Will Allen, Joan Beal,

1
The Influence of the Languages of Ireland and
Scotland on Linguistic Varieties in Northern
England. Aberdeen, 28th June 2004
Paddy and Jock Meet GeordieA
Prolegomenon to Investigating the Reflexes of
Nineteenth Century Linguistic Contact in the
North East.

• Will Allen, Joan Beal,
• Karen Corrigan and Warren Maguire.
• University of Newcastle University of Sheffield

2
Ellis(1889)
3

• Trudgill
• (1999)

4
Urban phonological features

• These typologies, including Trudgills modern
  dialect divisions, exclude a number of
  phonological and phonetic features which are
  markers of individual urban dialects rather than
  what one might term broader regional areas
• /d, t/ for /D, T/ and affrication of /p, t, k/
  in Liverpool
• E? in NURSE words in Liverpool, Hull and
  Middlesbrough
• ?? in NURSE words
• glottalisation (invervocalic) of /p, t, k/ in
  Tyneside English.

5
Stream

• Orton Wright
• (1974 87)

6
Car-handedOrton Wright(1974 184)
7
Bairn

• Upton et al.
• (1987 50)

8
OxterUpton et al.(1987 50)
9
TalletOrton Wright(1974 103)
10
Gob, (meaning mouth)

• marked in the OED as orig.obsc.,
• but it has such strong parallels with Irish gob
  that a Celtic etymology cannot be entirely ruled
  out.
• The word in Irish, for instance, is defined by Ó
  Dónaill as
• 1.(b) (Of mouth) gob a chur ort féin, to
  protrude ones lips, to pout, to put on a severe
  expression Tá gob géar, nimheach uirthi, she
  has a sharp, a severe expression (about the
  mouth) Bhí a anáil i mbarr a ghoib (leis), he
  was out of breath, panting Tá sé ar bharr a
  ghoib aige, he has it on the tip of his tongue.

11
Gob

• Orton Wright
• (1974 266)

12
Ecology First Principles

• What was the date of settlement exactly or was it
  over an extended period of time?
• What motivated the population movement? Which
  push/pull factors were involved and what kind of
  migration was it?
• Did these allochthonous groups settle in any
  other area of the British Isles prior to their
  arrival in the North East?
• Was their settlement in the North East
  permanent or is there evidence of
  seasonal/sporadic migration?

13
First Principles cont.

• What was their settlement pattern in Newcastle?
  
• What were the relative sizes of the
  allochthonous groups relative to one another and
  to the local population?
• Where exactly did these migrants originate?
  What social and regional varieties did they
  transport?

14
First Principles cont.

• Was the autochthonous population of Newcastle
  at this time homogeneous from a dialectal
  perspective or did it show signs of heterogeneity
  introduced as a result of earlier population
  movements?
• What was the social structure of Later Modern
  Newcastle and how was language socially evaluated
  by speakers at this time?

15
Scottish / Irish settlement on Tyneside

• Scots contact has taken place over an extended
  period whereas the Irish migration and settlement
  can be dated very precisely as nineteenth
  century.
• The Irish migrations were of the chain type
  and the Scots settlement was not.
• Scots who came to Tyneside were inclined to
  settle there permanently but there is evidence
  that the Irish migrants were more transitory.
• The Irish formed clusters in the industrial and
  working-class heartlands while the Scots were
  more dispersed and more likely to be found in the
  leafy suburbs of Jesmond and Gosforth.

16
Scottish / Irish settlement on Tyneside cont.

• The Scots were never as numerous as the Irish. In
  the 1851 Newcastle Borough census return, for
  example, only 6.5 of the citys total population
  claimed to have been originally born in Scotland
  whereas 8.1 of its inhabitants listed their
  place of birth as Ireland.
• The two communities appear to have espoused
  quite radically different value systems. Thus,
  the Irish were largely Catholic and poor by
  comparison to the Scots who were, relatively
  speaking, more likely to be artisan or middle
  class and to have been of dissenter or Church of
  Scotland persuasion.

