Department English Language and Literature Intelligibility of Lesser

Home , Geordie, Received Pronunciation, Scouse

Faculty of Education, Masaryk University

Department English Language and Literature

Intelligibility of lesser-known dialects

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Veronika Baranová

Supervisor: Mgr. Irena Kalischová, Ph.D

Brno 2015

Declaration

“I hereby declare that I have worked on this thesis independently and the information used in the thesis has been acknowledged in the text and included in the list of references.”

Brno, 20 April 2015 ...... Veronika Baranová

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Irena Headlandová Kalischová, Ph.D. for her valuable advice, friendly guidance and patience during her supervision over this bachelor thesis.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Ailsa Marion Randall, M.A. and Mgr. Jana Chocholatá for enabling me to conduct the research in their Practical language classes and their kind attitude.

Abstract

The bachelor thesis approaches the topic of intelligibility of lesser-known dialects among high level students of English. Scouse and Geordie, two of the northern English dialects have been chosen to represent the sample of dialects the Czech students are commonly not familiar with. The aim of the thesis is to show the discrepancy between such dialects and what is perceived as Standard English to which the students are generally exposed. The thesis is divided into two parts. The theoretical part provides definitions of the terms connected to this topic as well as a description of the dialects mentioned above. The practical part is based on presenting a recording of each dialect to students of the first and third year of Lower Secondary School Teacher Training in English Language and Literature and by means of the questionnaire eliciting the data and impact of variables which directly influence better understanding of lesser-known dialects of English.

Anotace

Tato práce pojednává o tématu srozumitelnosti méně známých anglických dialektů mezi studenty s výbornou úrovní anglického jazyka. Byly vybrány dva dialekty severní Anglie, Scouse a Geordie, se kterými studenti obecně nemají příliš zkušeností. Cílem této práce je ukázat rozdíly mezi těmito dialekty a standardní angličtinou, které jsou studenti běžně vystaveni. Práce je rozdělena do dvou částí. Teoretická část poskytuje definice termínů spojených s touto problematikou společně s popisem dialektů zmíněných výše. Praktická část je založena na prezentaci nahrávek studentům prvního a třetího ročníku studia oboru Pedagogické asistentství anglického jazyka a literatury pro základní školy a získání dat prostřednictvím dotazníku sloužící k posouzení proměnných, které ovlivňují lepší porozumění méně známých dialektů anglického jazyka.

Key Words dialect, Scouse, Geordie, intelligibility, familiarity, distinctive features, Standard English, recordings, questionnaire, variation

Klíčová slova dialekt, srozumitelnost, obeznámenost, charakteristické znaky, standardní angličtina, nahrávky, dotazník, variace

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 8

2. Theoretical Part ...... 10

2.1 Basic terminology ...... 10

2.2.1 Accent versus dialect ...... 10

2.2.2 Standard English ...... 11

2.2 Scouse ...... 14

2.2.1 The term, location and a brief history ...... 14

2.2.2 Phonological features ...... 15

2.2.3 Grammatical features ...... 17

2.2.4 Lexical features ...... 19

2.3 Geordie ...... 21

2.3.1 The term, location, anecdote and a brief history ...... 21

2.3.2 Phonological features ...... 23

2.3.3 Grammatical features ...... 24

2.3.4 Lexical features ...... 26

3. Practical Part ...... 29

3.1 Research ...... 29

3.1.1 Respondents ...... 29

3.1.2 Questionnaires ...... 31

3.2 Recordings ...... 33

3.2.1 Scouse recording ...... 33

3.2.2 Geordie recording ...... 37

3.3 Results ...... 40

3.3.1 Survey ...... 41

3.3.2 Gap filling results ...... 46

3.3.3 Results from listening for a certain phrase ...... 48

3.3.4 Listening for the gist results ...... 49

3.3.5 The general success rate ...... 51

3.3.6 The most problematic words ...... 52

4. Conclusion ...... 54

List of references ...... 56

Appendices ...... 59

Appendix I...... 59

The Questionnaire ...... 59

Appendix II...... 65

The original version of Scouse recording ...... 65

The abridged version of Scouse recording ...... 67

The original version of Geordie recording ...... 68

The abridged version of Geordie recording ...... 71

1. Introduction Fundamentally, teachers of English as a second language ought to aim to know as much as possible about the language they teach including the increased awareness of dialect variation. Even though the language used in the classroom should be accurate and consistent to sustain the quality of language education, the students’ exposure to a variety of dialects is regarded as highly beneficial for ensuring their future ability to communicate with different native speakers of various parts of the world. Unfortunately, once leaving a safe environment of a homogenous classroom, a large number of learners are alarmed to realise that despite having rather high level of English and sufficient knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, their ability to understand spoken interaction within an unknown dialect is highly impaired.

In Czech language education, it is a regrettable fact that teaching pronunciation is being significantly neglected, many teachers fail to be good role models when it comes to passing on satisfactory speaking skills. On the other hand, there are teachers who, in the pursuit of hypercorrect pronunciation, tend to overarticulate or reduce the speed of their speech in order for students to understand. By doing so, they might be diminishing the chances of the students to experience and to get accustomed to “real world” English, which is recognisably different from textbook English with archaic listening activities. Once students acquire a level of English which enables them to communicate without major difficulties, teachers should help them to achieve moderate efficiency in the language so that they are mutually intelligible to other English speakers. There is no practical necessity for non-native speakers of English to strive for perfect native-like pronunciation. And even if so, which dialect should be considered to be the right one is questionable. It is essential to say that no dialect is better than the other. Nevertheless, it is vital to teach students to notice the differences between dialects so as to understand the social class, educational background, regional and cultural distinctions.

A never-ceasing discussion has been lead about the best approach towards non- standard dialectal English. Generally, there is an incomparably higher demand on the need to get rid of the non-standard forms in order to meet the requirements of the society nowadays because as a fact, most dialects are regarded as substandard form of speech which should be avoided in formal environments.

Essentially, teachers should be able to provide the conditions for learners to realise that there is the existence of such varieties of English. The solution might be to encourage students to work on their knowledge of different dialects within the receptive skills only. On the other hand, when producing the language it is recommended to comply with the standard form of English. It does not necessarily mean Received Pronunciation, BBC English or General American, but a dialect that will create no associations to a particular geographical region and is widely accepted and understood by the majority of speakers of English language.

There is a vast number of English dialects throughout the whole world, but for the purposes of this thesis, the focus will be narrowed to English dialects of the North of England, mainly the dialects of the areas of Merseyside and Tyneside and their familiarity and intelligibility to students of English.

The theoretical part of the thesis provides the explanation of basic terms and the description of the two individual dialects chosen to represent the category of lesser- known dialects. The practical part is comprised of a research conducted for the purpose of a collection of data which reveals the level of intelligibility of these dialects to students of Faculty of Education, Masaryk University. Furthermore, two target groups were chosen to represent the sample of university students and there is a hypothesis established that students who have a higher level of English and have been studying the particular field of study for three years will be more apt to understand these dialects than their colleagues who have recently begun to study it.

2. Theoretical Part

2.1 Basic terminology

2.2.1 Accent versus dialect When describing language variations, it is necessary to mention two terms which are often incorrectly thought of as synonyms. These are “accent” and “dialect”.

J.C. Wells provides very complex definition of the term accent, “a pattern of pronunciation used by a speaker for whom English is a native language or, more generally, by the community or social grouping to which he or she belongs.”(Accents of English 1: An Introduction, 1) Subsequently, he broadens his definition by describing it as “the use of particular vowel or consonant sounds and particular rhythmic, intonational, and other prosodic features; to the syntagmatic (structural) and paradigmatic (systemic) interrelationships between these, and to the more abstract (phonological) representations which can be seen as underlying the actual (phonetic) articulations, together with the rules which relate the one to another; and to the relationship between all of these and the individual words or other items which constitute the speaker’s mental lexicology or vocabulary”.(1) He also warns about confusing this meaning of the term accent with the other one which is a synonym for a word “stress” concerning suprasegmental features of pronunciation. Furthermore, he states that instead of the term “dialect”, he prefers to use a neutral term “variety”. “A difference between varieties, then, may involve any or all of syntax, morphology, lexicon, and pronunciation.”(3)

Rather straightforward distinction can be found in Peter Trudgill’s Sociolinguistics, an Introduction to Language and Society. Stating that it is important to be aware of the difference, Trudgill distinguishes these two terms pointing out that dialect, unlike accent, does not refer solely to differences of pronunciation, but takes to account differences of grammar and vocabulary as well. (17)

The differences between accents maybe divided into two main sorts, phonetic and phonological. Phonetic differences between accents suggest that they share the same set of phonemes, but some of them might be realised differently. Phonological differences can be for instance represented by the situation where one of the accent has a lower number of phonemes than the other. This is the case with some of the northern accents which for example do not contain the phoneme /ʌ /. (Roach, 161)

2.2.2 Standard English

People have always been perceptive towards even a slight variation of their primary language, but nowhere has the situation escalated more than in The British Isles. As Cruttenden explains, “the ‘wrong accent’ may still be an impediment to social intercourse or to advancement or entry in certain professions. Such extreme sensitivity is not paralleled in any other country or even in other parts of the English-speaking world.”(77) Therefore, it has inevitably lead to making unfortunate comparisons and judgements about other people’s way of speaking. In The United Kingdom, having a certain accent can mean that you reached up to a desired upper part of society. There is still certain kind of obsession to which social class people belong to and many people believe that the most of accents other people speak are “wrong”. The problem might be that people usually forget that they themselves speak an accent too. On this account, mocking or rejecting other accents only because they differ from ours is absurd. Many forms are stigmatized as ‘bad English’ only for being typical of lower-class dialects. On the other hand, some forms are considered to be correct just due to the fact that they are used by the upper middle class and upper class. (Andersson, 119)

Naturally, attitudes towards dialects and evaluation based on a different variety of language is highly relevant. People love to lament over other peoples’ use of language. Here is a nice passage from Andersson and Trudgill’s Bad Language.

The pages of our newspapers and magazines, as well as the airwaves of radio and television, are full of complaints about bad language, bad grammar, sloppy speech, gobbledygook, bad diction, jargon, slang, 11

Americanism, mistakes, mumbling, Cockney, affectation, slurring, carelessness and misuse. Self-appointed guardians of purity and virtue of the modern English language write to the Radio Times, the BBC and the national newspapers in a series of desperate last-ditch attempts to stem the tide of corruption which they fear will soon engulf the nation in a wave of linguistic awfulness. (13)

In any case, in order to be able to compare different accents and dialects, there has to be a standard form of English. It is necessary to declare that there is not just one standard and it is in the constant process of change. The dialect which is used throughout the British Isles is commonly known as ‘Standard English’. Merriam- Webster dictionary defines Standard English as “the English that with respect to spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary is substantially uniform though not devoid of regional differences, that is well established by usage in the formal and informal speech and writing of the educated, and that is widely recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken and understood”.(Merriam-Webster) Surprisingly, it does not necessarily mean that when a form is spoken by the majority, it has to be the standard form. As an example, Anderson mentions the sentence “I done it”. Apparently, this form is used by a majority of native speakers as opposed to so- called ‘correct’ form “I did it”.

STANDARD ENGLISH Main verb: You do it, You did it, You’ve done it Auxiliary: do you? did you? haven’t you?

NONSTANDARD DIALECTS Main verb: You do it, You done it, You’ve done it Auxiliary: do you? did you? haven’t you? (121)

Standard English is a dialect of educated people used in teaching environment, formal writing purposes, applying for a new position at a market place and so on. It is often interchanged for Received Pronunciation, but as Hughes, Trudgill and Watt point out 12

in English Accents and Dialects, “unlike RP, Standard English is not restricted to the speech of a particular social group.”(13) Furthermore as stated previously, Standard English consist of many regional variations. For example in the south of England, when speakers want to express negative sentence, they usually contract it in the following way:

I haven’t said it. It won’t budge. Doesn’t he realise it?

On the other hand, in the northern parts of England, especially in Lancashire, Cumbria or Scotland, speakers tend to approach an alternative type of contracted negatives:

I’ve not said it. It’ll not budge. Does he not realise it? (Hughes, 19)

As well as standard forms of grammar, lexis and pronunciation, there are non- standard forms. There is a vast number of non-standard differences such as forms of irregular verbs, the usage of personal and relative pronouns, no distinctions in form between adjectives and adverbs, or very widely used multiple negation.

