Yorkshire accent? | TheaterFire

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Ok-Exam6702@reddit

Accents in England are extremely variable. In Liverpool for instance, the local accent is called ‘Scouse’ which is a mix of people from Wales, Ireland and Scotland. In the mid-twentieth century it’s said some people could judge which individual street people lived on by their accent, not just the general area where they lived.

I would say generally in England local accents are gradually disappearing. For instance, I live in Devon and the local accent should be a West Country burr (think Thomas Hardy). Most people here under 40 however have a modern English accent from London and along the Thames which is over 200 miles away. Does this come from tv and media, I don’t know.

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Geejay-18@reddit

I'd say Scouse is really a west Lancashire accent with influences from Wales, Ireland, Scotland and maybe Scandinivia. It isn't a million miles away from the accents of places like Preston and Blackpool.

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Ok-Exam6702@reddit

Preston and Blackpool accents are totally, totally different. Have you heard them? Scouse is quite unique with the biggest influence being the huge influx of Irish people during the famine plus Welsh and yes Scandinavian from being a major port.

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Geejay-18@reddit

Yes, I've heard them, and I do think there's some similarity with Scouse. I think people often overstate the influence of the Irish, Welsh etc. on Scouse. It's hard to imagine that they changed the local accent completely. Also, no northern accent is 'totally, totally different' from any other - they all have some common ground.

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Ok-Exam6702@reddit

I think you need to study Liverpool’s history. From the beginning of the 19th century to the end the population grew from 70,000 to 500,000. That number of people didn’t exist in Lancashire, the vast majority came from Ireland escaping the dreadful famine with other people coming from Wales and Scotland. They swamped the local population. The Scouse accent drifts east to Warrington, but accents in Manchester or Blackpool are completely different. My family is as Scouse as they come and lived a stone’s throw from Anfield, my dad’s parents were from Irish and Scots families, both sides arriving in Liverpool in the mid-19th century, working on the docks or in the Royal Navy.

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ProfessionalEven296@reddit

For the Liverpool accent; the last time I spoke to someone not in my family from Liverpool was in 2007. We could both tell within 5 miles where we came from.

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Leading_Shock5840@reddit

Sean bean is from West Yorkshire and wuthering heights is in North Yorkshire and accents do vary

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Revolutionary-Key650@reddit

He was born in Sheffield which is South Yorkshire mate.

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Leading_Shock5840@reddit

My bad

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pab6407@reddit

Sheffield and Haworth are both West Riding, albeit Sheffield is at the bottom end and Haworth half way up.

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GingerWindsorSoup@reddit

Top Withins, Haworth is in the West Riding.

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Any-Republic-4269@reddit

Sheffield too is in the West Riding...

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Leading_Shock5840@reddit

Every day is a school day but it’s filmed partly in the dales which is North Yorkshire

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brickne3@reddit

Haworth is in West Yorkshire, Bean is from Barnsley which is South Yorkshire (although used to be West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire was created relatively recently).

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-CSL@reddit

Yorkshire has a population of 5-6 million so there are plenty of regional variations. That said, it's definitely changed over time. There were old folks when I was young that I struggled to understand, and I've heard much thicker accents still in older or rural recordings.

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-Tyler-505-@reddit

There isn’t just 1 Yorkshire accent. My Dad grew up 20 minutes away from where I live and his accent is noticeably different to mine, so it’s probably just a location thing.

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True-Boysenberry7308@reddit

yeah, a lot of towns and villages have their own twang in Yorkshire.

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StillJustJones@reddit

Just checking, seeing as we are talking about Yorkshire…. When you say ‘twang’ are you talking about their willy?

You know; ‘a lot of towns and villages in Yorkshire have their own t’wang?’

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Master-Narwhal-9101@reddit

No. T'wangs run the local chinese chippy. Lovely family.

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Master-Narwhal-9101@reddit

Except dewsbury. They durnt have an accent at all.

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gazwel@reddit

It's the same all over the UK to be honest, half an hour down the road and you can barely understand each other and have to revert to actual Engish.

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gazwel@reddit

From outside, I've noticed that Sheffield seems to have a bit of a softer accent than other Yorkshire ones.

