Brighton / Sussex Accents

[kevo]

I work with a builder from Burrish (Burwash) who has a very distinct Sussex country accent. Brought up on a farm - sounds quite the yokel.

As Lord B points out, the old rural Sussex accent is pretty rare these days. My grandfather (from the rural wilds of the Weald) had it, but you come across it rarely now - it's all the old 'Mockney', estuary English, innit? I guess this is due to the influx of Londoners more than anything else.

If you want to hear what the old Sussex burr sounds like, I suggest you listen to the Copper Family - a group of singers from Rottingdean, who were originally a farming family, and have passed their songs down from generation to generation over hundreds of years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFP8K-oP-ag

 

[Lord Bracknell]

That could be a BBC sitcom. Sussex man shares house with a bloke with a broad Lancashire accent from Chorley and another with a slight stutter from Swansea, with HILARIOUS results.

If our Sussex man could be from out Littlehampton way, it could be called CARRY ON CLIMPING.

 

[Gully]

That could be a BBC sitcom. Sussex man shares house with a bloke with a broad Lancashire accent from Chorley and another with a slight stutter from Swansea, with HILARIOUS results.

You might be right...many sitcoms are made and survive with a lot flimsier plots than that!

 

[Lord Bracknell]

As Lord B points out, the old rural Sussex accent is pretty rare these days. My grandfather (from the rural wilds of the Weald) had it, but you come across it rarely now - it's all the old 'Mockney', estuary English, innit? I guess this is due to the influx of Londoners more than anything else.

If you want to hear what the old Sussex burr sounds like, I suggest you listen to the Copper Family - a group of singers from Rottingdean, who were originally a farming family, and have passed their songs down from generation to generation over hundreds of years.

... despite the fact that Bob Copper (John's dad) spent years working in Hampshire.

He was a policeman ... genuinely known as PC Bobby Copper.

 

[So.CalGull]

It's not uncommon for Americans to mistake English accents for Aussie ones. Not happened to me, but I've head it said a lot.

Get this all the time living here. Especially as I am in a teaching role, the parents think that all English people should sound like the queen, an actor from the Eastend such as Michael Caine or we should have a northern accent, so even the more worldly wise Septics Tanks have trouble hearing the difference between us and the convicts.

Which I get because as Gully says:

I have that trouble up norf, it is so difficult to distinguish between Lancashire and Yorkshire...although after a couple of seconds someone from the latter will tell you where they are from and how wonderful it is...problem solved!

I really can not tell the difference between some of our charity studies in the north. So using the example above, a Lancashire resident would find it ridiculous that we would confuse them with a Yorkshireman, that is the same view that most Americans have of our accent in the south.

It does not sound like anything else "British" that they have grown up listening to (examples stretching back years such as the Beatles and Oasis in music, Roger Moore, Sean Connery in movies and various politicians that would have been in the news).

I am told by some American "English" teachers that our (South of London) accent is a lot lazier than anything else in the country, but without a distinctive twang, such as Devon, Cornwall, Sommerset etc.

So without really even realizing it, our Sussex/Surrey accent is different but not in a "eky thump" "calm down, calm down" kind of way, and naturally leans towards the Aussie, Kiwi style of English, compared to the rest of the accents in the motherland.
I will happily take being mistaken for an Aussie over a Scouser any day...

 

[Jameson]

I think I have a bit of yokel going on (though not as much as some of my mates) being born & bred in a Sussex village. I find a Brighton accent has a little bit of Jonathon Ross about it.
i.e. You pronounce it Bwrighton. Am i correct in this?

Close; I think it's more "Broi - ton". When I was in Ireland for the tour in 2002 one of the local girls who had lived here for a while said it was "Broi-ton" that people said. The first time I ever went to the Goldstone the North Stand sang it like that. We do now but you don't really notice it. Someone from Hampshire would though.

The country dialects in East Sussex are different again, my brother in law comes from Mayfield and sounds quite yokel-ish. I grew up in Heathfield and that had a different accent from Mayfield, believe it or not. Sadly I think they are all disappearing since every young person now speaks like Sauff Lundun/Aussies/Yanks etc with rising inflections at the end of everything, most annoying. That Kylie's got a lot to answer for.

 

[severnside gull]

when I moved to Brighton as a 9 year old from London I was beaten up because I spoke differently so there is definitely a distinct Brighton accent

 

[Grassman]

One thing that has always stood out for me, and my mum and dad were both 3 generation Brightonians, was how they pronounced days of the week. It was never "xxxday", it was more "...dee", ie. "what you doing next tuesdee?". Though I struggle to put my finger on other differences, I can tell a Brighton accent, and yes it is totally different to the Sussex drawl that you get in the rural East Sussex areas.

 

[Gully]

...plus you have the dropping of the "h" and turning a "th" into a "v", also an "ing" in the middle of a word is pronounced as "in"...thus you get 'orsham, Wor'v'ing and Storr'in'ton...you might want to argue with me over that, but I wunt be druv!

