Suffolk dialect

The Suffolk dialect is a dialect spoken in the East Anglian county of Suffolk, England. Like many English dialects, it is rapidly disappearing, due to the advent of increasing social and geographical mobility and the influence of the media. Despite this, there are still many people who profess some knowledge of Suffolk dialect, and there is an increasing number of young speakers who have a distinctive Suffolk accent, if not a dialect.

Location of Suffolk within England

This dialect has several characteristics which are closely related to Norfolk dialect neighbouring in the north, yet it retains many specific and unique terms and phrases which are distinctively recognisable. A closely related accent called the Essex dialect can still be heard in the speech of older people in Colchester and its surrounding towns in the northern parts of its corresponding county, where it has not yet quite been displaced by Estuary English or Cockney.

Vocabulary
  • atum — at home, e.g. "I left my jumper atum".
  • batter puddin' — a common way to refer to Yorkshire pudding
  • bibble — (of animals, esp. birds) to drink
  • boi (with an emphasis on the 'i') — derived from boy but a term of familiar address, equivalent to 'mate' and can be used for a female (rarely) as well as a male addressee. In East Suffolk it is more likely to be buh or bor. A son is just as likely to call his father buh as vice versa.
  • dag — early morning or evening mist, especially associated with coastal/marsh areas, possibly extends to the general eastern England dialect.
  • hull, hoss — to throw[1] although hoss is also a horse.
  • on the huh; on the wonk (/hə/) — uneven, unbalanced.
  • learn - also means teach. If taught a lesson you might be told "that'll learn yer".
  • pingle — to be fussy about one's food
  • squit — rubbish, nonsense, e.g. "He's talking squit".
  • waddledickie — donkey
  • wog - Not an offensive noun but a verb meaning to steal. "Where did you a get that mooter from buh?","I wogged it from Tescos car park".

Mutations to certain words
  • "tomorrow" becomes "'amara" (with a hard glottal stop at the beginning).
  • "I'll" becomes "oi'll" (as in "oil") e.g. "Oi'll see yer 'amara". This also happens to other words with the 'ae' sound in, such as "five", which becomes "foive". (This was once common in New England, an area in the United States that was originally settled by East Anglians, though is rarely heard nowadays.)
  • "you" becomes "yer".
  • Yorkshire puddings are commonly referred to as 'batter puddings', pronounced 'batta puddins'.
  • "Mother" becomes "Ma'" as with many regional accents.
  • "rope" is pronounced "roup", with an emphasis on the 'u'. Likewise, "road" also sounds like "rud" ("rood" in the north of the county and in Norfolk) and "soap" sounds like "soup". This shows that Suffolk dialect is a context language.
  • most words ending in '-ing' become '-en', as in "Oi'm busy worken".
  • In Ipswich and up towards Reydon single syllable words can be pronounced as double syllables, for example dow-en tow-en.
  • "seen" and "been" become "sin" and "bin" respectively.
  • words such as "picture" and "lecture" become "pitcher" and "letcher". [this was once common in New England, an area that was originally settled by East Anglians, though it is somewhat dated there today.]
  • the perfect tense of "to show" changes from "showed" to "shew", e.g. "Oi shew er a pitcher". Also of "to snow". "That snew last night" - although becoming far less common.
  • words such as "shopping" and "office" mutate to "sharpen" and "arfice" as in "Oi'm gorn sharpen" or "Oi'm gorn de-oon-a poost arfice".
  • "going" becomes "gorn", but unlike Norfolk, "doing" becomes "do-en".
  • "int" is used for "have not", and is similar to "ain't" in London English.
  • "ant" is used for "has not".
  • "Can I have a..." becomes "C'I've a..." (similar to "cover")
  • Words ending in '-day' become "-di" as in "Toosdi" [once common in New England, an area that was originally settled by East Anglians, though it is somewhat dated there today] and "yesterday" which becomes "yissdi".
  • "it" often becomes "e'", an approximate schwa sound, somewhere between an 'e' and a 'u', like a short 'er', e.g. "Oi int gorn-a do e'".
  • "to" becomes "a", another schwa sound, after the compound future i.e. "I am going to" becomes "Oi'm gorn-a"
  • "go" and other words with an 'o' sound become 'oo', such as "Oi'm mooen the lawn".
  • words containing /aʊ/ sounds (as in 'ouch!') become something resembling 'e-oo'. This affects words like "now" which becomes "ne-oo". This is very similar to the Welsh 'ew' sound and is quite difficult to explain in writing – it should be heard to get the full gist of it. A particularly interesting website contains a dialect map, which has an example of this pronunciation.[2]
  • Pronunciation of words such as "bear" and "care" resemble New Zealand English in that they sound like "beer" and "keer".
  • In the Waveney area (and parts of Norfolk) there is a difference in the vowel sounds in "rowed" and "road".
  • Past participles are pronounced with an extra syllable. "Stewed" (as in to have slowly cooked) is not pronounced "stued", but "stue-uh" with the last syllable being more like a glottal stop. "Saved" is "sayv-uh", "cooked" is "cook-uh" etc. Some irregular verbs' past participles change to regular using this glottal stop formulation. "Ran" is replaced with "run-uh" and swam with "swim-uh".

Grammar and linguistics

Epenthesis occurs occasionally in Suffok dialect, as it does in Norfolk dialect. Words like "film" become "filum".

Yod-droppings is very common, so words like "dew", "queue", "new" and "tune" will become "doo", "koo", "noo" and "toone" respectively.

Suffolk dialect is non-rhotic, i.e. the 'r' in "hard" and similar words is not pronounced, unlike West Country English.

Suffolk dialect has a strong use of the glottal stop. This is shown in words like "'amara" and "e'" ('tomorrow' and 'it').

It is common for "that" to replace "it".

The intonation of words in Suffolk is very peculiar. Words have a notable range of rise and fall in pitch and can often sound as if the speaker were asking a question. This is one of the main features that distinguish Suffolk speech from Norfolk, which is characterised by a distinctive 'drawl'.

Verbs very rarely conjugate, the only exceptions being 'to be' and 'to have'. Other verbs do not conjugate whatsoever, and the present and perfect tense is often the same, and context is used. This is shown in "Ee say he goo down-a poost arfice" for "he said he went to the post office".

gollark: I mean, I *suppose* so, but lighting uses power you know...
gollark: LSD lighting... would that just be taking drugs until you *hallucinate* that your room is lit?
gollark: I totally meant LED.
gollark: Probably would be given LSD lighting technology's high efficiency.
gollark: Athe-ism (worship of the possibly nonexistent deity Athe) is the One True Truth\™.

See also
  • Norfolk dialect, Suffolk dialect's closest relative with which it shares many characteristics.

References
  1. Upton & Widdowson (1996), p. 179.
  2. A site containing geographically located accents on an interactive map of East Anglia – the one in Thorington Street is particularly helpful in the pronunciation of "now" and similar words. Archived 2011-10-20 at the Wayback Machine

Bibliography
  • Claxton, A. O. D. (1973), The Suffolk Dialect of the 20th Century, The Boydell PressCS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Upton, Clive; Widdowson, John David Allison (1996), An Atlas of English Dialects: Region and Dialect, Oxford University PressCS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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