Thorne (2003) has said that the accent is "a dialectal hybrid of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire speech", also with elements from the languages and dialects of its Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities.

There are also differences between Brummie and Black Country accents, which are not readily apparent to people from outside the West Midlands.^[1] A Black Country accent and a Birmingham accent can be hard to distinguish if neither accent is that broad. Phonetician John Wells has admitted that he cannot tell any difference between the accents.^[3]

Rhymes and vocabulary in the works of William Shakespeare suggest that he used a local dialect, with many historians and scholars arguing that Shakespeare used a Stratford-upon-Avon, Brummie, Cotswold, Warwickshire or other Midlands dialect in his work.^[4] However, the veracity of this assertion is not accepted by all historians,^[5] and his accent would certainly have been entirely distinct from any modern English accent, including any modern Midlands accent.^[6]

According to Thorne (2003), among UK listeners "Birmingham English in previous academic studies and opinion polls consistently fares as the most disfavoured variety of British English, yet with no satisfying account of the dislike". He alleges that overseas visitors, in contrast, find it "lilting and melodious", and from this claims that such dislike is driven by various linguistic myths and social factors peculiar to the UK ("social snobbery, negative media stereotyping, the poor public image of the City of Birmingham, and the north/south geographical and linguistic divide").

For instance, despite the city's cultural and innovative history, its industrial background (as depicted by the arm-and-hammer in Birmingham's coat of arms) has led to a muscular and unintelligent stereotype: a "Brummagem screwdriver" is UK slang for a hammer.^[7]

Thorne also cites the mass media and entertainment industry where actors, usually non-Birmingham, have used inaccurate accents and/or portrayed negative roles.

Advertisements are another medium where many perceive stereotypes. Journalist Lydia Stockdale, writing in the Birmingham Post, commented on advertisers' association of Birmingham accents with pigs: the pig in the ad for Colman's Potato Bakes, Nick Park's Hells Angel Pigs for British Gas, the puppet simply known as Pig from Pipkins and ITV's "Dave the window-cleaner pig" all had Brummie accents.^[8] In 2003, a Halifax bank advertisement featuring Howard Brown, a Birmingham-born and -based employee, was replaced by an animated version with an exaggerated comical accent overdubbed by a Cockney actor.^[9]

*In Brummie, some SQUARE words have shifted to the NEAR lexical set, such as there and where, which are thus pronounced as /ðɪə/ and /wɪə/ instead of /ðɛə/ and /wɛə/, respectively.

Urszula Clark has proposed the FACE vowel as a difference between Birmingham and Black Country pronunciation, with Birmingham speakers using /ʌɪ/ and Black Country speakers using /æɪ/.^[10] She also mentions that Black Country speakers are more likely to use /ɪʊ/ where most other accents use /juː/ (in words such as new, Hugh, stew, etc.).^[11] This /ɪʊ/ is also present in some North American dialects for words like ew, grew, new, due, etc., contrasting with /u/ (words like boo, zoo, to, too, moon, doom, etc.). Other North American dialects may use /ju/ for this purpose, or even make no distinction at all.

Below are some common features of a recognisable Brummie accent (a given speaker may not necessarily use all, or use a feature consistently). The letters enclosed in square brackets – [] – use the International Phonetic Alphabet. The corresponding example words in italics are spelt so that a reader using Received Pronunciation (RP) can approximate the sounds.

• The vowel of mouth (RP [aʊ]) can be [æʊ] or [æə]
• The vowel of goat (RP [əʊ]) can be close to [ɑʊ] (so to an RP speaker, goat may sound like "gout")
• Final unstressed /i/, as in happy, may be realised as [əi], though this varies considerably between speakers
• In Birmingham, STRUT and FOOT may either be distinguished or merged. If the two vowels merge, they are pronounced either as [ɤ] or [ʊ], as in northern England—see foot–strut split.

• 

  The majority of Brummies use the Northern [a] in words like bath, cast and chance, although the South-Eastern [ɑː] is more common amongst older speakers.^[12]
• The vowels in price and choice may be almost merged as [ɒɪ] so that the two words would almost rhyme. However, the two are still distinct, unlike in the Black Country dialect.
• In more old-fashioned Brummie accents, the FORCE set of words takes [ʌʊə] and the PURE set takes [uːə~ʊə], so both sets were in two syllables in broad transcription. In such an old-fashioned accent, the words paw, pour and poor would all be said differently: [pɔː], [pʌʊə], [puːə]. In more modern accents, all three are said as [pɔː].^[13]
• Final unstressed /ə/ may be realised as [a]
• The letters ng often represent /ŋɡ/ where RP has just /ŋ/ (e.g. singer as [ˈsiŋɡɐ], Birmingham as [ˈbɘ̝͗ːmiŋɡəm])—see NG-coalescence.
• /r/ is not pronounced except when prevocalic (followed by a vowel); the Brummie accent, as an urban accent of the West Midlands region, is characteristically non-rhotic. The use of linking R and intrusive R in Birmingham and the rest of the urban West Midlands region is practically universal.^[14][15][16]
• Some tapping of prevocalic /r/ (some speakers; e.g. in crime or there is)
• In a few cases, voicing of final /s/ (e.g. bus as [bʊz])

