The Brummie dialect, or more formally the Birmingham dialect, is spoken by many people in Birmingham, England, and some of its surrounding area. "Brummie" is also a demonym for people from Birmingham. It is often erroneously used in referring to all accents of the West Midlands, as it is markedly distinct from the traditional accent of the adjacent Black Country, but modern-day population mobility has tended to blur the distinction. To a degree, the Brummie accent now extends into some parts of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, but much of the accent within the borough might be considered to be closer to Standard Southern British (SSB).
Name The term Brummie derives from Brummagem or Bromwichham, which are historical variants of the name Birmingham.Michael Pearce, “The Ethnonym Geordie in North East England” Names, Vol. 63 No. 2, June 2015, 75-85
Accent The strength of a person's accent can vary greatly all across Birmingham. As with most cities, the local accent changes relative to the area of the city in question. A common misconception is that everyone in Birmingham speaks the same accent. It could be argued that Brummie is an accent rather than a dialect as opposed to Black Country speech, which is a dialect with unique words and phrases, such as "owamya?" for how are you, which, many comment, is not used in Brummie speech. Similarly, Brummies generally use the word I while pronouncing it as 'oy', whereas Black Country natives instead use the dialectal term 'Ah', as in 'Ah bin', meaning I have been.
has said that the accent is "a dialectal hybrid of northern, southern, Midlands, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire speech", also with elements from the languages and dialects of its Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities.
There are also differences between Brummie and Black Country accents, which are not readily apparent to people from outside the West Midlands. A Black Country accent and a Birmingham accent can be hard to distinguish if neither accent is that broad. Phonetician John Wells has admitted that he cannot tell any difference between the accents.
Many historians and scholars argue that rhymes and vocabulary in the works of the Warwickshire native William Shakespeare suggest that he used a local dialect in his work, either that of Stratford-upon-Avon or, more broadly, a Brummie, Cotswold, Warwickshire, or other Midlands dialect. However, not all historians accept this argument, and Shakespeare's own accent will certainly have been distinct from any modern English one, including any of the Midlands today.See Early Modern English#Phonology.
Stereotypes According to , among UK listeners "Birmingham English in previous academic studies and opinion polls consistently fares as the most disfavoured variety of British English, yet with no satisfying account of the dislike". He alleges that overseas visitors, in contrast, find it "lilting and melodious", and from this claims that such dislike is driven by various linguistic myths and social factors peculiar to the UK ("social snobbery, negative media stereotyping, the poor public image of the City of Birmingham, and the north/south geographical and linguistic divide").
For instance, despite the city's cultural and innovative history, its industrial background (as depicted by the arm-and-hammer in Birmingham's coat of arms) has led to a muscular and unintelligent stereotype: a "Brummagem screwdriver" is UK slang for a hammer.
Thorne also cites the mass media and entertainment industry where actors, usually non-Birmingham, have used inaccurate accents and/or portrayed negative roles.
Advertisements are another medium where many perceive stereotypes. Journalist Lydia Stockdale, writing in the Birmingham Post, commented on advertisers' association of Birmingham accents with pigs: the pig in the ad for Colman's Potato Bakes, Nick Park's Hells Angel Pigs for British Gas, the puppet simply known as Pig from Pipkins and ITV's "Dave the window-cleaner pig" all had Brummie accents. In 2003, a Halifax bank advertisement featuring Howard Brown, a Birmingham-born and based employee, was replaced by an animated version with an exaggerated comical accent overdubbed by a Cockney actor.
Grammar Older speakers tend to use more of these grammatical features, where younger speakers mostly use phonological and intonational features in the sections described below.
Double negatives are typical in Brummie as with many other dialects around the world. Syntactical examples include don't want none, hadn't got no, can't find none nowhere, hadn't got hardly any and without no. Similarly, Brummie also utilizes double comparatives, such as more happier or more cuter (compare standard happier/cuter). Note also bestest for best, badder/worser for worse and baddest/wors(t)est for worst. The plural demonstrative those is typically replaced by them (e.g., "Them was good days"). Relative pronouns who or that are frequently substituted with what or as (e.g., "the chap what fixed my car"). This specific substitution is heavily prevalent in urban centers across the Midlands and the North of England. Prepositions are often substituted; up is frequently used instead of to (e.g., "He went up the pub"), off is used instead of from (e.g., "I got a letter off our brother") and on replaces of.
Pronouns The following table outlines the Birmingham pronominal system. Note the frequent dropping of initial h and th sounds, as well as the unique possessive and object forms.