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OsotoViking@reddit

I'm from Sheffield, and don't have a Yorkshire accent. Pretty much just speak RP, although I'm loathe to pronounce "bath" with a long vowel.

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FUCKFASCISTSCUM@reddit

Sheffield is the buffer zone between the Midlands and the North lol.

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Ok-Exam6702@reddit

Sheffield is the independent Republic of South Yorkshire.

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neilm1000@reddit

When I moved to Sheffield, I was taken aback by how broad some people were. Along with the local pronunciations. And then I realised that compared to, say, around Bridlington it was far softer.

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Nikotelec@reddit

I understand that Sheffield folk get a bit antsy if you call them soft southerners.

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Matchaparrot@reddit

This. I've been traced back to my hometown based on how I said certain words

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Super_Ground9690@reddit

This was even more the case back in the day, when people moved around a lot less. Local accents and dialects could be very different just from one village to the next. It’s fading over time, which is kind of a shame.

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Gauntlets28@reddit

Location, and probably generations as well. Language is still changing, albeit at a slower rate than it used to.

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spinningdice@reddit

Lol, I didn't think I had much of an accent, until a guy asked if I was from a particular town after a 10 minute phoncall. I left when I was like 7 (I'm still in West Yorkshire, but still).

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AwkwardTie9427@reddit

Northern and Eastern Yorkshire dialects can be rough lol

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Shawn_The_Sheep777@reddit

People didn’t use to travel. They were born, lived,worked and died in the same town or village. There are hundreds of accents in the uk as a result. I live in Barnsley. Sheffield (where Sean Bean was born) is only 15 miles away and yet our accents are noticeably different. Accents are less strong now than they were when I grew up. My grandparents used to say Thee and tha for your and you. People rarely do that anymore. The reason? Travel, education and television

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Equal_Veterinarian22@reddit

Thee and tha (thou) would both be 'you' - they're different cases like 'me' and 'I'. Thy is 'your'.

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Shawn_The_Sheep777@reddit

They pronounced it Thee or thi

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Equal_Veterinarian22@reddit

Ah, right. As in "Get thi'arse off t'settee"

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Dalesman17@reddit

For us it would be off settee. We shorten to not the. Eg I'm off t' shop.

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HalfAgony-HalfHope@reddit

They're saying what their Grandparents said though, not what the actual meaning is.

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Dalesman17@reddit

Haworth is in Keighley, and we sound nothing at all like people from Sheffield. In the 19th century, that difference would have been greater as there was no mass media influence softening accents.

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masked_gecko@reddit

Apologies for being a bit late, but I've answered this question before in r/books:

There's an online archive of English dialects. I think the closest male Yorkshire accent England 56, although it's obviously way more modern and less broad than Joseph's. Worth listening to England 55 too - although she's a woman, being 91 at the time of recording her accent is the closest

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brickne3@reddit

England 56 doesn't sound much different from tons of people I talk to in the pub all over West Yorkshire, interesting.

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annnnnnaaaa5623@reddit

Joseph spoke a version of broad Yorkshire, which is more a dialect than an accent

My grandad grew up speaking broad Yorkshire but code switched to standard English with a Yorkshire accent to get ahead at work

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snapper1971@reddit

You skipped over parts because of the way it was written.

It's a bold strategy with that work. A bit like going to the cinema and leaving every time there's a scene outdoors. You'll get the gist of the story but not the full picture.

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BillyJoeDubuluw@reddit

I haven’t seen the new movie yet I’ve just been quietly watching TikTok blow up with various Kate Bush samples as a result of it, but growing up on the “frontier” of Lancashire and Yorkshire I can very confidently tell you that the next town down the road can almost have an entirely different dialect from the one you’re in.

There absolutely isn’t a singular Yorkshire accent and, to be honest, you would probably struggle to tune in to some of the more authentic and broad accents of the older folk…

Yorkshire is a big place in British terms… and the largest county in the country… It’s almost “the London of the Shires” in terms of how diverse it actually is.