ADBERBS: Standard form: Nonstandard form: She was a slow runner. She run slowly. She ran slow. (Hughes, 33)

MULTIPLE NEGATION: Standard form: Nonstandard form:

I had some tea. I didn’t have any tea. I didn’t have no tea. (Hughes, 25) I had no tea.

The difference between standard and non-standard variety of English is not based on principles of distinguishing between formal and colloquial. Standard English has colloquial variants too, as well as some ‘bad language’. “Standard English speakers 13

swear as much as others. (It is worth pointing this out because many people appear to believe that if someone uses slang expressions or informal turns of phrase this means that he is not speaking standard English.)” (Trudgill, Sociolinguistics, 17)

2.2 Scouse

2.2.1 The term, location and a brief history Commonly associated with the dialect spoken in and around the city of Liverpool and some adjoining urban areas of Merseyside, the term “Scouse” is derived from “Labskaus” which is a kind of Scandinavian traditional dish. It is found in the north- western part of England and its inhabitants refer to themselves as “Scousers” or “Liverpudlians”. ("Is It an Insulting Term or Do Liverpudlians Refer to Themselves as Scousers?")

The city of Liverpool and its peculiar accent received a lot of attention thanks to the popularity of The Beatles. “The inflection in their voices had historical origins that were relevant to the symbolic role they would assume during the 1963 "Mersey beat" phenomenon.” (Atkinson) An interesting fact is that Liverpool one of the few cities in England where the regional accent differs for male and female versions. “The male version of Scouse is a lot broader and coarse sounding with a rough edge to it, the female version is more refined and rounded. Lately there has been a trend for Scouse girls to sound more like Scouse lads.”(Walley)

Moreover the accent of Liverpool has a rather strange nasal quality that was deduced from the Liverpool's poor 19th-century public health. “Impairment of nasal resonance for many people over a long time resulted in it becoming regarded as "the group norm" and copied by others learning the language. Scousers therefore do not use adenoidal quality because they or anyone else have or have had respiratory trouble, but because it makes them sound like Scousers." (Knowles, 92)

Alun Owen, a British screen writer even suggested that Scouse is an accent which was invented by the multiracial population of the city in an effort to “evolve an accent for themselves", using borrowed constructions from their Irish and Welsh grandfathers in response to the "problem of identity" that was omnipresent there back in those times. (Atkinson)

The rise of modern Scouse can be dated around 1840 correlating with the period of massive immigration of Irish people. It was considered to be a popular speech of Liverpool spoken by educated people of Northern England. Knowles argues that no sources properly explain “why it should have spread to the whole of Merseyside already by 1889, and why it should be so close to Standard English, and not constitute a “dialect proper”. These could be due to the much older influence of communication.” (Knowles, 19-20) It could be given to the fact that the city of Liverpool had a good strategic position being a port because it has been linked to many other influential places and it has never been isolated from the rest of the country. “Merseyside has always had strong links with Ireland.” According to Knowles, by 1841 “the population of Liverpool increased by 139 800, of whom 77200 or 55 per cent were immigrants.” The Irish tended to settle around the cheap dock areas of Liverpool and Birkenhead where the accent seems to be the most distinct. (23)

There is a short paragraph in Wells’ Accents of English confirming some of these historical facts. “It is (Scouse) believed to have come into existence in the nineteenth century when large numbers of Irish immigrants as well as fair number of Welsch settled in this corner of north of England.” (Wells, Accents of English 2: The British Isles, 371)

2.2.2 Phonological features “One thing that is commonly claimed about Liverpool English is that it is not quite like its neighbours.”(Honeybone, NEW-DIALECT FORMATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LIVERPOOL: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCOUSE, 1) The features that are claimed to be the most salient are differences in how the consonant and vowel sounds 15

are realised. “Scouse belongs phonologically to the North-West Midlands, but many of its phonetic patterns are of Anglo-Irish origin. The source of the influence is British English generally, rather than RP. (A general development does not necessarily come from a single prestige source…If Liverpool speech is influenced from outside, there is no reason to assume the influence is from RP.)“ (Knowles, 279) “In terms of accent features, Merseyside speech is very different from the standard accent of ‘English English’ – that’s to say English English as opposed to Scottish English or Irish English – which is known as Received Pronunciation. Merseyside speech is very different to that, and actually very different from the accents of the area of the country around it in the North West.“ (Hamer)

These differences are adequately described in these pieces of work which serve as primary sources for this chapter.1, 2, 3

CONSONANTS

 The suffix –ing is /ɪn/ although words like “thing” or “sing” tend to have final /ŋg/  Scouse /ɹ/ may be an approximant or tap /r/  Th-stopping phenomenon occurs when speakers use dental or alveolar stops for /θ, ð/ resulting in words “then” and “den” sounding like homophones  Glottal stops are usually rare although not quite completely absent  /p, t, k/ are heavily aspirated and in the initial environments may be affricated  in the final position /p, t, k/ tend to be fully spirantised realized by phonemes /ɸ, s, x/, resulting in word “snake” for example to sound like /sneɪkx/

1 J.C. Wells: Accents of English: The British Isles

2 A. Hughes, P. Trudgill, D. Watt: English Accents and Dialects

3 Gerald Knowles: Scouse: The Urban Dialect of Liverpool

VOWELS

 There is no contrast regarding pairs of words “put” and “putt” which would in RP differ in the vowels /ʌ/ and /ʊ/ respectively  There is a variable concerning words like “dance” and “daft” which in Scouse contain shorter /a/  Long vowel /uː/ occurs in words “book” or “cook” which tend to be shorter containing the vowel /ʊ/ in RP  The “happy” vowel is /i/  There is a notable merge of sounds /eə/ and /ɜː/ contained in pairs of words like “fair” and “fur”. The most typical realisation is /eː/ although /ɜː/ can be heard as well  Liverpool dialect is strictly non-rhotic  Generally in Scouse, the centre of gravity of the tongue is brought backwards towards the soft palate which gives it a distinctive quality. The feature is called velarisation as it concerns velar position of the mouth cavity.  Between vowels, the first of which is short, /t/ maybe realised as /r/ through T- flapping

INTONATION  Scouse tends to use rise in sentences where RP would use fall. Conversely, a fall can be used where RP would use rise as well.

2.2.3 Grammatical features

In his doctoral thesis Scouse: The Urban Dialect of Liverpool, the linguist Gerald Knowles states that almost all the peculiarities of Scouse are entirely phonological; due to its historical trading links with London, its grammar and lexis stay very close to Standard English. (24) “Incorrect grammar in Liverpool might include non-standard details, register differences, badly formed sentences, and looseness of syntactic organisation. The identification of Scouse is thus not a simple matter of picking out examples of local usage: it is a complex linguistic, sociological, psychological,

educational and even literary problems.” (Knowles, 25) The fact that Scouse is not greatly different from Standard English in its grammar and lexis might be explained by the fact that by its origins, it is a relatively new dialect of English. (Honeybone, Alice: translating Standard English into dialect literature, 2)

Some experts even argue that Scouse is not a dialect at all due to its lack of grammatical and lexical features. “There are a few non-standard dialect words, and there are a couple of non-standard grammar constructions, for example ‘I haven’t seen nothing’ or ‘I haven’t been nowhere’ where you’ve got two negatives in the same sentence. But again, that’s very widespread – it’s not peculiar to Merseyside at all. In terms of accent features though, Merseyside speech is very different from the standard accent of ‘English English’ – that’s to say English English as opposed to Scottish English or Irish English – which is known as Received Pronunciation. Merseyside speech is very different to that, and actually very different from the accents of the area of the country around it in the North West.”(Hamer)

Nevertheless, there are aspects of grammar and lexis of Scouse that are different to grammar and vocabulary of Standard English even though these are typically widely shared with other non-standard dialects. Some of the grammar differences are included in the paragraph below. Unless stated otherwise, they were retrieved from Knowles’ Scouse: The Urban Dialect of Liverpool.

Very distinctive is the usage of possessive “me” instead of standard “my”, for example in: “Me dad is proud of me.” or the pattern in making auxiliary-verb contraction as stated in 2.2.2. (I’ll not x I won’t) As for example in the following sentence “They wouldn’t put up with it, would they, like?” the word “like” tends to be often used as a discourse particle. (Hughes, 116) Moreover, Scouse speakers are often misunderstood due to their tendencies to slur sentences together:

“I couldn’t get over it was me.”

“I couldn’t get over the surprise” and “I didn’t think it was me”.

As another example might serve confusing the forms “hasn’t got” and “doesn’t have” and mixing them together.

“It hasn’t have to be a proper story?”

The “had have” form as in “Had I’ve known what was going to happen…” is heard in Scouse as in many other varieties of English as well the non-prestige “he says” in a past time narrative.

Liverpudlians often use non-standard past and perfect forms of verbs. As Knowles says, “these forms are highly stigmatised, and would probably be avoided in the interview situation.”(35)

Past tense forms include: “I give”, “I seen”

Past participles include: “I have ate, broke, chose, took, wrote…”

2.2.4 Lexical features “Vocabulary varies according to register and class as well as geographical area, so that the identification of a “Scouse vocabulary” is a complex problem. Many Scouse words are in fact phonological variants of standard words, others are non-standard words or standard words with non-standard senses. (Knowles, 38) In respect of lexis, Scouse is considered „an urban dialectal source of neologisms […] secondly to London‟ (Grant, 152) One of the very interesting features is “the prosodically conditioned morphological truncation process (which gives ozzie from hospital, bezzie from best mate, lecky from electric and bevvy from beverage)” (Honeybone, NEW-DIALECT FORMATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LIVERPOOL: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCOUSE, 13)

This subchapter was based on several online sources stated in the list of references, but for better understanding of the text, they are included here as well. These are an

article “Scouse is boss”, the doctoral thesis Scouse: The Urban Dialect of Liverpool by Gerald Knowles and a web page: http://y2u.co.uk/liverpool_uk/Liverpool_Scouse_ _Accent.htm

EXAMPLES OF SCOUSE LEXIS: BEVY an alcoholic drink (therefore BEVVIED = drunk) BLIND an intensifier used both positively and negatively (as in “blind drunk“ or “I couldn’t hear a blind thing.”) BILLY NO MATES a loner BINS a pair of glasses BUTTY open sandwich, topped with jam, sugar, condensed milk, potato crisps and usually folded over roughly before being eaten COD ON to pretend DEAD an intensifier of adjectives and adverbs as in “dead good” (also pronounced as /diːd/) DIVVY stupid person DO ONE go away GET term of abuse for a soft or stupid person HARD tough, fearless LAST an adjective of intense disapproval (as in “The ale you get in London is last.”) “LENT IT OFF“ “borrowed it from” MA mother MOGGY a cat NARKED annoyed

NESH unable to withstand the cold NIPPER a small boy OLD FELLA dad OSSY hospital SKINT penniless, bankrupt

WHEN JESUS CHRIST WAS PLAYING long time ago FULL BACK FOR ISRAEL YELLOW BELLY a coward YOCKSIE a very thick Liverpool accent Tab. 1. A list of typical Scouse lexis

2.3 Geordie

2.3.1 The term, location, anecdote and a brief history According to Wells, Geordie /dʒɔːdi/ is a term used to describe both the traditional northern English dialect and a native of Tyneside, which is a conurbation comprised of Newcastle-upon Tyne, with the surrounding urban areas of southern Northumberland and parts of northern Durham. (Accents of English 2: The British Isles, 374) “By contrast, recent studies has shown that it is highly inappropriate to call it people who lives elsewhere than in the city of Newcastle and its direct surroundings.” As Keuchler claims, “there is hardly any evidence for either theory.”(2)

A similar amount of confusion is raised by the origin of the word Geordie. Different sources claim different theories. One of the theories suggests that the name was taken from George Stephenson, a railway engineer responsible for inventing a special kind of a lamp which was used by miners in 1920’s. Other theory disagrees, claiming that Geordies were called Newcastle’s supporters of King George I against Jacobite rebellions. On the website www.theguardian.com, there is a long thread of people discussing this interesting matter even though it is very unlikely that the truth will ever be discovered. (The Guardian) Nevertheless, this issue is perfectly summarised

in English Accents and Dialects as follows, “the reason this nickname is applied to Tynesiders and Tyneside speech is not certain, but Geordie is a diminutive form of the name George in the northern England and in Scotland, so it is probable that it has come to be attached to Tynesiders in the same way that ‘Jock’ (= Jack) is a nickname for anyone from Scotland, or ‘Paddy’ (= Patrick) for an Irish person.” (Hughes, 153)

Geordies are often described as “the friendliest people within the UK”. Such a statement cannot be confirmed or disproved, however, it is an unprecedented phenomenon that even though there are many incongruities concerning Geordie’s origin or placement, there is one anecdote carried on throughout many sources. It would seem highly foolish not to include it here as well. “It goes as followed: A Geordie in a wheelchair visits a medical doctor. The doctor says: “You’ve made good progress and it’s time to try to walk again.” The Geordie replies: “Work? Why man, I can’t even walk!”(Keuchler, 3) This anecdote is funny under a circumstance that a listener understands Geordie pronunciation which perceive both word “walk” and “work” as homophones being pronounced as /wɔːk/.