+ The Birmingham pronominal system Person Nominative Accusative Dative Genitive Adjective Pronoun 1st singular I us / me us / me me / ma mine 2nd singular yo / you yer / you yer / you your yourn 3rd singular (h)e / er / it (h)im / er / it (h)im / er / it (h)is / er / its (h)isn / ern / its 1st plural we us us our / us ourn 2nd plural yous / you yous / you yous / you your yourn 3rd plural they (th)em (th)em their theirn
The second-person plural pronoun is often yous (or youse), which acts as the subject, direct object and indirect object. This is a feature shared with many Northern English dialects resulting from Irish immigration. Possessive pronouns frequently take an -n suffix, creating forms like yourn (yours), (h)isn (his), ern (hers), ourn (ours) and theirn (theirs). The first-person singular object pronoun me is commonly replaced by us (e.g., "give it us"). The third-person feminine subject pronoun she is commonly replaced by er. Reflexive pronouns are regularized across the paradigm to be based on possessive pronouns, resulting in forms like (h)isself and theirselves.
Contractions Contractions in Brummie contain unique expressions for the area. Most involve negation particles.
BrummieStandardPronunciationExampleNotesain'thaven'tI ain't seen 'er in donkey's years.Used as a common vernacular in many other areas. Unique to Brummie though, when meaning "haven't", pronunciations range from in't ~ en't ~ ain't.isn't/aren'tShe ain't joinin' us.bain'tam not (c.f. Hiberno-English amn't)I bain't doin' owt with me babby today.Used only with the first person pronoun I.cor / cawcan'tI cor see the point myself.Common in both Brummie and Black Country dialects.dain't / daydidn'tThey dain't got no time for playin' with 'em.The form day or deint is historically common across the region.gonna / gunnagoing to, gonnaWe're gonna 'ave a bostin' jolly up at the park this weekend.Varies from gunna to gonna.ne'er / nareneverI ne'er thought I'd see the day.Regularly used as a negative preterite meaning "not on one specific occasion".worn'twasn't / weren'tI worn't thinking a-gooin' up the pub today.Acts as the negated past tense form for both the first and third person.wun'twon'tShe wun't be 'appy at all when she 'ears what 'appened 'ere.Pronounced with a short vowel sound.
Morphophonology The past tense forms of strong verbs are often simplified. Examples include kept to kep', swept to swep' and wept to wep'. Older Brummies often pronounce nouns ending in -ce with a in the plural form, where it would not be in the standard language. Eye dialect spellings that demonstrate this phenomenon include writing fazes instead of faces, plazes for places, and prizes for prices. The third-person present of go, goes, is usually pronounced . The "going to" future form has variants ranging from to . Several verb forms, including make, made and take, realise the vowel as monophthongal , similar to the monophthongisation of RP says or said. Standard English irregular verbs are widely regularized, utilizing the -ed suffix for both past tense and past participle forms (e.g., knowed for knew/known, catched for caught, and drawed for drew). Past participles are frequently used in place of the past simple tense (e.g., "I done that" or "I seen him"), and the present simple is sometimes used in place of the past participle (e.g., "I'd 'ave give up"). Noun pluralization among older speakers occasionally retains the Old English -en suffix, most notably in the word housen for houses. The pronouns he, him, his, her, along with the related forms have, has and had are often orthographically represented with an apostrophe ('e, 'im, 'is, 'er, 'ave, 'as and 'ad respectively), reflecting the phenomenon of H-dropping (see #Phonology below).
Phonology
Much of the information below is taken from with supplementary information from and .
Consonants Like the West Midlands accents of the north, and many other Northern English accents, NG-coalescence is absent, with being pronounced as . This velar nasal plus feature is subject to stylistic and age-based variation. Word-final G-dropping is varied upon social class; with being favoured by middle-class speakers and by the working class. Older working-class speakers often drop the and use the bare nasal , especially in present participle endings like singing. Younger speakers, conversely, tend to use the pronunciation more frequently, especially in nouns ending in in RP. H-dropping is present, which mirrors many other working-class British accents. It is, however, most consistent with function words, as mentioned above. Hypercorrection with commonly occurs with younger middle-class people as well as some older working class, with words such as April and orange being pronounced and represented as Hapril and horange. This is especially seen if the other person addressed appears to be of a higher social status or upper class. Speakers also use the indefinite article an before words beginning with such as an 'ouse. This is a further extension to standardized accents such as RP, where it is only used in learned terms such as hour or honest. Th-fronting of to respectively is an innovation spreading among an increasing number of teenagers, particularly working-class males, and is nearly categorical with some boys. especially occurs before at the beginning of a word (as in through) however, is not fronted word-initially (e.g. this). These phenomena are also common with other regional British dialects. Under influence of Estuary English, T-glottalization occurs intervocalically and word-finally, albeit primarily in younger speakers, while middle-aged and elderly Brummies generally retain the voiceless alveolar plosive. Additionally, the T-to-R rule is widespread, where intervocalic is tapped to an or (e.g., get a becomes gerra, put on becomes purron). The accent is non-rhotic, which means that the consonant is not pronounced at the syllable rime. However, when as an onset, it is rendered as a single tapped like of Scottish English varieties: the most prominent examples include intervocalically in disyllabic words, such as marry, perhaps (note the 'h' here is silent) and worry, as well as following a velar or bilabial stop in monosyllabic words, like bright or cream. Other onset environments are otherwise realized as .