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vastaril@reddit

It's not just an accent, it's a dialect (well, the line between those can be tricky to define, but...) - that is to say, he isn't saying "standard" words and phrases but with spelling changed to indicate "non-standard" pronunciation, he's also using "non-standard" words and iirc sentence structure, on top of the whole book obviously being written ~175 years ago and set even earlier. I can more or less understand the gist of most of his dialogue, but this is a really helpful site:

https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/josephs-speech

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TheBladesAurus@reddit

Have a look at the "In this collection" tab here, too see some of the Yorkshire accents https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/414942/english_dialect_sound_recordings_england_and_wale

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Useful_Tear1355@reddit

My sister in law grew up a 20 minute drive up the exact same main road that we grew up on - her accent is significantly different. It’s just one of those things!!

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justeUnMec@reddit

Worth noting the Brontes were from Haworth in North West Yorkshire; Sean Bean is from Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, and an actor with a decent range of accents but one who will have scripts that will have more standard dialect to ensure speach is intelligible to audience in film while retaining accent. Yorkshire spans across a big chunk of England with multiple major cities, and the regions all have distinctive accents. I can't think of any actors that an american might know from the area, maybe Jodie Whitaker is from a bit closer.

There is a class dimension to accent, and the author may well have caricatured lower class accents to an extent, to emphasise the otherness or status of a servant but also the wildness and rustic themes of the story.

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EUskeptik@reddit

You should not regard Sean Bean’s Yorkshire accent as any kind of gold standard.

-oo-

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justeUnMec@reddit

Worth noting the Brontes were from Haworth in West Yorkshire, but Wuthering Heights is set further East toward the North Sea, in the moors which would be distinctive. Yorkshire spans across a big chunk of England with multiple major cities, and the regions all have distinctive accents. Remember, there is a class dimension to accent, and the author may well have caricatured lower class accents to an extent, to emphasise the otherness or status of a servant but also the wildness and rustic themes of the story.

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Boring-Print9058@reddit

Haworth was a very poor and pretty insular place at the time of the Brontes. Up until the industrial revolution, I doubt the inflow was greater than those leaving because it was a miserable place to live.

I'm the 5th generation who was born and brought up in Haworth/Stanbury. My accent's pretty generic northern English these days.

My mum and her family were probably far closer in dialect to what it sounded like in the time of the Brontes. I've heard thicker Yorkshire accents in North Yorks, but when my mum, her siblings and my gran got together when I was a small kid I couldn't always grasp what they were talking about (because my mum probably toned it down at home as my dad was an offcumden from that county we don't talk about).

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Forsaken-Tennis-5921@reddit

I think a lot comes down to the difference between dialect and accent though? I.e. Joseph speaks in a dialect so he's going to be harder for all to understand

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Automatic-Plan-9087@reddit

Strange thing, the Yorkshire accent. As others have rightly pointed out there is a variation for every town and village. From the dour grunts of North Yorkshire farmers to the ee bah gummers of Barnslaria and surrounds, they’re all music to my ears. Weirdly, as an ex resident of Bradistan, I thought I spoke with a BBC 1950’s newsreaders accent. Apparently I’m mistaken. Or so it would seem by those so called friends rolling around laughing at the suggestion.

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Automatic-Plan-9087@reddit

Can someone explain why it’s Shawn Been and not Seen Been or Shawn Bawn?

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Away-Ad4393@reddit

Sean is an Irish name and pronouns Shaun

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ionthedonut@reddit

Hi parents named him Shaun Bean and he changed it to Sean Bean, presumably for a laugh.

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Automatic-Plan-9087@reddit

TIL thanks for the explanation 😁👍

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Cheap-Vegetable-4317@reddit

Sean Bean I'd from Nottingham.

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Cheap-Vegetable-4317@reddit

Oh alright everyone, I thought he was from Nottingham, sorry.

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boatson25@reddit

It always baffles me when someone can be so confident in correcting others when they are so, so wrong themselves.

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Cheap-Vegetable-4317@reddit

Oh really, you're baffled that I thought he was born 9 miles away from where he was actually born, which is where Nottinghamshire begins?

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boatson25@reddit

Yeah I am.

Sean Bean is very famously a Yorkshireman.

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Cheap-Vegetable-4317@reddit

Obviously not so famously cos I though he was born in Nottinghamshire.

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No_Election_1123@reddit

Sean Bean was born in Handsworth In Sheffield and attended school in Handsworth then went to Rotherham College of Arts and Technical

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True-Boysenberry7308@reddit

thought he was from Sheffield. I met his mam once. 😁

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WeDoingThisAgainRWe@reddit

r/confidentlywrong

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skrew86@reddit

No he wasn't.