Geordie dialect origination dates back to the end of the fourth century after the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. Afterwards an invasion of Anglo-Saxons began, Britons, unable to protect themselves from the colonisation, were flooded by the incursions and soon first settlements appeared gradually developing into the Anglo- Saxon kingdom of Bernicia. Later Bernicia expanded and eventually developed into a kingdom called Northumbria. It is from the ancient Germanic and Scandinavian language of the Angles of Denmark that England was given its name as well as Geordie owes its origins to. As opposed to Standard English which is predominantly by Latin origin influenced by Norman French, Geordie words are more than 80 % Angle in origin. Therefore Geordie dialect should not be perceived as sloppy neighbour or wrong use of language. It is only a common usage which survived only in certain parts of Britain. (Simpson, „Geordie Origins“)

2.3.2 Phonological features Geordie is sometimes said to be unintelligible to such an extent that it should be considered to be a separate language. Peter Beardsley, a famous Geordie soccer player was embarrassed on the national television when they added subtitles during his interviews as he was not understood even by native speakers. This incomprehensibility is due to various distinctive grammatical and lexical features, though the most characteristic is the non-standard use of sounds, especially vowels. (Smith, “Newcastle English (Geordie)”)

There are many variations concerning mainly segmental phonology. Two primary sources for this subchapter are Accents of English 2: The British Isles by J.C. Wells and English Accents and Dialects by Hughes, Trudgill and Watt, therefore, unless stated otherwise, these should be regarded as authors of the paraphrased points.

CONSONANTS

 Voiceless plosives /p, t, k/are usually glottalised. This may be realised by a full glottal stop /ʔ/ or a combined glottal stop preceded by the plosive /pʔ, tʔ, kʔ/  No H-dropping which means that Geordie is a unique among other urban England varieties for having a phoneme /h/ always present  /l/ is noticeably clear in all positions  Uvular fricative /ʁ/ is almost instinct apart from the rural areas of Northumberland, therefore is realised as /ɹ/ or /r/  -ing form is /ɪn/

VOWELS

 Burr retraction is a process resulting in words where RP would have a phoneme /ɜː/, but Geordie has /ɔː/, which gave the Geordie anecdote an opportunity to be created

 Words which have /ɔː/ in RP and at the same time have -al- in spelling as well as words like “know” or “cold” have broad Geordie pronunciation with /aː/, which also gave the Geordie anecdote an opportunity to be created  Words like “farm”, “car”, “dark”, ”start” or “half” have a long back /ɑː/, which may be often slightly rounded  Diphthongs /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ become either monophthongs /eː/ and /ɔː/ or centring diphthongs /ɪə/ and /ʊə/  The weak vowel /i/ appears in final positions  Diphthong /aʊ/ is often realised as /uː/  Diphthong /aɪ/ is usually /eɪ/ except for before voiced fricatives /v, ð, z/ where it remains the same  As well as in Scouse and other northern accents with the exception of Scottish, the vowel /ʊ/ has much wider distribution also occurring in words where RP would be realised by /ʌ/  At the same time, words like “dance” and “daft” have /a/  Word-endings –er(s) and –or(s) ends with /ɐ/ (which is slightly less open than cardinal vowel /ɑ/) or more or less front /e/ instead of schwa /ə/

2.3.3 Grammatical features This chapter deals with grammatical features which distinguish Geordie from other dialects including Standard English. Due to the mutual influence, it cannot be expressively stated that these varieties applies only to Geordie as they are usually not regional specific. Many constructions are widespread especially across the northern border with Scotland. Nevertheless, there are several grammatical standard and non- standard constructions which are typical for Tyneside conurbation. These will be compared with the forms of Standard English which is used by educated people throughout the whole England. As Hughes states, “the grammar of a dialect changes with time, but very slowly and it is not always easy to identify ongoing grammatical development.”(14)

As mentioned in 2.2.2, speakers of northern parts of England including speakers of Tyneside tend to use contracted negatives in the way that is quite different from the way a speaker of south of England would use it. The former would be likely to contract in this way “he’s not” whereas the latter one would prefer the option “he isn’t”.

A word “like” is becoming more and more frequent and it has several functions. It can function as a pause filler, intensifier or as a discourse particle. There seems to be no rule for applying the third kind though, although in Geordie, it tends to be rather overused.

There are many deviations in the system of pronouns. “Us” can function as the first person singular pronoun “me” or as a possessive plural pronoun “our “as well. There is also the extensive usage of possessive “me”. Pronoun “our” can be sometimes exchanged for “wor” both in “my” or “our” meaning. Lastly, “us” and “we” is interchangeable as well. Furthermore, a special form “youse” can be used instead of “you” for both singular and plural form of personal pronoun, especially when addressing other people in an exclamative way. Nevertheless, the most common non- standard variant is the use of “them” instead of a demonstrative pronoun “those” (I don’t know them people). A relative pronoun “who” can be omitted even in a sentence where elision of the pronoun may result in confusion. There is a rule in Standard English which says that if the subject of the subordinate clause is identical to the object of a main clause, the relative pronoun must be present. However, in Geordie dialect, speakers do not seem to need this rule.

Geordie seems to prefer singular form of the verb “be” both in present and past time. Moreover there are many exceptions concerning irregular verbs, mainly in past tense and past participle. Many of them take the same form. On one hand, the two other forms of the verb “go” are went-went, on the other a verb “do” takes both forms as “done”. A verb “give”, for instance, is a special case altogether, because it takes the

same form every time. Another very common feature for Geordie is that a negative form of “do” takes a form of “divn’t”.

Some adjectives and adverbs tend to have the same form though in Standard English they would have the adverbial suffix –ly or different form entirely. Furthermore -s suffix is often added to a verb even though it is not a third person singular form (as in “I says we do that!”) Another interesting point might be that a phrase “a bit of” is often used without the preposition of. (“We bought a bit of carpet.”) Finally, there is the non- standard form of using more than one negative in a sentence, called multiple negation which is described in chapter 2.2.2.

The sources for this chapter consisted of the information retrieved from British Library supported by explanation found in English Accents and Dialects by Hughes, Trudgill and Watt.

2.3.4 Lexical features Lexical changes are in comparison to grammatical ones more rapid and it is easier to realise the change of a new word entering a language. (Hughes, 14) Geordie dialect shares rather a great deal of its lexis with other northern dialects, nevertheless, it consists of special vocabulary as well which is quite unique and cannot be found anywhere else.

As previously stated, most of the words are of Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian origin due to the given historical facts. This chapter offers a short list for readers to become acquainted with some of the words the most frequently used in Geordie nowadays.

EXAMPLES OF GEORDIE LEXIS: AYE “yes” (it is used as well in formal ceremonial voting system of The House of Commons for instance) BAIRN a child, common in Scotland too BAIT a word expressing “food” or “snack” CANNY a versatile word widely used with a variety of meanings, including adverbial “very”. Canny old soul - a nice old person. Canny good. Canny hard - very good or very tough. CLAMMING starving, hungry or in desperate need of some service HACKY dirty, but can also mean “very” when used to prefix lazy HINNY Sources quite differ on this word. It can mean either wife, female companion or life partner, or a Geordie form of a word “honey” KETS sweets, usually the penny chew variety that you'd buy with your pocket money from a corner shop MARRA a friend or workmate MONKEY’S BLOOD the raspberry or strawberry flavour sauce used to garnish ice cream cones NETTY toilet facility PAGGERED exhausted or extremely tired PET term to address females (e.g. "thanks, pet") SACKLESS stupid or hopeless TEN O’CLOCK a morning snack UP A HEIGHT in a state of high emotions or upset WORKYTICKET someone who is being mischievous or downright annoying Tab. 2. A list of typical Geordie lexis

The list of typical Geordie vocabulary was assembled by using several online sources. They were chosen purposefully so that the words were not too outdated. The most extensive is the online Geordie Dictionary, British Library “Sounds familiar” offers many interesting words as well, although the most useful proved to be the article on www.chroniclelive.co.uk named “Geordie sayings: The top 56 things that you'll only hear someone from Newcastle say” where a phrase "Gan canny, man" can be found, meaning “a generic farewell term implying take care or take it easy.”

3. Practical Part

3.1 Research The research for the practical part of the bachelor thesis was carried out on the premises of the Faculty of Education. Despite the original idea being the effort to examine the students of Teacher Training in Foreign Languages - English Language as this is the author’s field of study, on the account of insufficient number of the students of this particular specialisation, students of Lower Secondary School Teacher Training in English Language and Literature were chosen to participate. The desired number was to have at least thirty participants in each group of first and third year students in order to be able to compare whether higher efficiency of English influence better understanding of non-standard accents and dialects. The research took place in four different classes of Practical language, two of each target groups, in a form of a short survey and a listening task based on two recordings of lesser-known dialects.

Firstly, students were asked to complete one page long survey obtaining relevant information considering certain personal data together with coveted dialect-related information. Before the recordings were played, students were asked to read through the questionnaire thoroughly first so they could fully focus on the listening tasks later. Both recordings were divided into three separate parts and were played for students twice. First as a whole for students to become accustomed to the sound of the dialect, then they were stopped after each section so it was easier for students to have a better grasp of the given questionnaire in order to diminish any disruptive elements. There were several loud speakers arranged in the well-equipped classroom so as to provide equal conditions for all the students. The research took approximately fifty minutes for each of four groups.

3.1.1 Respondents The respondents participating in the research were all Czech nationality students of Lower Secondary School Teacher Training in English Language and Literature. In total, there were seventy-two respondents consisting of thirty-eight students of the first year and thirty-four students of third year of studies. All of them have reached at 29

least upper-intermediate level which corresponds to B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages as it is a standard required for passing the entrance exam. Due to its demanding nature, it was not possible to conduct the research among lower level of learners than university students. According to the European Language Portfolio, learners of this level can understand in detail what is said to them in standard spoken language even in a noisy environment. With no further difficulties they are able to follow main ideas on both concrete and abstract topics delivered in a standard dialect. As the main aim is to examine the intelligibility of the accents it was necessary to establish that students are able to understand standard forms of English to nearly full extent. (The Alte Can Do Project)

First year students Third year students Number of students 38 34 Female - 23 (61 %) Female - 25 (74 %) Gender Male – 15 (39 %) Male – 9 (26 %) Average age 20 23 Average number of 11 13 years studying English Number of students 7 (18 %) 13 (38 %) who spent time abroad Average number of 1,5 6,5 months spent abroad Tab. 3. Basic data about respondents

The Table 3 above deals with the information acquired from the respondents during the initial survey. These are the number of participants, average age, gender, the number of years of studying English language in average, the number of students who spent any time abroad in an English speaking country and how long they stayed there in average. The United Kingdom was the most frequent answer, students mentioned namely London (several times), Manchester, Oxford, Brighton, Colchester, and Plymouth (twice). The United States were represented by four students who have

spent some time in Arizona, California, Florida and Illinois (Chicago). There were also two students who spent their holidays in Ireland (Dublin).

3.1.2 Questionnaires The questionnaire which can be found in the Appendix was initiated with a page carrying an introduction of the author and her research, its purposes, a polite request to complete it, an acknowledgment and a short survey. The survey consisted of a set of questions inquiring about respondents’ gender, age, the current year of studies, time spent abroad in an English speaking country or their aim for any specific accent together with explanation for their choice. Furthermore, students were asked to express their opinion considering the question whether they believed that strictly standard form of English (for instance Received Pronunciation) should be taught at universities or if, on the other hand, they wished to be exposed to a variety of different dialects.