17
The Irish-born population of England, Wales and
Scotland

• 1841 ? 415,725
• 1851 ? 727,326
• 1861 ? 805,717
• Irish-born 3.5 of the total
• population (Swift 1992 56)

18
Increase in North-Eastern English towns of
Irish-born migrants, 1841-1851
Source Neal (1997 58)
19
New Dialect Formation

• Koineisation
• Unmarking
• Interdialect Development
• Focusing
• (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985 Siegel 1985
• Trudgill 1986 Trudgill Britain (forthcoming)
• Trudgill et al. 1998, 2000a, 2000b and 2003
• inter alia).

20
Irish settlement in Newcastle

• Chain migration
• i.e. these refugees were travelling to
  destinations already settled by family and
  friends in the early nineteenth century.

Source Neal (1998)
21
Irish settlement in Newcastle cont.
Newcastle upon Tyne (1864) www.old-maps.co.uk

• Although the 1851 Irish-born population was just
  over 8, this migrant group represented 31 of
  all long distance inward migration to Newcastle.
• 57 of these migrants had crowded into the All
  Saints district.

22
HOUSEHOLD 67, DOCKHOUSE ENTRYENUMERATION
DISTRICT NO.15 (1851)
Source Neal (1999 80)
23
Stepwise migration?

• Neal (1999 86) records the following evidence
  given to the Select Committee on Poor Removal by
  George Grey, who, in 1855, acted as Assistant
  Overseer of the All Saints district in which the
  Irish were heavily clustered

....they do not remain long in one employment
when they have obtained it, they work for a short
time in one place and go to another and another,
and so on, and probably they do not work
altogether more than half their time. A person
who is in good work in Newcastle, during a few
weeks in harvest, throws up his work, goes away
and leaves it, and leaves his family chargeable
to the parish and a great many of them, I am
sorry to say, do not come back.
24
THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE IRISH-BORN
MIGRANTS AMONG THE VARIOUS SUB-DISTRICTS OF THE
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE REGISTRATION DISTRICT AT
MARCH 31ST 1851
Source Neal (1999 75)
25
19th Century Irish Migrants Origins,
Social/Ethnic Status

• The Famine immigration increased the size of
  existing Irish settlements in Victorian Britain
  and created new ones. Despite the fact that many
  did climb up the social and income ladders, it is
  flying in the face of all the evidence to deny
  that most remained in poor paid, unskilled jobs.
  The areas of British towns in which most
  Catholics lived were characteristically the
  poorest parts of the town. This was the case
  until the slum clearance programme of the 1960s.
  In many areas, local politics were coloured by
  the presence of large numbers of Catholics.
• Neal (1997 76-77)

26
Social Status in Tyneside A View

• An area of England which falls outside the
  common pattern of rural poor immigration from
  Ireland is Tyneside. Here the Irish belong to a
  higher social class and the influence of their
  speech has been general in Newcastle as opposed
  to Merseyside whereas in Liverpool it was largely
  restricted to the working-class population.
• Hickey (forthcoming)

27
Social Status in Tyneside Another View

• The occupational profile of Irish males conforms
  to the widely held view that they were
  principally to be found in heavy manual work
  while domestic service, as in all large towns,
  provided a significant source of employment for
  Irish females.
• Neal (1999 91)

28
Social and Ethnic Status in the N.E. 19th
Century Views

• The town of Sunderland is overrun with Irishmen
  who are in a miserable condition and herding
  twenty or thirty in a single room at the
  convenience of the town. The scenes of want and
  misery among them is indescribable but happily
  disease has not yet appeared among them. Every
  cellar and room that can be procured is filled in
  this way and they subsist in common on whatever
  they can get by begging or occasional work, but
  many of them are unable to find employment. The
  presence of such a number of lawless strangers
  among them occasions much alarm to the
  inhabitants of Sunderland.
• Source Extract from the Newcastle Journal, 27th
  March 1847, cited in Neal (1997 62)

29
More 19th Century Views

• ...in the district called Sandgate, occupied by
  multitudes of the labouring classes, especially
  the Irish, there are neither private nor public
  privies.
• Source Extract from Cholera Report,
• 1854, cited in Neal (1999 76)

30
Later Modern Tyneside Autochthonous Population

• Hughes (1952 365-366) notes the case of two
  children from well-to-do families being sent to
  schools in the south so as to rid them of their
  northern intonation pattern. One parent is
  reported to have claimed in a letter that after
  four terms at Bradenham School near High Wycombe
  he was extremely disappointed that the north
  country tendency to raise the voice on the last
  syllable had
• not been eradicated.