 

[Jonno]

This idea that the increasing prevalence of rising inflection at the end of words is a result of overexposure to Neighbours and Home & Away etc. is very dubious indeed.
There are no sociolinguistic studies that come anywhere near confirming this. The fact is that High Rising Terminals as they are known are a feature of many varieties of English, from Californian to South African to Oz and NZ. They also occur in many varieties of South East English and had been observed long before the appearance of Australian soap operas.
It doesn't help when people like Stephen Fry go on TV and start propagating this theory. It's by no means confirmed and is almost certainly not the case. The fact that they are more prevalent now is probably just the continuation of a trend that began long before the 1980s.

 

[Elvis]

This idea that the increasing prevalence of rising inflection at the end of words is a result of overexposure to Neighbours and Home & Away etc. is very dubious indeed.
There are no sociolinguistic studies that come anywhere near confirming this. The fact is that High Rising Terminals as they are known are a feature of many varieties of English, from Californian to South African to Oz and NZ. They also occur in many varieties of South East English and had been observed long before the appearance of Australian soap operas.
It doesn't help when people like Stephen Fry go on TV and start propagating this theory. It's by no means confirmed and is almost certainly not the case. The fact that they are more prevalent now is probably just the continuation of a trend that began long before the 1980s.

Never mind dialects! Can I have that in English!!

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Never mind dialects! Can I have that in English!!

High-Rising Terminals and Fall-Rise Tunes in Australian English
Janet Fletcher, Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic., Australia,
& Jonathan Harrington, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, and Speech Hearing and Language Research Centre, Macquarie University, North Ryde, N.S.W., Australia

Phonetica 2001;58:215-229 (DOI: 10.1159/000046176)

Abstract

It is usually claimed that statement high rises in Australian English are more or less phonetically identical to yes/no question rises. In this paper, statement high rises and question rises were examined in a corpus of controlled spontaneous speech (i.e. map task dialogues) to see if this is the case. It appears that speakers in this study used different kinds of rises for declaratives and questions. The majority of statement high rises were realized with a low pitch accent onset, whereas almost all question rises were produced with high pitch accent onsets. High-range fall-rises also appeared to be used by some speakers in the same way as statement high rises. Implications of these findings for the current ToBI analysis of Australian English are considered.


Better?

 

[Grassman]

I know who has a pretty authentic Brighton accent, it's Ray Brooks, the voice of Mr Benn amongst others.

 

[Buzzer]

Never mind dialects! Can I have that in English!!

My mates and I used to call it speaking in Questionese.

I know who has a pretty authentic Brighton accent, it's Ray Brooks, the voice of Mr Benn amongst others.

And that's exactly who I sound like apparently.

 

[fire&skill]

Most of it is a southern London accent that's been adapted to the Sussex area innit me old bone? My mums neighbour in EP of 30 years has always had the Sussex twang... quite twee really, a twee twang.

Yeah - I was told this - a 'south london nasal drawl' is how somebody once described it to me which I've definitely got. That said, I was talking to some colleagues from Kent and pronounced the 'olk' in Folkestone, rather than saying 'Fokestone' like they do. They started ribbing me and saying 'oo-ar, oo-ar' etc.

And people from ChiCHester call it 'Chiddester'. What's all that about?

 

[brighton_girl87]

When I first went to uni quite a few people said I had an accent and my housemates would laugh because I said "sin" and "bin" rather than "seen" and "been".

 

[HAILSHAM SEAGULL]

I was born in Woodingdean, my mum was true Yorkshire and Dad was also Brighton. When I hear myself on video or the answer phone I sound more like Eric Bristow than he does.
Brighton was always known as Little London, but why do I sound like Eric?

 

[shaun_rc]

When I lived in Yorkshire, I always knew if someone was speaking on the radio that they were from the Sussex Coast before they said it, not just the South East.

I'd also agree about North Kent - very distinctive, not nice, and totally different from Essex on the other side of the river. Also not nice, but very different.

As for Bri- ton, there's no "t"! Also in Yorkshire, someone asked me who this "Brian" bloke I was talking about was. There's just a glottal stop - "Bri - on"

 

[robinsonsgrin]

When I lived in Yorkshire, I always knew if someone was speaking on the radio that they were from the Sussex Coast before they said it, not just the South East.

I'd also agree about North Kent - very distinctive, not nice, and totally different from Essex on the other side of the river. Also not nice, but very different.

As for Bri- ton, there's no "t"! Also in Yorkshire, someone asked me who this "Brian" bloke I was talking about was. There's just a glottal stop - "Bri - on"

yes...brian and hove albion is often what i hear chanted.....
my grandad had a wonderful earthy sussex accent....rip....... and when i sit and chat with my father, he will have the odd word that really kicks in the sussex drawl...i dont think i have inherited any of it... phew!

 

[Gully]

It sometimes sounds like we are singing about a team named after an Irishman...and it's brian o'valbion, brian o'valbion fc...