The next part was divided into two subsections each based on two of the given dialects. The order of recordings was purposefully designed for the Scouse dialect to be the first as it is generally considered to be easier to understand and does not contain as many distinctive features considering vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation as Geordie does. Both subsections were introduced by a short paragraph which helped students to get familiar with the topic as in reality people hardly listen to something without any prior knowledge or idea to what they are about to hear.

When acquiring a second language, listening is probably the hardest skill to develop – students have to be dealing unfamiliar vocabulary, suprasegmental features of pronunciation such as connected speech, intonation or rhythm, and unknown grammatical sentence structures which is even more highlighted in this case of different dialects.

Therefore it was vital to acquaint the respondents with the topic beforehand not only to make the listening more real-like, but also to help the students relax because the

stress may play important role in the listening. Students might be afraid of the fact that they are not going to understand every word which can prevent them from concentrating which is the natural process when you listen to someone in real life conditions. Another premise might be the fact that students may not be interested in the given topic, thus at least minor pre-listening activity is likely to stir students’ interest and curiosity.

The questionnaire is comprised of three types of questions originally designed for the purposes of this research. The first of the type was simple gap filling where students were asked to provide usually one word long answers. The second one featured closed questions where particular piece of information was needed. The last kind was represented by listening for a gist questions where student do not have to focus on every word as it is aimed for understanding the general idea.

After the set of questions, there were two tables, one for each dialect which solicited student’s subjective evaluation on how well he/she could understand the speaker with the range from one to five, one for the best (I was able to understand the speaker very clearly.), five for the worst (I was not able to understand the speaker at all.).

At the very end of the questionnaire, students were asked to fill in one last table. Its purpose was to determine which of the dialect was more appealing, challenging, which resembled more to Received Pronunciation or which would more likely be considered to be appropriate for teaching other students.

Apart from the questions stated above, students were given a table of words which sound significantly different when pronounced in the accent. Their task was to tick some of the words or write down their own suggestions if they noticed any deviation from Standard English.

3.2 Recordings The listening activity is based on two recordings found in British Library Sound Archive. Both of the recordings were created in 1999 and contained over five minutes long interview where the speakers answered several questions considering their lives. For the purposes of the research, they have been significantly shortened and adjusted so they still remained logical and consistent but they took about a half less of the original time.

In the first of the recording, the speaker is a thirty-year-old housewife Maria who talks about her husband who was fired for no specific reason and his role in the industrial dispute of 1955 in Birkenhead, Liverpool. This strike involved dockers and workers employed by a company called Torside who were demonstrating against being made redundant after refusing to cross a picket line set up in support of their fellow workers. Maria talks with a strong Scouse dialect using non-standard grammatical features as well as special vocabulary typical for the north of England. The edited version of this recording is three minutes and fifteen seconds long and is divided into three parts.

The second recording is one of Geordie dialect and is three minutes and fifty seconds long. It is spoken by Mark, a sixty year old labourer from Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne who talks about courtship to his wife, his life as a married man and finally about working as a labourer in the 1960s. In my opinion as well as according to the reaction of students, this recording was harder to comprehend due to the speaker’s rather strong accent and usage of rich vocabulary and grammar typical for Geordie dialect.

3.2.1 Scouse recording 3.2.1.1 Transcription and distinctive features of Scouse recording

PART 1: Maria: Torside turned up, there was this, his dad said that, you know, the docks was taking on men, you know, dockers’ sons and he should apply, so, which he did. So he thought, you know, “I won’t get it” and I was thinking, “Well, you might get it,” and, of course, we was saying, “If you do get it, it’s a job for life: look at your dad; it’s good money, it’s tonnage and everything,

blah, blah, blah.” And we were hoping and praying he’d get it and it turned out that he did get this job. Well, it was just fantastic; we just all, we, we celebrated that he’d got this job. The whole family went out for a meal and, it, my dad was so made up, because, I think my dad looked upon it as it being security for his daughter as well, because a job on the docks was a good job, you know, you, everyone wanted to have security and that’s what we thought.

Scouse Standard English Category of a equivalent variation up /ʊp/ up /ʌp/ phonological sons /sɒnz/ sons /sʌnz/ phonological we was saying we were saying grammatical money /mɒni/ money /mʌni/ phonological tonnage /tʰɒnɪʤ/ tonnage /tʌnɪʤ/ phonological celebrated /seləbreɪtʰɪd/ celebrated /seləbreɪtɪd/ phonological my /mɪ/ my /maɪ/ phonological made up happy lexical looked /luːkt/ looked /lʊkt/ phonological daughter /dɔːtʰe/ daughter /dɔːtə/ phonological security /səˈkjʊərɪtʰi/ security /səˈkʊərɪti/ phonological Tab. 4. Scouse variations part 1

PART 2: So your, your standard of living improved then obviously, if he was earning more money?

Maria: It did, yeah, it did. And he used to work a lot of overtime as well, so that used to be, come in handy, although he always regretted missing Thomas, when Thomas was a baby and him growing up, cause he used to come home from work and Thomas would be in bed; he’d’ve had his bath, had his bottle and gone to bed. So he’d say, you know, “What’s your day been like?” and I’d say, “Oh, fine” and I’d say, “And my mum has told me that Thomas,” cause I was missing things as well. And he’d say, “Oh, is he?” and I’d say, “Yeah,” and he came home and I’d say, “He walked today,” and it was, like, “Oh, is he in bed?” and I’m saying, “Yeah,” and I thought, “Oh, it’s so sad, really, that he missed all that,” but, ehm.

Well, we got a car; we got a telephone; uh, we’d go on holidays — not a lot abroad, cause we had the baby — but we were all generally, we’d, we’d buy clothes for ourselves and we started shopping in Tesco’s rather than the Kwik-Save; uhm, and we, we, you know, we’d go for meals and go the pictures and things like that.

Scouse Standard English Category of a variation equivalent work /wɛːk/ work /wɜːk/ phonological bath /bæθ/ bath /bɑːθ/ phonological bottle /bɒʔl/ bottle /bɒtl/ phonological missing /mɪsɪn/ missing/mɪsɪŋ/ phonological telephone /tʰelɪfəʊn/ telephone /telɪfəʊn/ phonological not a lot /nɒʔlɒʔ/ not a lot /nɒt ə lɒt/ phonological go the pictures go to the cinema lexical Tab.5 Scouse variations part 2

PART 3:

Maria: Ehm, he came home from work early and I thought he’d got what they call ‘the twilight shift’ and he said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” and I said, “Oh, give us the good news.” He said, “I’m not on the twilight,” and I said, “Well, what’s the bad news?” He said, “I’ve been sacked.” Well, I was sitting there and I said, “You’ve been sacked?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Don’t be daft,” I said, “what’ve you been sacked for?” I said, “What’ve you done?” He said, “I haven’t done anything.” I said, “Well, you haven’t been sacked then,” I said, “you can’t be sacked for doing nothing.” He said, “Maria, I’ve been sacked.” He said, “We’ve all been sacked.” So then he, he sat down and he told me and I said, “Well, it doesn’t make sense.” and he said, “We’re going to set a picket line up,” he said, “have you got any coffee?” I said, “What for?” He said, “Well, I don’t know how long I’m going to be there for.” So I gave him coffee and teabags and made butties for him and he, he went out in his usual clothes: in his yellow jacket and his, his woolly hat. And I thought, you know, “Oh, I hope this is going to get sorted out today.” And it went on for another day and then we went round to see his dad and his dad said, “I’m not crossing no picket line, especially with my son being on it.” So he never crossed it and then I couldn’t believe it when all these dockers weren’t crossing this picket line, thought, “God, this is serious now! I can’t believe what’s going on!” And he was really upset, his dad, cause he’d worked there for thirty years and I thought, “Oh God!” I felt so guilty and Chris felt guilty, because we, I felt as if we’d lost his job; it was our fault, you know.

Scouse Standard English Category of a equivalent variation twilight /twaɪlaɪts/ twilight /twaɪlaɪt/ phonological sacked /sækt/ sacked /sækt/ phonological daft /dæft/ daft /dɑːft/ phonological coffee /kʰɒfi/ coffee /kɒfi/ phonological what for /wɒʔ fɔː/ What for /wɒt fɔː/ phonological butties /bʊtiz/ sandwiches lexical I’m not crossing no picket I’m not crossing any picket grammatical line. line. fault /fɔːlts/ fault /fɔːlt/ phonological Tab. 6. Scouse variations part 3

The recording of Scouse dialect offers a vast number of examples of lexical, grammatical and mainly phonological features. The most profound characteristics is the heavy aspiration of words containing the plosives /p t k/ like “celebrated” /seləbreɪtʰɪd/, “daughter” /dɔːtʰər/, “security” /səˈkjɔːrɪtʰi/, “telephone” /tʰelɪfəʊn/ or “coffee” /kʰɒfi/. Moreover at final position, these plosives tend to be affricated which results in words “fault” or “twilight” being pronounce as /fɔːlts/and /twaɪlaɪts/. Despite Scouse being described as a dialect with relative infrequency of glottal stops, with this particular speaker, glottalisation of /t/ can be clearly perceived for instance in “bottle” /bɒʔl/, “what for” /wɒʔ fɔː/ or “not a lot” /nɒʔlɒʔ/, although this feature is quite common for many dialects. The word “sacked” has the same phoneme /æ/ in both variants, but its quality seems to be rather different in Scouse, sounding more similar to phoneme/ʌ/.

Furthermore, sound /h/ was usually omitted in personal pronouns although it is not a rule. The sentence “I’m not crossing no picket line.” is an example of multiple negation which is another one of rather widespread construction within many dialects both in British Isles and worldwide.

Considering vowel sounds, the most significant difference between Standard English and Scouse is absence of /ʌ/sound. In the recording, there appeared several words which would in RP contain this sound, although in Scouse they were pronounced in the following way “up” /ʊp/, “sons” /sɒnz/, “money”/mɒni/and “tonnage”/tʰɒnɪʤ/. Other phenomenon can be observed with the words like “bath” or “daft” which in RP have a long vowel /ɑː/ phoneme, but in Liverpool the phoneme /a/ occurs there, which is an equivalent for open front vowel/æ/. Moreover Liverpudlians have the same sound /ɛː/ for both diphthong /eə/ and open-mid central unrounded vowel /ɜː/. Therefore the word “work” is pronounced as /wɛːk/, the middle sound being close to long /e/sound. Lexical differences are being represented by terms “butties” or “made-up” which are quite common for Scouse dialect.

3.2.2 Geordie recording 3.2.2.1 Transcription and distinctive features of the Geordie recording

PART 1:

Mark: It might sound old-fashioned, but I fell in love with her. You know. I still, I still, I’ll always love our lass. I mean I love her stronger each day. I mean, you, the, them days you didn’t, you didn’t live with lasses. If, if a bloke was going out (ganning) with a lass and they weren’t married, she, she had a bad name. You know. And everybody looked, looked down on people like that. And if a lass had a bairn, even if a lass had a bairn out of wedlock, she was, look, frowned upon, you know. I mean, I’m not saying that’s right. But at the time they seemed right. I mean, people’s att, your attitudes change now. I don’t (divn’t) think they’re right now anyway. You know, when they live together. And they’re having kids and, and they don’t (divn’t) want to get married and, I think you’re, you’re better being married. I mean it worked for me. But saying that, mind, uh, I got the right one. I was lucky; I got the right one. And it didn’t work for my brother; he got the wrang one. So you cannot speak for other people really, can you? You know what I mean? I cannot. But I mean, I’m lucky. I’ve been lucky; dead lucky.

