Author Topic: The real difference between Birmingham and the Black country accent/Cannock etc  (Read 32316 times)

wooo

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Hi Wooo
 
Very interesting as I have said previously  being used to hearing the local accent all the time, we tend not to discern it. Though out of the three Birmingham accents recorded there I would have to say that the young lady from Rubery sounded more like the brummies I am used to hearing. Also I think that you would need to be hard of hearing not to note the difference between black country and brummie.
 
You know I think all this accent thing, has quite a lot to do with your family background and history and how your parents speak. When I returned from Scotland at five years of age after two years living there, I had such a broad Scottish accent that no one could understand me. I have no trace of that accent left now. Perhaps this is why I have no discernible brummie accent (or so I'm told).
 
Phil
Yeah, I think the accents you pick up on later on in life, you generally lose after you move away from the place you moved to. Did you move back to Birmingham after then?


Thankyou Wooo,
                     I think you have solved one of my family mysteries. I posted the bonfire pic on the Nechells thread recently and we couldn't figure what it was all about. The other pic of a party in a back garden is off the same reel of film as it's the same size and carries the same serial number on the back.
 Listening to the Brummy accent of Aubrey Walton on the links you posted seem to have cracked it as he describes the street bonfires and parties that went on, on VE Day.
 I also recall my Mum saying they were dancing on the tables in the pubs that night.
Very interesting! Nice to know I helped

Phil

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Yeah, I think the accents you pick up on later on in life, you generally lose after you move away from the place you moved to. Did you move back to Birmingham after then?

Hi wooo
 
Yes I have lived in Birmingham since then, although I did move around England in my teen years. I always returned to Birmingham, perhaps this explains my lack of accent. Though in reality I would think there is very little chance of there being any discernible Birmingham accent these days as the city is far too cosmopolitan for an accent to take hold.
 
Phil
Phil died in 2020. RIP.

plod

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when i were a lad back in the sixties living in handsworth and hanging around there and winson green i can remember the olduns speaking in a strong accent. you would be hard pressed to tell it from the west brom accent nowadays.
my mom was from west brom and would give me hell if i spoke with much of an accent!

Anne from Stirchley

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I doubt that I still have a Brummie accent after so many years away, but if I had a dollar for every time someone has told me I have a beautiful voice, I would be a billionaire by now.

wooo

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Thanks for all the responses everyone.

One of the main reasons i made this thread is because of where i'm from - as i said i live in south staffordshire, around areas like Burntwood, some people have very broad accents yet i can't actually tell very well if it's closer to brummie or black country, as it seems to vary - it's neither really, just very 'midlands' sounding. Especially Cannock, but I think that the accent there is closer to black country. Anyone live round here?

Lee308

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I believe that the black country accent will die out as 1) communities are broken up as the young are forced to leave to find jobs. 2) as it becomes less common people will be forced to drop it to avoid ridicule and to gain work. You can spout all you like about diversity and inclusion but the day we get a prime minister sounding like they come from wrens nest is the day hell freezes over. The accent itself, IMHO, is ridiculed not because the people are deficient but because the area is and will always be associated with the industrial past which is an era many people outside the area don't want to be reminded of. People are ashamed of hard physical graft,manual skills and dirty-hands jobs nowadays. It will be a sad day when it goes. one more thing thrown away for good in the space of three generations and that ay good!

Phil

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True words Lee, how strange that people who tell us that there is no class system anymore are all members of the upper class. I just wonder how many of the working class have been members of The Bullingdon Club.
Phil died in 2020. RIP.

Akatarawa

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My Mum and Dad were born in pretty much the heart of Brum, Belmont Row and King Edwards Road, so I had a Brum accent. However we moved to Langley near Oldbury around October 1945, and the boys at school poked fun at my accent, and I found some things hard to understand.

Years later having now acquired a mixture of Brum and Black Country I used to go down to Old Hill where Tom Sommerton the Vincent man had a bike sales and workshop.

The people around there, only about a couple of miles or so away, spoke yet another language, a mixture of Black Country and Old English.  I found it very hard to understand at times.

Coley221

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RIP the regional accent. Not long for this world. That's globalisation for you....


My favourite take on the Brum/Black country accent issue was from Lenny Henry who once said;


People from Dudley say 'Yam gooing down the pub.' Whereas people from Birmingham say, 'Can I come?'

Akatarawa

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Now if only Enoch had become Prime Minister...............

maggie

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My daughter reckons my accent is strong and very
Brummie, yet other people have asked do you come from ............ I reckon Brummies have a
very nasal way of speaking and could,nt care less
if I am or not exactly the same, hearing a tape
I sounded rather quiet and husky voiced,maybe we all in our own way invent a new accent which others
pick up on... Usn am fair to middling bur cud
be bostin later
do unto others as you would be done by


 

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