West Country Dialects

The West Country dialects and West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country.

This region encompasses the city of Bristol and the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, while Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Wiltshire are usually also included, although the northern and eastern boundaries of the area are hard to define and historically Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, which were also part of Wessex, were, and sometimes still are included. The core area of West Country dialects is in Somerset.

In the nearby counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Oxfordshire it is possible to encounter comparable accents and, indeed, distinct local dialects, though with some similarities to others of the region - a dialect speaker from the Isle of Wight for instance could hold an understandable conversation with a dialect speaker from Devon without too many problems. Although natives of such locations, especially in rural parts, can still have West Country influences in their speech, the increased mobility and urbanisation of the population have meant that local Berkshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight dialects (as opposed to accents) are becoming increasingly rare.

Academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectal forms. The Survey of English Dialects captured manners of speech across the West Country that were just as different from Standard English as anything from the far North of England. There is some influence from the Welsh and Cornish languages, depending on the specific location.