Geordie Standard English Category of a variation equivalent might /meɪt/ might /maɪt/ phonological love /lʊv/ love /lʌv/ phonological our/wor my grammatical lass woman lexical day/dɪə/ day /deɪ/ phonological them days in those days grammatical bloke man lexical ganning going lexical name /nɪəm/ name /neɪm/ phonological doon /duːn/ down /daʊn/ phonological bairn child lexical wedlock marriage lexical right /reɪt/ right /raɪt/ phonological time /teɪm/ time /taɪm/ phonological now /nuː/ now /naʊ/ phonological divn’t don’t grammatical are better being better be grammatical work /wɔːk/ work /wɜːk/ phonological mind /meɪnd/ mind /maɪnd/ phonological lucky /lʊki/ lucky /lʌki/ phonological my /mi/ my /maɪ/ phonological wrang wrong phonological/lexical know /nɑː/ know /nəʊ/ phonological dead /diːd/ dead /ded/ phonological/lexical Tab. 7. Geordie variations part 1

PART 2:

Mark: It’s funny, but the kids now, they want everything. Straightaway. We were happy to get a few sticks of furniture and pay weekly for it. And then a bit, a bit carpet. And you rented your house. And you’d never, ever thought you’d buy a house. I mean that seemed and, and, naebody bought houses in them days. And we got our bits of furniture. And then, then, then we got a black and white television, which we rented. And that was a luxury. We were happy. And later on your sights went a bit higher. You made more money. The kids grew up a bit. We bought our own house. And I, I worked on bonus and I, I, I paid it off quick as I could. Because I always had the fear that I wasn’t going (ganning) to be working. Because that was always on the back of your mind. That you were going (ganning) to be on the dole. Nae money. Because when you’re brought up like (x lately) me, I mean, we were always hungry. And always wanting. And you never had that dinner. And that’s always on the back of your mind that you’re going (ganning) to be like that again. I always remember a story about Charlie Chaplin. They reckon even when he was rich, he used to hide (x hate) food and store food. I can understand that.

Geordie Standard English Category of a variation equivalent funny /fʊni/ funny /fʌni/ phonological straightaway /strɪətəwɪə/ straightaway /streɪtəweɪ/ phonological furniture /fɔːnɪʧə/ furniture /fɜːnɪʧə/ phonological pay /pɪə/ pay /peɪ/ phonological a bit a bit of grammatical house /aʊs/ house /haʊs/ phonological nobody (naebody) /niːbədi/ nobody /nəʊbədi/ phonological later /lɪətə/ later /leɪtə/ phonological sights /seɪts/ sights /saɪts/ phonological bonus /bɔːnəs/ bonus /bəʊnəs/ phonological dole /dʊəl/ dole /dəʊl/ phonological no (nae) /neɪ/ no /nəʊ/ phonological like /leɪk/ like /laɪk/ phonological about /əˈbuːt/ about /əˈbaʊt/ phonological hide /heɪd/ hide /haɪd/ phonological Tab. 8. Geordie variations part 2

PART 3:

Mark: And I worked with Irishmen. Well, with me being English, they didn’t want me in a gang. Unless I was, I had to be really good. And prove I was as good as them, if not better. So I proved I was as good as them. And I set the pace. And, uh, it was, it was great. It was great.

Cause I was working that hard. I was just working and sleeping and drinking and working. And that’s all your life was. The bairns now, they says, “Dad, we thought you were hard and you were hard then and we were frightened to talk to you. But we realise now you had to do (dae) that.” And, uh, I’ve got more time for the kids now. Because I’m not working. Cause work, it takes over your whole life, you know. It, it’s, it’s like a drug, it makes, it’s hard. I mean, when I was working, I mean, I, even when I

was sleeping, I used to be working in my sleep. Cause it was that hard. You know, I was, I was like a machine and I, I was proud of the fact as well, because your muscles would pump up, you know.

Mind you, I still love my work. I work at a college. Newcastle College there. I work with young bricklayers and that. I do (dae) a bit part-time teaching sometimes. I get teaching and that. And I can get on great with the kids, because you know how to talk to them. And you get them laughing. And we just, I mean the kids are great, the kids, I mean. They say the kids aren’t as nice as they used to be. I think that they are. I think it’s just, just the, the way it is, isn’t it, you know? But I love working with young ones, like. I work with the special needs, you know. The special needs are funny. You know, I, I, I felt proud, because they would, they come to you like a magnet.

Geordie Standard English Category of a equivalent variation Irishmen /eɪərɪʃmen/ Irishmen /aɪərɪʃmen/ phonological pace /pɪəs/ pace /peɪs/ phonological great /grɛːt/ great /greɪt/ phonological life /leɪf/ life /laɪf/ phonological they says they say grammatical frightened /freɪtnd/ frightened /fraɪtnd/ phonological drug /drʊg/ drug /drʌg/ phonological muscles /mʊslz/ muscles /mʌslz/ phonological pump up /pʊmp ʊp/ pump up /pʌmp ʌp/ phonological talk /taːk/ talk /tɔːk/ phonological laughing /læfɪn/ laughing /lɑːfɪŋ/ phonological way /wɪə/ way /weɪ/ phonological Tab. 9. Geordie variations part 3

In the recording, it is noticeable that in Geordie the vowel /ʊ / has wider distribution than it does in RP so it can be found in words such as “love” /lʊv/, “lucky” /lʊki/, “funny” /fʊni/, “drug” /drʊg/, “muscles” /mʊslz/ or “pump up” /pʊmp ʊp/. This tendency is quite familiar to ESL students though and it does not compromise the ability to understand the words to a large extent. On the other hand, the inclination to pronounce diphthong /aɪ/ as /eɪ/ made certain words almost impossible to recognise. As a result, words such as “time” /teɪm/, “hide” /heɪd/, “like” /leɪk/ could be easily mistaken for words “tame”, “hate” and “lake”.

Geordie recording features many interesting examples of unique vocabulary, such as “bairn” (a child), “wedlock” (marriage), and “bloke” (man). Another example might

be the word “dead” which is pronounced /diːd/in Geordie and instead of an adjective it serves as an intensifier.

In Geordie dialect, there are also several features which coincide with Scouse. Apart from wider distribution of /ʊ/ sound due to inexistence of /ʌ/ vowel, there is also a glottalisation of /p t k/consonants or occurrence of short vowel /a/in words such as laughing /læfɪn/ where RP would have long vowel /ɑː/together with preference for /ɪn/instead of /ɪŋ/ in –ing forms.

3.3 Results

This chapter consists of results of a short survey about the respondents asking them to name any English accents or dialects and if they have any personal experience with particular accent. Furthermore, they were to decide whether they believe that students at universities should be exposed to a variety of accents and dialects or they prefer the teacher to speak Received Pronunciation or General American only. The last question inquired about their personal aim for any specific accent.

Apart from the opening survey, the results were divided into several categories. Firstly, according to the year of studying of respondents, secondly into the two described dialects and lastly by the type of a question. There were three different types of question to deal with including gap-filing, close one-word-answer questions and the gist questions. Students were also asked to mark or fill in any words the intelligibility of which was compromised the most.

Finally, the results showed the likeability and difficulty of these dialects according to the students together with the self-evaluation of their ability to understand each recording. Naturally, there was a noticeable pattern between the ability to understand the dialect and its likeability.

3.3.1 Survey When asked to name any English accents or dialects, students mentioned the most often Cockney, Scottish, Irish and Liverpool accent respectively. Just one student was familiar with Geordie dialect even though he could not recall the exact area where it is spoken.

Preference of accents vs RP 35

0 1st Year 3rd Year

RP yes RP no Accents yes Accents no

Fig. 1. Preference of accents versus Received Pronunciation

In the graph above, the results demonstrates that both first and third year students support the option to have a variety of different accents and dialects to be taught at universities. Interestingly enough, this opinion does not change with the years of studying as the results are equally distributed in both target groups. In total, only 11 respondents voted against the accents. One of the students’ explanation was that students should master standard form of English first before they move to lesser- known accents and dialects. Some students were concerned about the difficulty of understanding these accents and one student commented on the fact that some of them are not very pleasing to one’s ear.

On the other hand, many students complained about the artificiality of the language taught in the classes. In the questionnaires, they stated that they would rather learn “the real world English” as some of them suffered quite a shock when trying to understand English speaking people outside the classroom. They would not want to be exposed to different dialects too early though. The number of years of studying English in the questionnaires visibly corresponded with the need for broadening their knowledge beyond Received Pronunciation.

Accents 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1st Year 3rd Year

British American Other None

Fig. 2. Personal aim for an accent

As for the personal aim for specific accent, majority of the students did not opt for any. Most of them had the need to justify their choice by explaining that they either have not decided yet or are still waiting for their language abilities to get better in general before they attempt to aim for one.

Generally, British accents appear to be more popular than American ones. There were several reasons stated in the questionnaires. The most frequent reason was the possibility to travel to The United Kingdom which is considerably closer than the United States, the euphony of British accents (especially the non-rhotic ones), the

personal experience with the accent given by living in the area or knowing the people from there. Many respondents became familiar with certain accents through their favourite characters of some of the British series, there were mentioned titles such as Red Dwarf, IT – Crowd, Black Books etc. Dylan Moran, the Irish comedian, actor and co-creator of a Black books sitcom was apparently the main reason why two of the students, one of first year the other of third year, decided to pursue an Irish accent.

The two following graphs deals with the matter of how the two dialects appealed to the students and whether or not they personally found them challenging.

Likeability 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1st Year 3rd Year

Scouse Geordie Both Neither

Fig. 3 Likeability of accents

Seventy percent of first year students and even more of third year students found the Scouse accent more appealing and they would not mind introducing it to their future students. In general, older students were slightly more critical towards both of the accents, sixteen percent did not like either of them and almost ten of the older students would never consider teaching any of them to students. When asked about the resemblance between the given accents and Received Pronunciation, barely any of the

respondents heard any likeness between Geordie and RP but more than twenty respondents of each group marked Scouse as quite similar to RP.

Geordie dialect did not seem to appeal to most of the students, probably as a result of being considered too challenging which can be seen in the graph below where it was marked as overly challenging for more than a half of the first year students. Surprisingly enough, seven out of ten students of the third year dismissed Geordie accent as too difficult as well, which was even more than first year students said. As opposed to it, Scouse received more favourable rating. It was indicated as challenging by even less than a half of both first and third year students.

Challenge 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1st Year 3rd Year

Scouse Geordie Both Neither

Fig.4 Difficulty of accents

On the other hand when it came to the self-evaluation of how well the respondents were able to understand the speakers, the results were not so distinctive. The students were asked to measure their ability to understand each accent separately. The score went from one to five, number one for “I was able to understand the speaker very clearly” and number five for “I was not able to understand the speaker at all”. More detailed description is provided in the table below.

 Tick the most appropriate answer. 1 I was able to understand the speaker very clearly. 2 I was able to understand the speaker for most of the time with the exception of several words. 3 I was able to understand the speaker with minor difficulties. 4 I was not able to understand the speaker for most of the time. 5 I was not able to understand the speaker at all. Tab. 10 for self-evaluation of students

As the graph below reflects, for the students of the first year of studies, there was only a slight difference between the ability to perceive the two accents despite Scouse being assessed considerably less challenging in the previous graph. The average value was 3.8 whilst for the third year students the value was only 3.4. As for Geordie accent, the results were not so distinctive with the value of 4 for first year students and 3.85 for the third year students.

Self - evaluation 4,1 4 3,9 3,8 3,7 3,6 3,5 3,4 3,3 3,2 Scouse Geordie

1st Year 3rd Year

Fig. 5. Results of self-evaluation of both target groups for each accent

After the going through the results of the whole listening part, it was visible that most of the students underestimated themselves a great deal. As an example being respondent number 7 (the third year) who had nine from ten questions answered correctly missing just one word which was not identified by any other student. He marked his ability to understand Geordie dialect as “somewhere between 3 (I was able 45

to understand the speaker with minor difficulties) and 4 (I was not able to understand the speaker most of the time”).

3.3.2 Gap filling results In total, there were two gap-filling questions, one in each dialect consisting of eight blank spaces for students to fill in. These were the only parts of each listening that were played separately twice for students to have enough time and space to fill the words in.

Gap - filling 60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% Scouse Geordie

1st Year 3rd Year

Fig. 6. Gap-filling results

Third year students accomplished better results in Scouse (thirteen percent), but considering Geordie the incomes were practically equivalent.

EXAMPLE:

 Scouse: “Have you got any …coffee…1?” I said, “…What for…2?” He said, “Well, I don’t know how long I’m going to be there for.” So I gave him …coffee…3 and teabags and made …butties…4 for him and he, he went out in his …usual…5 clothes: in his …yellow….6 jacket and his, his woolly hat.