31
Heslop(1892-4)
32
Nineteenth Century Irish-English Features
Sources for DialectFocusing in Tyneside?

• Irish English Influence on the phonology of Urban
  Northern Englishes? A test case NURSE/NORTH
  Merger.
• Irish English Influence on the Morpho-Syntax of
  Urban Northern Englishes? A test case
• (you (pl.)) vs. (yous(e)yizyeesyez).

33
The NURSE/NORTH Merger

• In the broadest Geordie the lexical set NURSE
  is merged with NORTH, /??/ work w??k, first
  f??st, shirt ???t ( short) In a less broad
  Newcastle accent, NURSE words have ?? or
  something similar, e.g. rounded centralised-front
  ø?. (Wells 1982374-375)

34
The origin of the NURSE/NORTH Merger Wells
(1982)

• It is the effect of uvular /r/ on a preceding
  vowel which has historically given rise to forms
  such as b???dz birds, w???mz worms in
  Northumberland the ? has not only coalesced
  with the vowel, making it uvularized, but has
  also caused it to be retracted from centre to
  back. (pp.369-370)

35
The origin of the NURSE/NORTH Merger
Watt (1998)

• The retraction of the NURSE vowel in
  TynesideEnglish may be a similar reflex to
  that found in some forms of Irish English
  (indeed, ?? is stereotypical in Irish
  pronunciations of words like sir and thirty).
  (p.123)

36
Evidence for the NURSE/NORTH Merger in Irish
English

• Patterson (1860) represents the Belfast
  pronunciation of turpentine as torpentine
  (Harris (1985209)).
• William Dean Howellss An Imperative Duty
  (1891) the word sir is represented as sor and
  first appears as forst in the speech of the
  Irish manservant.

37
Evidence for the NURSE/NORTH Merger in Irish
English, cont.

• Joyce (191078) notes that Wor is very usual in
  the south of Ireland for were.
• Macafee (1996) bird/bord, burn/born (vb.),
  church/chorch, dirt/dort, further/ford(h)er,
  turf/torf, urchin/orchin

38
Assessing the likelihood of Irish English
influence

• 1) What/Manner was the linguistic feature in
  question a feature of Irish English?
• 2) When/Time does an explanation based on Irish
  English influence fit with the known chronology
  of the linguistic feature and of Irish
  immigration to the area?
• 3) Where/Place does the geographical
  distribution of the linguistic feature fit with
  the geographical distribution of Irish
  immigration?

39
NURSE and NORTH Lexical sets in Irish English
40
19th century evidence for the NURSE/NORTH
Merger from Ellis (1889)

• South Shields (AA?) ???? bird, church,
  corn, dirty, fir, first, fore, horn, lord, score,
  scourge, shirt, sword, third, thirty, turn, word,
  world, worm, worse
• Wark (North Tynedale) (or) ?? birth, church,
  corn, first, further, horn, storm, swore,
  thirteen, Thursday, word, world, worth
• Warkworth (or) ?? birth, church, corn,
  corner, first, ford, further, girl, horn, horse,
  mirth, storm, sword, thirteen, Thursday, turned,
  word, world, worth

41
19th century evidence for the NURSE/NORTH
Merger from dialect poetry

• The Newcastle Signs (Cecil Pitt, 1806)
• The Three Kings and Unicorn, Bulls Head, and
  Horse,
• Would prove, that the farther they went theyd
  fare worse.
• The Glister (William Armstrong, in Marshall
  (1823))
• Thou mun run for a docter, the forst can be
  fund,
• For maw bellys a rang, an awm varry fast
  bund.