Recordings of Brummie speakers with phonetic features described in SAMPA format can be found at the Collect Britain dialects site.^[17]

According to the PhD thesis of Steve Thorne at the University of Birmingham's Department of English,^[18] Birmingham English is "a dialectal hybrid of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire speech" also containing elements from the languages and dialects of its Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities.

Traditional expressions used in Brummie speech include:^[19]

Babby

variation of "baby"

Bab

variation of "babe"

Bawlin, bawl

to weep, as in "She started to bawl" (not unique to Birmingham, common in other parts of England, Canada, Australia and South Africa)

Bottler

a popular and enjoyable song

Blart

to weep/cry

Cob

a crusty bread roll (originates from the idea that bread rolls look like street cobbles and may be as hard as one; soft bread rolls are known as rolls or baps)

Each

everyone (as in "Good evening each")

Fock

a milder and more nuanced version of the swear word fuck

Gambol

a West Midlands term for a forward roll

Go and play up your own end

said to children from a different street than one's own that are making a nuisance of themselves. Used as the title of the autobiographical book and musical play about the Birmingham childhood of radio presenter and entertainer Malcolm Stent

Mom

a common variation of the word "Mum" (also common in the United States, South Africa and elsewhere)

Our kid

used to refer to siblings (as in "Our kid fell off his bike.") Also commonly used in the north of England

Our wench

an affectionate term meaning "one's sister", also used sometimes by husbands referring to their wives. Derived from the word "wench"'s older 16th- and 17th-century meaning of "young woman"

The outdoor

an exclusively West Midlands term for the off-licence, or liquor store

Pop

another word for a carbonated drink, e.g. "Do you want a glass of pop?" (common in other parts of Great Britain, as well as in Canada and parts of the United States)

Snap

food, a meal, allegedly derived from the act of eating itself (usage example: "I'm off to get my snap" equates to "I'm leaving to get my dinner"). May also refer to the tin containing lunch, a "snap tin", as taken down into the pit by miners

Scrage

a scratched cut where skin is sliced off (example, used as a verb: "I fell over and badly scraged my knee")

Suff

another word for a drain, as in the phrase "put it down the suff"

Throw a wobbly

to become sulky or have a tantrum (not unique to Birmingham; also common in England, Australia and South Africa)

Trap

to leave suddenly or flee

Up the cut

up the canal (not unique to Birmingham)

Yampy

mad, daft, barmy. Many from the Black Country believe "yampy" originates from the Dudley-Tipton area of their region, with the word also being appropriated and claimed as their own by speakers of both Birmingham and Coventry dialects. However, usage of the word is, in fact, found in areas of the Black Country both outside Birmingham and Tipton/Dudley, including areas of south Staffordshire and north Worcestershire; therefore, the term might have originated throughout a more general zone than is popularly thought.

Examples of speakers of the Brummie dialect include TV presenter Adrian Chiles, singer/musician Christine McVie, comedian Jasper Carrott, Goodies actor and TV presenter Bill Oddie, hip-hop and garage musician Mike Skinner, rock musicians Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward (all members of the original Black Sabbath), Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne (ELO founders), and Dave Pegg (of Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull), broadcaster Les Ross, politicians Clare Short and Jess Phillips, SAS soldier and author John "Brummie" Stokes, TV presenter Alison Hammond, internet meme Danny G, and many actresses and actors, including Martha Howe-Douglas, Donnaleigh Bailey, Nicolas Woodman, Julie Walters, Cat Deeley, Sarah Smart, Felicity Jones, footballer Jack Grealish, John Oliver and Ryan Cartwright.

• Black Country dialect
• Potteries dialect (North Staffordshire)

• Talk Like A Brummie A wiki-based Birmingham dialect dictionary
• ebrummie.co.uk Dr Steve Thorne's website devoted to the study of Brummie, including a dictionary, MP3 speech samples, discussion of his research on stereotypes, etc.
• Birmingham English sample using a test paragraph including most English sounds: George Mason University Speech Accent Archive. Compare a Dudley (Black Country) sample
• Sounds Familiar? Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
• Why Brummies Why not Birmies? Etymological article by Dr Carl Chinn
• Paul Henry on Benny's accent Noele Gordon and Crossroads Appreciation Society interview
• English Accents and Dialects, British Library: Sue Long, Aubrey Walton, Harry Phillips and Billy Lucas.