The most problematic was the word in the fourth position. Out of the seventy-two respondents only one was able to identify the word correctly as “butties”, which is a

northern English term for a sandwich. It was probably formed from the adjective buttered. The incorrect guesses for this option were often words “potties” or “tea”. Most of the student just left the option blank. It is vital to realise that according to such questions, the word dialect should be used when describing Scouse, because not only the phonetic features are dealt with but special vocabulary and grammatical features are come across as well. (Collins English Dictionary)

EXAMPLE:

 Geordie: Fill in the right words ( numbers 1,2,3,5 stand for the same word, only 4 is a different one):

I got the right one. I was …lucky…1 I got the right one. And it didn’t work for my brother; he got the wrong one. So you cannot speak for other people really, can you? You know what I mean? I cannot. But I mean, I’m …lucky…2 I’ve been …lucky…3; …dead….4 …lucky…5

In Geordie listening, students were supposed to fill in five different positions. Nevertheless, as the instructions say, four of the options stand for the same word, only the fourth one is different. As for the “lucky” options, in Geordie it is pronounced as /lʊki/not /lʌki/which confused the students into opting for the word “looking” instead. More than a half of the respondents answered incorrectly and there was no significant difference between the first and the third year students. Option number four was also problematic as the word “dead” is pronounced /diːd/ instead of /ded/which made the students believe they heard the word “really”, which was the only choice that was made apart from leaving the option blank. No student was able to recognise this word and it resulted in being the only item that was not answered correctly by any student.

3.3.3 Results from listening for a certain phrase

Listening for a certain phrase 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Scouse Geordie

1st Year 3rd Year

Fig. 7. Results from the listening for a certain phrase

There were twelve questions in both dialects altogether that were dealing with this particular issue. Overall, comparing to the gap-filling type of questions, students achieved considerably better results. It can be explained by the fact that here, they were given multiple choice options whereas in the gap-filling they were forced to come up with the word entirely on their own. In Scouse dialect, the third year students reached up to seventy-seven percent of correct answers, their younger colleagues managed to get about ten percent less. In Geordie, the disparity between the two groups was even more noticeable, sixty-two percent in favour for the third year students to forty-four percent achieved by the first year students.

EXAMPLE:

 Scouse: What word does Maria use to express that her husband was made redundant? …sacked… (one word)

Of the total of seventy-two respondents, only seventeen (twelve to five for the benefit of the third year students) wrote the correct version of the word. Another twenty-four students mistaken it for the word “sucked”.

EXAMPLE:

 Geordie: In Mark’s story, Charlie Chaplin is said to: a. …have been so rich that he wasted the food. b. …have been hiding and secretly storing the food despite being rich. c. …have been picky about what he ate and he hate most of the food.

The vast majority of the students guessed this answer incorrectly as they confused the verb “hide” with the verb “hate”, because in Geordie the diphthong /aɪ/ is pronounced as /eɪ/.

3.3.4 Listening for the gist results The last category of questions included in the questionnaire tests the ability to understand the general idea. It does not focus on grasping a particular word or a phrase which can be sometimes even more difficult as the listeners cannot target any specific words from the text. Despite this fact, students of both categories seemed to be appreciably more successful in listening for the gist. As the graph below shows, third year students reached the percentage of almost ninety percent in Scouse which was the best result achieved within the set categories. The students from the first year managed to get to mere sixty-one percent, losing twenty-seven percent compared to their more successful older colleagues. Concerning Geordie, the resultant score was not as high as the Scouse score, nevertheless sixty-two percent was reached by the third year students leaving the first year students with forty-four percent far behind.

Gist 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Scouse Geordie

1st Year 3rd Year

Fig. 8. Results from Listening for a gist

EXAMPLE:

 Scouse: What does the term “made-up” means in the context of this listening? Write an adjective with the closest meaning to this term.

“The whole family went out for a meal and, it, my dad was so “made-up”, because, I think my dad looked upon it as …” …Happy…

This is one of the questions which was focused on grasping the main idea of the first part of Scouse listening. In the italics, there is the exact excerpt of an unfinished sentence using the term “made-up” which in Scouse accent portrays the feelings of joy and happiness.

The vast majority of students left the space blank. Eighteen students wrote the right answer which could be several words, seven students did not understand the meaning properly and made a wrong guess.

Correct answers: happy, satisfied, content, excited, delighted, and pleased Incorrect answers: good, devised, promoted, amused, confused, and raised

Statistically, this question was correctly answered by equal number of 9 students of each year. EXAMPLE:

 Geordie: When reminiscing about his past working years, Mark… a. Has fond memories although he worked very hard. b. Has bad memories as it has caused him back pains. c. Prefers not to think about the past.

Altogether fifty percent of all respondents answered this question correctly which rates it as the most successful one with the twenty students of the third year and sixteen students of the first year marking the right option.

3.3.5 The general success rate The last graph deals with the correct answers in average. It shows the comparison between the students of the first and third year of studying and their ability to understand lesser-known dialects of English. As expected, it clearly shows that the students of the third year were able to understand almost sixty-one percent in total whereas students of the first year were about four questions less successful and achieved only forty-seven percent of correct answers in general.

Correct answers - average 18,0 16,0 14,0 12,0 10,0 8,0 61 %

6,0 47 % Correct answers Correct 4,0 2,0 0,0 1st Year 3rd Year Year of Study

Fig. 9. The average of correct answers

Overall, there was only one question where the first year students scored higher result and two questions where the score was even. Both first and third year students achieved better results in Scouse comparing to Geordie. The difference was more significant with the first year students who scored fifteen percent better results in Scouse whereas the distinction with the third year students was just thirteen percent.

Correct answers 18,0 Scouse: 67%

16,0 Scouse: 54% Geordie: 54% 14,0 Geordie: 39% 12,0

10,0

8,0

6,0

4,0

2,0

0,0 1st year 3rd year

Fig. 10. Correct answers in both accents for each target group

This results might reflect the fact that Scouse does not feature such amount of vocabulary or grammatical structures related to the dialect to impede with its intelligibility.

3.3.6 The most problematic words After listening to each recording, students of both target groups were asked to mark or suggest any words that they found different from the standard form of English. From both dialects, students mentioned only words that differed in pronunciation. This could manifest the fact that students find phonological aspects the most

disruptive and distinctive or on the other hand the easiest to detect. The vocabulary or grammar distinctions might have been too difficult for students to identify so as the result they could not have been noted.

Here is the list of some of the words that were written down the most frequently. Scouse: sons, money, my, daughter, work, sacked Geordie: love, married, down, work, time, lucky, my, know, funny, house, mind

Visibly, Geordie, which represents a wider range of dialect differences offered considerably more options for respondents to note down. Mostly it concerns change in vowel or consonant sound.

Several of the students who finished their task slightly earlier felt the need to “scribble” some of their observations on the margins of the questionnaire. There were a few who apologized for “ruining the research” because they found the dialects too difficult to understand. On the contrary, some of them could be considered as an additional feedback. Students were highlighting the parts which seemed to be the most challenging or offered opinions which were not specifically asked about. One student explicitly stated that when listening to Geordie recording he was convinced that the speaker must have switched to a different language.

4. Conclusion There might be many reasons behind the wish to acquire a new language such as travelling, the desire to live in a foreign country, work-related purposes etc. Nevertheless, one of the main reasons is the need to communicate. Therefore, in order to increase the efficiency when communicating, one should go beyond the customary paradigm of obtaining a new language, following the path of learning vocabulary, grammar rules and pronunciation just barely necessary to be understood by other speakers. Once students reach a certain level, it is advisable to reveal to them that language is a living organism and there are not many other languages that would be changing as rapidly as English. At the same time, most languages consist of several variations and English is no exception. Whether we should follow the rules of a standard form or expose ourselves or potentially our students to a variety of dialects is a question which probably cannot be answered universally. However, according to the results of the questionnaire, almost eighty five percent believe that university students of English should be exposed to a variety of dialects.

Despite the fact that students evaluated themselves as “almost unable to understand” the dialect of the recordings, scoring the value of 3.76 in average for both dialects on the scale from one-five (one for the best, five for the worst), both target groups achieved satisfactory results showing that:

 In general, Scouse dialect was more intelligible for both the first and the third year students  The group of third year students obtained better results for both Scouse and Geordie dialect.

Consequently, the hypothesis that the third year students will be more successful at perceiving a lesser-known dialect was confirmed as there was only one question when first year students scored better results.

As for Geordie dialect, it was evaluated as not very likeable and considerably more challenging comparing to Scouse. This might be given by the fact that Geordie dialect has a wider range of its own lexical and grammatical features and the pronunciation is considerably more distinctive and less common than Scouse. Only eleven participants would consider teaching this dialect to their students.

Unexpectedly, two students used the opportunity to contact the author of this thesis asking for the additional information and the link for the recordings of dialects so they could listen to them more. As just a rather small sample of respondent was examined during the research, engaging the attention of even two people to such extent can considered as meaningful.

List of references

Andersson, Lars, and Peter Trudgill. Bad Language. Harmondsworth U.a.: Penguin, 1992. Print.

Atkinson, Pete. "Scouse: The Accent That Defined an Era." Times Higher Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2015. .

"Birkenhead." Accents and Dialects of the UK. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. .

"butties." Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003. HarperCollins Publishers 10 Apr. 2015

"Byker." Accents and Dialects of the UK. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. .

Cruttenden, Alan, and A. C. Gimson. Gimson's Pronunciation of English. London: Arnold, 2001. Print.

"Geordie Grammar." Geordie Dialect. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. .

"Geordie Sayings: The Top 56 Things That You'll Only Hear Someone from Newcastle Say." Nechronicle. N.p., 16 Mar. 2015. Web. 12 Apr. 2015. .

Grant, Anthony, and Clive Grey. The Mersey Sound: Liverpool's Language, People and Places. Ormskirk: Open House, 2007.

Honeybone, Patrick (to appear) ‘Analysin de werdz ov de Scouse Alice: translating Standard English into dialect literature.’ With back-translation and notes. To appear in: Lindseth, Jon & Lång, Markus (eds) Alice in a World of Wonderlands: the translations of Alice’sAdventures in Wonderland.

Honeybone, Patrick. NEW-DIALECT FORMATION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LIVERPOOL: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCOUSE (n.d.): n. pag. Http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

Hughes, Arthur, Peter Trudgill, and Dominic Watt. English Accents & Dialects. London: Hodder Education, 2012. Print.

"Is It an Insulting Term or Do Liverpudlians Refer to Themselves as Scousers?" Http://www.theguardian.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. .

Keuchler, Karsten. "Geordie Accent and Tyneside English." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2015. .

Knowles, Gerald O. "Scouse: The Urban Dialect of Liverpool." Thesis. The University of Leeds, 1973. Web. 12 Apr. 2015. .

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. .

Roach, Peter. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.

"Scouse." Liverpool Language and Dialect. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2015. .

Simpson, David. "A Geordie Dictionary." Geordie Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2015. .

Simpson, David. "Geordie Origins." Geordie Accent and Dialect Origins. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2015. .

Smith, Geoff. "Newcastle English (Geordie)." Newcastle English (Geordie). N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. .

THE ALTE CAN DO PROJECT (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. .

Trudgill, Peter. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1983. Print.

Walley, Steven J. "Scouse Is Boss: A List of Words, Quotes & Phrases From Liverpool." N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. .

Wells, J.C. Accents of English 1: An Introduction. N.p.: CUP, 1982. Print.

Wells, J.C. Accents of English 2: The British Isles. S.l.: Cambridge, 1996. Print.

"Why Are People from Newcastle Called 'Geordies'?" Http://www.theguardian.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2015. .

Appendices

Appendix I.

The Questionnaire

Dear students,

My name is Veronika Baranová and I am a student of the third year of “Teacher Training in Foreign Languages – English Language”. Currently I am writing my bachelor thesis on the topic of “Intelligibility of Lesser Known English Dialects”. I am trying to find out the level of awareness and intelligibility of these dialects among the students of “Lower Secondary School Teacher Training in English Language and Literature” of Faculty of Education.

Thank you for participating in the practical part of my research and good luck with you future studies. If you have any questions, please contact me on: [email protected]

gender / age/ the year of study / /

How long have you been studying English?

Can you name any English accents?

Do you have any personal experience with different accents…if so, which ones?