42
Geographical distribution of the NURSE/NORTH
Merger
43
The non-local population of Newcastle, 1851-1911
44
The non-local population of Gateshead, 1851-1911
45
Concluding Test Case 1

• The NURSE/NORTH Merger in Tyneside English did
  not originate in Irish English influence.
• Hypotheses based on contact must fit with the
  linguistic, chronological and geographical facts.
• If contact did have an affect, its results are
  more likely to be found in the features of
  levelled urban dialects than in traditional
  dialect features.

46
Test Case 2 (you (pl.))/(yous).

• Harris (1993 139) In some dialects,
  particularly
• those spoken in Ireland, as well as others with
  Irish
• connections, we find the vernacular form youse
• Hickey (forthcoming 255) it is known that the
  form
• youse is of Irish English origin (this form is
  not found in
• historical forms of British English) so that its
• occurrence in forms of southern hemisphere
• English....points clearly to an Irish origin in
  these
• varieties.

47
Test Case 2 My Views

• Beal (1993 206) yous as a plural is found in
  Scots,
• Irish and Liverpool dialects as well as in the
  North
• East.
• Beal (2004) located the feature in inner city
  Manchester,
• Glasgow as well as urban Australia and New
  York
• suggesting that its presence in these urban areas
  was
• related to high levels of nineteenth century
  Irish
• immigration.

48
Test Case 2 Current Forms

• This form is cited as current in contemporary
  dialects of Irish-English by both Dolan (1999
  292) and Macafee (1996 400) and it is also
  productive in our NECTE corpus as can be seen
  from
• (1) Yousll have Thomas next year. (referring to
  the whole class) (NECTE)

49
Test Case 2 Origins

• Joyce (1910 88)
• The dropping of thou was a distinct loss to
  the English language for now you has to do
  double duty - for both singular and plural which
  sometimes leads to obscurity. The Irish try to
  avoid this obscurity by various
  devices.....Accepting the you as singular, they
  have created new forms for the plural such as
  yous, yez, yis, which do not sound pleasant
  to a correct speaker, but are very clear in
  sense.

50
Test Case 2 Joyces Evidence

• personal observation
• postal survey dating from the 1890s
• literary works of the 18th and 19th centuries
• 19th century prescriptive treatises.

51
Test Case 2 Wrights Evidence

• YEES, pron. Irel. Also written yez, yiz. You
  used when speaking to more than one person. Cf.
  yous.
• Source Wright (1895-1905 574-575)
• YOUS, pron. Irel. Amer. Aus. Also in Amer. Aus.
  yowz Don. You used when speaking to more than
  one person. Cf. yees.
• Source Wright (1895-1905 590)

52
Test Case 2 Origin in Irish-English

• Dolan (1999 292) In Irish there is both a
  singular and a plural second person pronoun, as
  there used to be in English, viz. tú (you sg.)
  versus sibh (you pl.)

53
Test Case 2 Supralocal and Local Changes?

• Supralocal Change Diffusion of youse from one
  urban centre to another across the Anglophone
  world. Off-the-shelf/globalized in the sense of
  Milroy (2004) and Meyerhoff and Niedzielski
  (2003)
• Local Change youse has been generalised
  as the local form of the second person amongst
  younger speakers and can, in fact, now be used
  to address one person. (Beal 1993 205)

54
Conclusion

• For future research, what is really required is
  analyses of a range of lexical, phonological and
  morpho-syntactic features using these principles.
• Our main objective here is to demonstrate the
  kinds of evidence that will be required if we are
  to achieve our goal of assessing nineteenth
  century Celtic influences on Northern Englishes.

55
The Influence of the Languages of Ireland and
Scotland on Linguistic Varieties in Northern
England. Aberdeen, 28th June 2004
Paddy and Jock Meet GeordieA
Prolegomenon to Investigating the Reflexes of
Nineteenth Century Linguistic Contact in the
North East.

• Will Allen, Joan Beal,
• Karen Corrigan and Warren Maguire.
• University of Newcastle University of Sheffield