The subjects on phonology

Melchers’ focus is on distinctions between the phonology of Orkney (“Orcadian”) and Shetland, and also between their divergence from and correspondence to the accents of mainland Scotland. Amongst those accents, Stuart-Smith identifies a continuum corresponding to a phonological range available to very many in Scotland, whose speech ranges seamlessly between Scottish Standard English and Scots: as regards the latter, on grounds of population density and the existence of detailed research data, she concentrates on the Urban Scots of the ‘Central Belt’ around Edinburgh and (especially) Glasgow. In a opic which, concerning its northern data, relates very closely to that of Scotland, Hickey describes a complex of accents in which a north-south split provides a basic structure. He identifies a supraregional Southern accent and three regional southern varieties, distinguishing these from Northern varieties. He includes discussion of the complex terminology associated with northern variation, and three urban accents, those of Dublin, Belfast, and Derry. As Hickey’s chapter treats the admixture of English, Irish and Scots influences on the Irish English accents, so Penhallurick’s is concerned with the interface of English and Welsh in the phonology of Wales. Welsh sounds in English, the effects of long-established cultural links with the English Midlands and Southwest, and the existence of English as a Foreign Language for Welsh speakers are shown to be factors in the creation of the Principality’s distinctive English accents.

Directly across the border from Wales, Clark’s West Midlands is the second largest conurbation of England and the UK, home to the two distinct if closely-related accents of Birmingham and the Black Country. Concentration is on the Black Country on the one hand and on the wider West Midland conurbation on the other, with the various accents discussed as both distinctive and as collectively a Northern English variety. In a discussion of the Northern accents of England proper, Beal identifies pan-northern accent features, whilst pointing also to more locally distinctive characteristics, most especially though not exclusively those of the Northeast (‘Geordie’) and Liverpool (‘Scouse’). Altendorf and Watt, in their chapter on the phonology of southern England, divide their area firmly into east and west (the non-rhotic and rhotic areas respectively), and describe the distinctive characteristics of the accents of these areas quite separately. Whilst they regard East Anglia as part of the South they do not venture specifically into this region: features of the East Anglian accents, and their relation to those of surrounding areas to the south, west, and north, are the subject of Trudgill’s chapter Concluding the chapters which deal with the accents associated with specific geographical regions, Ramisch concentrates on the Channel Islands, where interaction with Channel Island (Norman) French and mainland immigrant English have both had an impact on distinctively local English pronunciation.

Descriptions of two non-regional accents round off the discussion of accents of the British Isles. The first is that of British Creole, an ethnic variety which, in Patrick’s words, ‘is the product of dialect contact between West Indian migrants … and vernacular varieties of urban English’. The second is Received Pronunciation (authored by Upton), an accent that is in essence unmarked for place and so attracts none of the (sometimes adverse) social judgements which regional accents attract, and that is, in consequence, frequently used in broadcasting and as a language-teaching model.