Have you spent any time living in an English- speaking country? How long? Where?

Do you believe students should be taught only Yes - no Received Pronunciation at universities? 59

Why?

Do you believe students should be exposed to Yes - no a variety of accents?

Why?

Do you personally aim for any specific accent?

Why?

Scouse listening: You’re going to hear an interview with a lady, Maria, whose husband has been involved in the Torside industrial dispute of 1995. The dispute started when 80 men were fired at Torside for no specific reason. Later on the fired workers set up a demonstration asking the other workers not to come to work either. Most of them actually refused to go to work and joined the demonstration. Eventually the company used this chance to fire those newly demonstrating workers as well.

Listen to Maria and her husband’s story and try to fill in as much information as possible.

PART 1 (Question A-E)

A) When talking about applying for the job, Maria’s husband… a. …was confident about getting it. b. …was reluctant about the possibility of actually getting the job.

B) Family wanted Maria’s husband to take the job… a. …it was his life-long dream. b. …despite the fact that the money wasn’t that good it was better than being unemployed. c. …because it was a lucrative well-paid offer.

C) Where did the job take place? ………………….. (not geographically)

D) What does the term “made-up” means in this context? Write an adjective with the closest meaning to this term.

“The whole family went out for a meal and, it, my dad was so “made-up”, because, I think my dad looked upon it as …”

…………………………………

E) Did you notice any words that sounded “funny” to you? Tick or suggest your own…

made-up sons my daughter security money so celebrated

PART 2 (Questions F-H)

F) What was the downside of Maria’s husband’s job? a. He was missing out on his son. b. He would hardly see his wife anymore. c. He suffered from an insomnia.

G) How did the standard of living of family improved? - Tick the correct answers (more than one is possible

 A new car  Holidays abroad  Visiting restaurants and cinemas  A new telephone  New furniture

PART 3 (Questions H-J)

H) What word does Maria use to express that her husband was made redundant?

……………………….. (one word)

I) What does her husband and his fired colleagues decide to do after the incident? a. They agreed on sending an official complaint to the company. b. To set up a picket line. c. They were upset and decided to look for a new job.

J) Fill in the right words:

“Have you got any …………?” I said, “…………….?” He said, “Well, I don’t know how long I’m going to be there for.” So I gave him …………… and teabags and made …………for him and he, he went out in his ………… clothes: in his ……………. jacket and his, his woolly hat.

 Tick the most appropriate answer about Scouse listening I was able to understand the speaker very clearly. I was able to understand the speaker for most of the time with the exception of several words. I was able to understand the speaker with minor difficulties. I was not able to understand the speaker for most of the time. I was not able to understand the speaker at all.

Geordie listening:

You are going to hear Mark talking about courtship to his wife, his life as a married man and finally about working as a labourer in the 1960s.

PART 1 (Questions A-B)

A) Mark believes that… a. People should get married before having children and moving in together. b. People should be given the right to do as they see fit. c. People should get married only if they find the right person.

B) Fill in the right words ( numbers 1,2,3,5 stand for the same word, only 4 is a different one):

I got the right one. I was ……….1 I got the right one. And it didn’t work for my brother; he got the wrong one. So you cannot speak for other people really, can you? You know what I mean? I cannot. But I mean, I’m ………..2 I’ve been ………..3; ………..4 /…………5

PART 2 (Questions C-F)

D) Mark believes that a. Kids are much more patient and appreciative of the things they get these days. b. Young people nowadays want the same things he wanted when he was young. c. Kids want everything and straightaway now.

E) Mark and his wife: a. Inherited their first house from Mark’s relatives. b. First rented house, later on they bought one. c. Never bought their own house.

F) In Mark’s story, Charlie Chaplin is said to: a. …have been so rich that he wasted the food. b. …have been hiding and secretly storing the food despite being rich. c. …have been picky about what he ate and he hate most of the food.

G) Did you notice any words that sounded “funny” to you? Tick or suggest your own…

funny nobody house like bonus hide straightaway furniture going

PART 3 (Questions G-J)

H) Mark started to work very hard because… a. He wanted to show the Irish that English can be as hard-working as them. b. He wanted to make enough money to afford his own house. c. He was afraid of losing his job.

I) When reminiscing about his past working years, Mark… a. Has fond memories although he worked very hard. b. Has bad memories as it has caused him back pains. c. Prefers not to think about the past.

J) What does Mark do now? a. He is unemployed. b. He teaches at college. c. He is on a disability pension.

K) What is Mark’s attitude towards children? a. Kids aren’t as nice as they used to be. b. He thinks that they are great and he gets on with them very well. c. Mark doesn’t like them, apart from the ones with special needs.

 Tick the most appropriate answer. I was able to understand the speaker very clearly. I was able to understand the speaker for most of the time with the exception of several words. I was able to understand the speaker with minor difficulties. I was not able to understand the speaker for most of the time. I was not able to understand the speaker at all.

Tick one/both/none of the options:

Which of the accents: Scouse Geordie

Did you like better?

Did you find more challenging?

Do you think resembles more to Received Pronunciation?

Would you consider teaching to your students?

Appendix II. Both of the recordings were retrieved from the British Library Sound Archive. http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/birkenhead/ http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/england/byker/

The original version of Scouse recording

Maria: Torside1 turned up, there was this, his dad said that, you know, the docks was taking on men, you know, dockers’ sons and he should apply, so, which he did. So he thought, you know, “I won’t get it” and I was thinking, “Well, you might get it,” and, of course, we was saying, “If you do get it, it’s a job for life: look at your dad; it’s good money, it’s tonnage and everything, blah, blah, blah.” And we were hoping and praying he’d get it and it turned out that he did get this job. Well, it was just fantastic; we just all, we, we celebrated that he’d got this job. The whole family went out for a meal and, it, my dad was so made up, because, I think my dad looked upon it as it being security for his daughter as well, because a job on the docks was a good job, you know, you, everyone wanted to have security and that’s what we thought. Ehm.

Evelyn: And what was the actual job?

Maria: He w, he was a, he was a docker, he was, ehm, he worked for an agency called Torside, but he would do the same work as what the RDW’s2 would do: he would, ehm, work on the stacker trucks; he’d do the cranes; he’d be a deck-hand; ehm, he’d do, do everything the same really. He’d work alongside them.

Evelyn: So how long was he there?

Maria: Oh, ehm.

Evelyn: Well, when did, when did he start? [inaudible]3

Maria: When did he start? It probably was about ninety-one, ninety-two.

Evelyn: So your, your standard of living improved then obviously, if he was earning more money?

Evelyn: But you s, did you have a better standard of living? Were you able

Maria: We did.

Evelyn: to afford things that you couldn’t before?

Maria: Well, we got a car; we got a telephone; uh, we’d go on holidays — not a lot abroad, cause we had the baby — but we were all generally, we’d, we’d buy clothes for ourselves and we started shopping in Tesco’s4 rather than the Kwik-Save5; uhm, and we, we, you know, we’d go for meals and go the pictures and things like that.

Evelyn: So the, the money did make a difference to your lives?

Maria: It made a big difference, yeah.

Evelyn: And then the bombshell.

Maria: And then the bombshell, yeah, yeah.

Evelyn: Just tell me briefly what happened, would you, Maria?

Maria: Ehm, he came home from work early and I thought he’d got what they call ‘the twilight shift’, you see, cause it was normal practice: he’d go to work and sometimes he’d come home and he said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” and I said, “Oh, give us the good news.” He said, “I’m not on the twilight,” and I said, “Well, what’s the bad news?” He said, “I’ve been sacked.” Well, I was sitting there and I said, “You’ve been sacked?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Don’t be daft,” I said, “what’ve you been sacked for?” I said, “What’ve you done?” He said, “I haven’t done anything.” I said, “Well, you haven’t been sacked then,” I said, “you can’t be sacked for doing nothing.” He said, “Maria, I’ve been sacked.” He said, “We’ve all been sacked.” So then he, he sat down and he told me and I said, “Oh well, that’s just ridiculous, Chris,” I said, “they”, you know, “they don’t mean that.” I said, “Go back in to work tomorrow. Everything’ll be OK.” So he said, “Maria, I’ve been sacked.” So I said, “Well, it doesn’t make sense.” He said, “Well, listen to this,” he said, “Chris” — this is another Chris, his friend, who actually lived in the same street as us — ehm, “has been sacked.” And he was on holiday and he’d been sacked. And I said, “Well,” you know, “you’d better go and tell him,” cause he’d just got back at the weekend. So he said, “I will.” So he went over and told him and then Gail came over and she said, “I can’t believe this,” and I said, “Well, I can’t to be honest with you, Gail, there must be some mistake,” I said, “don’t worry about it; it’ll all get sorted out.” Well, of course, it didn’t all get sorted out. And it got worse for us as well, because his dad is an RDW and when they set up the picket line, he come home and he said, “We’re going to set a picket line up,” he said, “have you got any coffee?” I said, “What for?” He said, “Well, I don’t know how long I’m going to be there for.” So I gave him coffee and teabags and made butties for him and he, he went out in his usual clothes: in his yellow jacket and his, his woolly hat. And I thought, you know, “Oh, I hope this is going to get sorted out today.” And it went on for another day and then we went round to see his dad and his

dad said, “I’m not crossing no picket line, especially with my son being on it.” So he never crossed it and then I couldn’t believe it when all these dockers weren’t crossing this picket line, thought, “God, this is serious now! I can’t believe what’s going on!” And I was watching the news – the ‘Granada6 Report’, which was the local news — every hour on the hour to see what was going on. And I’d see Chris on the television and I’d think, “Oh God, it’s real. What’s going on?” He’d be standing round this tin with this, this fire burning from it. And then it, it turned out that his dad had got his P457; I think it had got delivered in a taxi. And he was really upset, his dad, cause he’d worked there for thirty years and I thought, “Oh God!” I felt so guilty and Chris felt guilty, because we, I felt as if we’d lost his job; it was our fault, you know. But when I heard the story of what’d, how it’d happened, that these man had just refused to do this overtime, cause it hadn’t been agreed and then, “You’re sacked; you’re sacked; you’re sacked; you’re sacked!” I thought, you know, “That, that’s not, you know, it’s not fair that and you’re right to do what you’re doing.” But I th, I still do feel terribly guilty about those men losing their jobs and.

Notes:

1. Torside Limited is the name of a company that was registered with The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company in the early 1990s 2. RDW is an abbreviation for Registered Dock Worker 3. [inaudible] indicates a passage or phrase where the speaker’s exact words are unclear 4. Tesco’s refers to the UK’s largest national chain of supermarkets. 5. Kwik-Save refers to a national chain of discount supermarkets. 6. Granada refers to the largest independent broadcaster and serves the whole of the northwest as part of ITV plc 7. P45 refers to the form issued by the Inland Revenue at the termination of an employee’s contract

The abridged version of Scouse recording Maria: “Torside turned up, there was this, his dad said that, you know, the docks was taking on men, you know, dockers’ sons and he should apply, so, which he did. So he thought, you know, “I won’t get it” and I was thinking, “Well, you might get it,” and, of course, we was saying, “If you do get it, it’s a job for life: look at your dad; it’s good money, it’s tonnage and everything, blah, blah, blah.” And we were hoping and praying he’d get it and it turned out that he did get this job. Well, it was just fantastic; we just all, we, we celebrated that he’d got this job. The whole family went out for a meal and, it, my dad was so made up, because, I think my dad looked upon it as it being security for his daughter as well, because a job on the docks was a good job, you know, you, everyone wanted to have security and that’s what we thought.” Evelyn: “So your, your standard of living improved then obviously, if he was earning more money?”