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Irksomecake@reddit

No, he’s from Sheffield. He has a Sheffield accent. Sheffield is in South Yorkshire and has its own distinct accent

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MountainDapper167@reddit

Sean Bean is (famously) from Sheffield in South Yorkshire.

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sbaldrick33@reddit

Which Yorkshire accent?

Baarnsleh? Oodezfield? Sheffieeeeeld? Yark?

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Revolutionary-Key650@reddit

I'm from Cleckudderfaxfield AMA.

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Icy_Ear7079@reddit

*uddersfield. Nobody sez oode, and York would be yohrrk.

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herwiththepurplehair@reddit

Tennyson's Northern Farmer (Old Style) was published in 1864, and Northern Farmer (New Style), in 1869. These are both written in Lincolnshire dialect, the first in a much older way of speaking and the second in the style that was current in the mid-1800s. It's very distinctly different from the Lincolnshire accent today, even among those who are broad speakers (not all that many of those left sadly).

The advent of radio, television and film has muted our accents greatly, as has the fact that most of us travel further than the confines of the village, town or city in which we grew up (my maternal grandfather never lived more than 10 miles from where he was born his whole life, and very seldom travelled; I on the other hand live the other end of the country and have done for 27 years). The advent of the telephone has done even more "damage", as we have to speak clearly to the person on the other end in order to be understood.

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BaddyWrongLegs@reddit

Also how you write someone else's accent will depend on yours, as essentially what you're doing is writing the difference between how they speak and what you think of as "normal", which is shaped by your own accent. For example, to emphasise accent an American writer might write how the English say "duty" as "dyoo'y" while an English writer might write an American saying it as "doody".

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loranlily@reddit

Accents have huge variation in the UK. I’m from Nottingham, and I have a similar, but noticeably different, accent to my dad, who was born and raised in Derby. The distance between the two places is 13 miles.

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FUCKFASCISTSCUM@reddit

I'm from a small village near Notts and my partner is from a small village right on the Derby border and we have very different accents and even slightly different dialects lol.

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loranlily@reddit

Haha I grew up in Hucknall and Bingham, and my dad is from Spondon. So many differences in our vocabulary! I’m married to an American and I find it hilarious how many “Nottingham” words and phrases he knows now. He can also tell when I’ve been talking to my parents, because my Notts accent comes out haha.

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MrTea1976@reddit

My mum grew up in Selston and Jacksdale, my dad Bulwell. Their accents are definitely different. Not big differences, but still...

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Kremm0@reddit

I'd love to imagine a version where he's got a Hull accent!

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Langholm62@reddit

Sean Bean is from Sheffield and the Brontës lived in Haworth which is quite a different accent both now and probably then too

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VastOpinion6020@reddit

In the era of Wuthering Heights and earlier, it’s likely that any strong Yorkshire accent wouldve been fully rhotic (so the Rs would be pronounced in ‘farmer’ like in most of the US, Scotland, Ireland etc).

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Fantastic-Speech-438@reddit

The Yorkshire accent varies town by town and village by village. For an extreme example, compare someone from Middlesbrough to Sheffield and you will see a noticeable difference. Combining North, South, East and West, Yorkshire as a region is the biggest in England (and the best 😉).

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MerlinMusic@reddit

Sean Bean has a fairly mild Yorkshire accent. There is a spectrum in Yorkshire from broad Yorkshire dialect to a more standard English with a slight Yorkshire accent. Over time, it's not necessarily that the accents have changed all that much, but that people have shifted along that spectrum away from broad dialect and towards standard Southern English.

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EldritchSanta@reddit

Hard to say, and maybe someone here can give you a better wander, but bear in mind that there's several localised versions of Yorkshire accents in the modern world.

Comparing Sean Bean's accent to a different part of Yorkshire plus a different time period isn't comparing like for like.

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Interceptor@reddit

Slightly less travel and exposure to different accents back when it was written, so regional accents tended to be stronger, and have mellowed over time. As another example, I'm originally from Dorset on the south coast, if you. Ever read Thomas Hardy, the written accents are extremely thick, but nowadays have softened. A lot to a slight burr. It's just a bit more travel, some immigration, and modern media exposure over time.