Kingston Upon Hull - Dialect and Accent

Dialect and Accent

The local accent is quite distinctive and noticeably different from the rest of the East Riding; however it is still categorised among Yorkshire accents. The most notable feature of the accent is the strong I-mutation in words like goat, which is in standard English and across most of Yorkshire, becomes ("gert") in and around parts of Hull, although there is variation across areas and generations. In common with much of England (outside of the far north), another feature is dropping the H from the start of words, for example Hull is more often pronounced 'Ull in the city. The vowel in "Hull" is pronounced the same way as in northern English, however, and not as the very short /ʊ/ that exists in Lincolnshire. Though the rhythm of the accent is more like that of northern Lincolnshire than that of the rural East Riding, which is perhaps due to migration from Lincolnshire to the city during its industrial growth, one feature that it does share with the surrounding rural area is that an /aɪ/ sound in the middle of a word often becomes an /ɑː/: for example, "five" may sound like "fahve", "time" like "tahme".

The vowel sound in words such as burnt, nurse, first is pronounced with an /ɛ/ sound, as is also heard in Middlesbrough and in areas of Liverpool yet this sound is very uncommon in most of Yorkshire. The word pairs spur/spare and fur/fair illustrate this. The generational and/or geographic variation can be heard in word pairs like pork/poke or cork/coke, or hall/hole, which some people pronounce identically (using the second of the two variations) while others make a distinction; anyone called "Paul" (for example) soon becomes aware of this (pall/pole).