Maria: “It did, yeah, it did. And he used to work a lot of overtime as well, so that used to be, come in handy, although he always regretted missing Thomas, when Thomas was a baby and him growing up, cause he used to come home from work and Thomas would be in bed; he’d’ve had his bath, had his bottle and gone to bed. So he’d say, you know, “What’s your day been like?” and I’d say, “Oh, fine” and I’d say, “And my mum has told me that Thomas,” cause I was missing things as well. And he’d say, “Oh, is he?” and I’d say, “Yeah,” and he came home and I’d say, “He walked today,” and it was, like, “Oh, is he in bed?” and I’m saying, “Yeah,” and I thought, “Oh, it’s so sad, really, that he missed all that,” but, ehm. Well, we got a car; we got a telephone; uh, we’d go on holidays — not a lot abroad, cause we had the baby — but we were all generally, we’d, we’d buy clothes for ourselves and we started shopping in Tesco’s rather than the Kwik-Save; uhm, and we, we, you know, we’d go for meals and go the pictures and things like that. Ehm, he came home from work early and I thought he’d got what they call ‘the twilight shift’ and he said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” and I said, “Oh, give us the good news.” He said, “I’m not on the twilight,” and I said, “Well, what’s the bad news?” He said, “I’ve been sacked.” Well, I was sitting there and I said, “You’ve been sacked?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Don’t be daft,” I said, “what’ve you been sacked for?” I said, “What’ve you done?” He said, “I haven’t done anything.” I said, “Well, you haven’t been sacked then,” I said, “you can’t be sacked for doing nothing.” He said, “Maria, I’ve been sacked.” He said, “We’ve all been sacked.” So then he, he sat down and he told me and I said, “Well, it doesn’t make sense.” and he said, “We’re going to set a picket line up,” he said, “have you got any coffee?” I said, “What for?” He said, “Well, I don’t know how long I’m going to be there for.” So I gave him coffee and teabags and made butties for him and he, he went out in his usual clothes: in his yellow jacket and his, his woolly hat. And I thought, you know, “Oh, I hope this is going to get sorted out today.” And it went on for another day and then we went round to see his dad and his dad said, “I’m not crossing no picket line, especially with my son being on it.” So he never crossed it and then I couldn’t believe it when all these dockers weren’t crossing this picket line, thought, “God, this is serious now! I can’t believe what’s going on!” And he was really upset, his dad, cause he’d worked there for thirty years and I thought, “Oh God!” I felt so guilty and Chris felt guilty, because we, I felt as if we’d lost his job; it was our fault, you know.”

The original version of Geordie recording

Mark: Well. I met our lass in, I mean, I fell, I mean, why, it sounds, it might sound old- fashioned, but I fell in love with her. You know. I still, I still, I’ll always love our lass. I mean I love her stronger each day. I mean, you, the, them days you didn’t, you didn’t live with lasses. If, if a bloke was ganning with a lass and they weren’t married, she, she had a bad name. You know. And everybody looked, looked down on people like that. And if a lass had a bairn, even if a lass had a bairn out of wedlock, she was, look, frowned upon, you know. I mean, I’m not saying that’s right. But at the time they seemed right. I mean, people’s att, your attitudes change now. I divn’t think they’re right now anyway. You know, when they live together. And they’re having kids and, and they divn’t want to get married and, I think you’re, you’re better being married. I

mean it worked for me. But saying that, mind, uh, I got the right one. I was lucky; I got the right one. And it didn’t work for my brother; he got the wrang one. So you cannot speak for other people really, can you? You know what I mean? I cannot. But I mean, I’m lucky. I’ve been lucky; dead lucky.

Virtue: What did you want in your home when you were setting up home in the early sixties?

Mark: I think, I di, it’s, you know, it’s funny, but the kids now, they want everything. Straightaway. We were happy to get a few sticks of furniture and pay weekly for it. And then a bit, a bit carpet. And you rented your house. And you’d never, ever thought you’d buy a house. I mean that seemed and, and, naebody bought houses in them days. And we got our bits of furniture. And then, then, then we got a black and white television, which we rented. And that was a luxury. We were happy. You were happy with what you’d got, cause you knew no else, anything else. You didn’t know anything else. And we were pleased just to be in our own house. And later on your sights went a bit higher. You made more money. The kids grew up a bit. We bought our own house. And I, I worked on bonus and I, I, I paid it off quick as I could. Because I always had the fear that I wasn’t ganning to be working. Because that was always on the back of your mind. That you were ganning to be on the dole. Nae money. Because when you’re brought up like me, I mean, we were always hungry. And always wanting. And you never had that dinner. And that’s always on the back of your mind that you’re gannin to be like that again. I always remember a story about Charlie Chaplin1. They reckon even when he was rich, he used to hide food and store food. I can understand that. Because you always think you’re ganning to be left with naught again, aren’t you? It’s in the back of your mind. But I, we, we bought our house and, uh, it’s the best thing we done, like. And I’m, you’ve got to be content with what you’ve got, haven’t you? You know.

Virtue: Was it, was it hard to get a mortgage?

Mark: Not really. It wasn’t really hard to get a mortgage. Paying it off is a, a different thing, like. Because, I mean, they say it’s a milestone round your neck. And it is. It is a milestone. Because that was

Virtue: You mean it’s a millstone?

Mark: Aye, millstone. Well, we call it milestone.

Virtue: Aha.

Mark: Because, you know on the side of the road, when, uh, you were a kid? You had a, uh, it’s eight miles to, so I, I suppose, uh, you’re, you’re pro, you’re, you’re pro, you’re probably right, like. But, eh, it was hard to pay off. But I think what it is, I’ve always had casual work, me, you know. I’ve never had a, a permanent, steady job. And I, I work, when you work with your hands, jobs divn’t always last. You build, you might be on a building, so it might last for six months. Then you’re on the dole

and you get another job. That might last nine months. But the cables was the best, cause that lasted years. Cause I was, I was always good at what I done. I had to be good. I had to be good with my hands. And I worked with Irishmen. Well, with me being English, they didn’t want me in a gang. Unless I was, I had to be really good. And prove I was as good as them, if not better. So I proved I was as good as them. And I set the pace. And, uh, it was, it was great. It was great. It was, eh, the, the, the, the crack was great, the crack. You know, uh, blackguarding each other and, I mean, you’re always calling each other. And we used to gan in the bar and get drunk, you know. And there used to be fighting and everything, you know. You used to. It was, I, I mean, it was the way it was. We, we used to jump off the wagon. Outside the Central Station covered in clarts. You know, we, you know, we, we were like a lot of tramps. We used to roll across the bar across the road. And the first pint didn’t touch the sides, you know, because you were thirsty. And the crack would start. And you’d be bragging about how much work we had done and how much money we had made. And the other gangs would come in. And you were all bragging and that. And it was great, man. And the old, the next thing you used to remember was the alarm clock ganning off the next day. It was time to gan back to work. Because I never used to hurry see the bairns then. Cause I was working that hard. I was just working and sleeping and drinking and working. And that’s all your life was. The bairns now, they says, “Dad, we thought you were hard and you were hard then and we were frightened to talk to you. But we realise now you had to dae that.” And, uh, I’ve got more time for the kids now. Because I’m not working. Cause work, it takes over your whole life, you know. It, it’s, it’s like a drug, it makes, it’s hard. I mean, when I was working, I mean, I, even when I was sleeping, I used to be working in my sleep. Cause it was that hard. I mean, you, a pick and shovel and a spit. I mean, it would kill a horse, you know. If a horse was daeing that, I think the RSPCA2 would, they would have something to say, would. Well, we worked, I mean some of the lads, they, they worked till they dropped, some of them. They died very young, you know. I mean, we, we used to pass the cap for the funerals and put money in the cap. There was always lads keeling over and dying with their heart and that. And we just accepted it. Why, you know, they used to be dying all the time. And I mean you cannot work like that. At the time I didn’t know. I was too, too thick to realise. I thought I was like, I was like a machine, you know. And honestly, the work; I’ve seen me dig fifty, sixty yards, you know. Two foot six deep, you know, like. You know, I was, I was like a machine and I, I was proud of the fact as well, because your muscles would pump up, you know. And you, and you, it was like, you know, you’d, you, it was automatic. You didn’t know you were daeing it. You used to just dae it automatic. And you used to be thinking of other things, you know, when you were digging. And uh, uh, the sun on your back, you know, I used to love it. But you get older, divn’t you, and you, you start to get the arthritis in your joints. I’m starting to get all them aches and pains now, like. Mind you, I still love my work. I work at a college. Newcastle College3 there. I work with young bricklayers and that. I dae a bit part-time teaching sometimes. I get teaching and that. And I can get on great with the kids, because you know how to talk to them. And you get them laughing. And we just, I mean the kids are great, the kids, I mean. They say the kids aren’t as nice as they used to be. I think that they are. I think it’s just, just the, the way it is, isn’t it, you know? But I love working with young ones, like. I work with the special needs,

you know. The special needs are funny. You know. Uh, and, uh, I got on the bus with them the other night, you know. And, uh, I, I got on and they were all sitting around us. “Hello, Mark,” you know. And everybody was looking at me and I had all these kids around us. You know, I, I, I felt proud, because they would, they come to you like a magnet. I mean, you never, ever talk down to anybody, dae you? I mean, these, these kids were the special needs. And I can, I, I’m on the same wavelength as them. They’re brilliant, like.

Notes:

1. Charlie Chaplin (1899 -1997) was a London-born actor/director and arguably the most famous figure in the early years of motion pictures at the start of the twentieth century. 2. RSPCA refers to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – a charitable organisation established in 1824 that seeks to promote kindness and prevent cruelty to animals. 3. Newcastle College is an FE College.

The abridged version of Geordie recording

Mark: “It might sound old-fashioned, but I fell in love with her. You know. I still, I still, I’ll always love our lass. I mean I love her stronger each day. I mean, you, the, them days you didn’t, you didn’t live with lasses. If, if a bloke was going out (ganning) with a lass and they weren’t married, she, she had a bad name. You know. And everybody looked, looked down on people like that. And if a lass had a bairn, even if a lass had a bairn out of wedlock, she was, look, frowned upon, you know. I mean, I’m not saying that’s right. But at the time they seemed right. I mean, people’s att, your attitudes change now. I don’t (divn’t) think they’re right now anyway. You know, when they live together. And they’re having kids and, and they don’t (divn’t) want to get married and, I think you’re, you’re better being married. I mean it worked for me. But saying that, mind, uh, I got the right one. I was lucky; I got the right one. And it didn’t work for my brother; he got the wrang one. So you cannot speak for other people really, can you? You know what I mean? I cannot. But I mean, I’m lucky. I’ve been lucky; dead lucky. It’s funny, but the kids now, they want everything. Straightaway. We were happy to get a few sticks of furniture and pay weekly for it. And then a bit, a bit carpet. And you rented your house. And you’d never, ever thought you’d buy a house. I mean that seemed and, and, naebody bought houses in them days. And we got our bits of furniture. And then, then, then we got a black and white television, which we rented. And that was a luxury. We were happy. And later on your sights went a bit higher. You made more money. The kids grew up a bit. We bought our own house. And I, I worked on bonus and I, I, I paid it off quick as I could. Because I always had the fear that I wasn’t going (ganning?) to be working. Because that was always on the back of your mind. That you were going (ganning?) to be on the dole. Nae money. Because when you’re brought up like (x lately) me, I mean, we were always hungry. And always wanting. And you never had that dinner. And that’s always on the back of your mind that you’re going (ganning?) to be like that again. I always remember a story about Charlie Chaplin. They reckon even when he was rich, he used to hide (x 71

hate) food and store food. I can understand that. And I worked with Irishmen. Well, with me being English, they didn’t want me in a gang. Unless I was, I had to be really good. And prove I was as good as them, if not better. So I proved I was as good as them. And I set the pace. And, uh, it was, it was great. It was great. Cause I was working that hard. I was just working and sleeping and drinking and working. And that’s all your life was. The bairns now, they says, “Dad, we thought you were hard and you were hard then and we were frightened to talk to you. But we realise now you had to do (dae) that.” And, uh, I’ve got more time for the kids now. Because I’m not working. Cause work, it takes over your whole life, you know. It, it’s, it’s like a drug, it makes, it’s hard. I mean, when I was working, I mean, I, even when I was sleeping, I used to be working in my sleep. Cause it was that hard. You know, I was, I was like a machine and I, I was proud of the fact as well, because your muscles would pump up, you know. Mind you, I still love my work. I work at a college. Newcastle College there. I work with young bricklayers and that. I do (dae) a bit part-time teaching sometimes. I get teaching and that. And I can get on great with the kids, because you know how to talk to them. And you get them laughing. And we just, I mean the kids are great, the kids, I mean. They say the kids aren’t as nice as they used to be. I think that they are. I think it’s just, just the, the way it is, isn’t it, you know? But I love working with young ones, like. I work with the special needs, you know. The special needs are funny. You know, I, I, I felt proud, because they would, they come to you like a magnet.”