1. Yorkshire Accent

2. Accent Pronunciation • The Yorkshire dialect refers to the varieties of English used in the northern English county of Yorkshire. These varieties refer to themselves as Tyke, In some areas of Yorkshire. • Some features of northern English accents are also features of Yorkshire accents. For example Yorkshire speakers have short [a] in words like ‘bath’, ‘grass’, and ‘chance’, as opposed to the long [ɑː] of Received Pronunciation (RP). Yorkshire accents tend not to distinguish RP /ʌ/ and /ʊ/, making pairs of words like put and putt homophones, but parts of the East pronounce ‘put’ in an intermediate way between Standard English and the rest of the North. • Most Yorkshire accents are non-rhotic, but rhotic accents do exist in some areas that border with Lancashire. Much of the East is partially rhotic: a final ‘r’ on a word, as in ‘letter’, ‘hour’, and ‘quarter’, would be pronounced in a rhotic manner, but an ‘r’ mid-way through a word, as in ‘start’, ‘yard’, and ‘burn’ would be pronounced in a non-rhotic manner.

3. Other Features Include: • Vowels: In some areas, especially in the southern half of Yorkshire, there is a trend to pronounce the phoneme /aʊ/ (as in mouth) as a monophthong [aː], often represented with "ah", as in "dahn" for down, "sahth" for south. In these areas, the words out and art may be identical. • Consonants: In some areas, an originally voiced consonant followed by a voiceless one can be pronounced as voiceless. For example, Bradford may be pronounced [bɹatfəd], with [t] instead of the expected [d]. • Vocabulary And Grammar: Yorkshire dialect shares many features with other English dialects used in northern England or in Scotland : e.g. "Aye" for "Yes".

4. Conclusions • Many regional dialects are affected and eroded by the influence of Standard English, changes in society, movement of populations, the media and improvements in education. • But because so much of Yorkshire - and especially North Yorkshire - is rural and isolated, it has retained many traditional sayings and phrases. Perhaps this is why the Yorkshire dialect is so easy to caricature.