The dialect of East Anglia: phonology

East Anglia

As a modern topographical and cultural term, East Anglia refers to an area with no official status. Like similar terms such as “The Midlands” or “The Midwest”, the term is widely understood but stands for an area which has no clear boundaries. Most people would agree that the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk are prototypically East Anglian, although even here the status of the Fenland areas of western Norfolk and northwestern Suffolk is ambiguous: the Fens were for the most part uninhabited until the 17^th century, and the cultural orientations of this area are therefore less clear. The main issue, however, has to do with the extent to which the neighboring counties, notably Cambridgeshire and Essex, are East Anglian or not.

Historically, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia was bordered in the south by the river Stour, and in the west by the Ouse, the Lark and the Kennett, thus leaving the Newmarket and Haverhill areas of Suffolk, from a modern perspective, on the ‘wrong’ side of the border. The Kingdom later expanded further west, however, up to the River Cam; Anglo-Saxon East Anglia at its greatest extent therefore consisted of the habitable parts of Norfolk and Suffolk plus eastern Cambridgeshire.

East Anglian English has probably always been a distinctive area. Fisiak (2001) discusses its distinctive character in Old English and Middle English times. It has also played an important role in the history of the language. If it is accepted that the English language came into being when West Germanic groups first started to settle in Britain, then East Anglia – just across the North Sea from the coastline of the original West Germanic-speaking area – has a serious claim to be the first place in the world where English was ever spoken. Subsequently, East Anglian English played an important role in the formation of Standard English. East Anglia was one of the most densely populated areas of England for many centuries, and until the Industrial Revolution Norwich was one of the three largest provincial cities in the country. Together with the proximity of East Anglia to London and large-scale migration from the area to London, this meant that a number of features that came to be part of Standard English had their origins in East Anglia. East Anglia also played an important role in the development of colonial Englishes, notably the American English of New England. The New England short o clearly has its origins in East Anglian pronunciations such as home  ; and yod-dropping and ‘conjunction do’ were also transmitted to the USA from this area. East Anglian English also formed part of the input for the formation of the Englishes of Australia and New Zealand. More recently, however, East Anglia, particularly the northern area, has become much more isolated, and its English has retained a number of conservative features.

As a distinctive linguistic area, East Anglia is clearly smaller today than it was two hundred years ago: it has shrunk over the past many decades under the influence of English from the London area. In the 19^th century, it would probably have been reasonable to consider parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire as linguistically East Anglian; now it would no longer be so. On the other hand, there are still parts of Essex which are linguistically very similar to Norfolk and Suffolk.

Modern linguistic East Anglia consists of a core area together with surrounding transition zones. The core area, as defined by Trudgill (2001), consists of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, except for the Fenland areas of western Norfolk and northwestern Suffolk, plus northeastern Essex. The transition zones consist of the Norfolk and Suffolk Fens, together with eastern Cambridgeshire, central Essex, and a small area of northeastern Hertfordshire.

This definition of linguistic East Anglia is based on traditional dialect features as presented in the Survey of English Dialects (SED). As far as Modern Dialects are concerned, the transition zones of north-eastern Hertfordshire, central Essex and southern Cambridgeshire can no longer be considered East Anglian. Within the core region, urban areas such as Norwich, the largest urban centre in the region, and Ipswich are still solidly East Anglian. Colchester, however, shows much southeastern influence; and the East Anglian character of King’s Lynn and Thetford has been somewhat weakened by considerable in-migration from London and elsewhere.