English in Derry

The city of Derry has a population of over 95,000 (1991 census) and is ethnically over 70% Catholic as opposed to Belfast which has a majority Protestant population. The designation Londonderry is a variant preferred by both Ulster Protestants and British commentators and goes back to a renaming of the city when London companies were commissioned with the task of transporting English settlers there at the beginning of the 17^th century. The city’s name is an Anglicization of Irish doire ‘oak-grove’, a common name, or element of name, in the north and south of the country.

There is a large degree of segregation in terms of residence for the two communities: east of the River Foyle, which divides the city, are found Protestants and west of the river is almost exclusively Catholic. The segregation increased greatly in the last 30 years because of the sectarian violence.

The only research on the English of Derry city is that of M-Cafferty, apart from one study of intonation in Derry. The city has a special status within Northern Ireland as it is on the one hand the second largest and on the other the only major city with a Catholic majority. It is understandable that it would receive innovations which arise in Belfast but also that the Catholic majority in the city might well show an inherent resistance to these. A number of changes are recorded for Derry which are listed in the following.

McCafferty (2001) maintains that there is a tendency for the SQUARE and NURSE lexical sets to merge, a feature spreading from the east of Northern Ireland and typical of the Protestant middle class. For this group a lack of quantity distinction with the NORTH and FORCE lexical set is also found. The shift of older [I] to  in the FACE class is taken to be characteristic of younger Protestants. Protestant changes are in general incoming innovations which are spreading from eastern Northern Ireland, i.e. from the Belfast conurbation. In this case the changes for the Protestants in Derry have arisen through a process of supraregionalization of Belfast innovations. The only leading change among the Catholics in Derry is the shift of intervocalic [ð] to a lateral [l]. The Protestants in Derry have no vernacular innovations of their own.