Brighton accent

[seagullsovergrimsby]

Disagree. There's still loads of Brightonians. They just live in the burbs, in the 'bury's and 'deans.

On reflection I think I could tell a Lahndahner from a Brightonian. We do have a certain softness that the cockernees don't. Have a listen to the Max Miller clip.

A lot of Brightonians have been displaced out to Portslade & Mile Oak and Peacehaven in the other direction due to the astronomical house prices that Londoners are prepared to pay to be within a short distance of the train station. Why are all the houses for sale in Moulescoomb and Bevendean not for families anymore ? BTL investors shouldn't be allowed to convert them into 5 individual letting rooms per house which then costs thousands to restore into family living accomodation. If house prices still continue to slide many of these houses will become repo's which maybe one way of returning back home to people speaking just like me.

 

[London Calling]

I used the word twitten when I was a lad. It used to be the path in between the Infants and Secondary schools in Whitehawk and had its own streetsign saying "The Twitten".

loads of twittens leading from the Belle Vue on Buck Place all the way to the Clock Tower,

regularly used the word and the little passages

 

[London Calling]

oh year,

we say "gels" instead of girls (very specific to Brighton) and according to northern folk we say "bass" instead of bus

 

[Buzzer]

It's that "air" sound again, LC. Apparently the way we say things like theatre. It's more thee-et-er rather than th-ear-ter.

I read somewhere that we tend to refer to people as "old" (bumped into ol' whatsisface yesterday).

 

[house your seagull]

i get taken the piss out for saying 'paul' or 'ball' up here.

i say twittens, but only learned it recently, people don't know what i'm talking about, they call hem ginnels up here but it's a bit of a different thing. never heard twittens i went to middle street school which is surrounded by twittens. or alleyways as i used to call them!

 

[The Large One]

Disagree. There's still loads of Brightonians. They just live in the burbs, in the 'bury's and 'deans.

On reflection I think I could tell a Lahndahner from a Brightonian. We do have a certain softness that the cockernees don't. Have a listen to the Max Miller clip.

Nor do we have a snotty superiority arrogance of believing that we should feel privileged that some Lahndahners have moved to our Godforsaken hamlet because we're finally being educated out of our narrow-minded, small-town provincial attitudes which came straight out of the Middle Ages.

 

[Fungus]

Of course, we're all mongrels, and accents aren't fixed any more than language is. My mum is (only technically) a Cockney, and her mum was a Geordie, so I doubt my "normal" Brighton accent is actually "pure", even though my dad's family are local.

In three years time, we'll look back on this thread as being of "historical interest".

 

[Southover Street Seagull]

Most people up here think that I am a Londoner. If you are born in Brighton you dont have an accent because that is what you grow up with and it is considered normal and everyone else has an accent. Mind you there aren't many genuine Brightonians left , after the hordes of commuters who used to live in the environs of London have all moved down to the seaside.

So what you are saying is that is because you don't sound any different to people where you are born you don't have an accent? But if you move away you do have an accent?
Surely you always have an accent wherever you live?
The people of Grimsby have an accent and I expect they recognise that they have accents amongst themselves.

Accent
1 A person's accent is the way he or she pronounces words. People from different regions and different groups in society have different accents. For instance, most people in northern England say path with a 'short' a, while most people in southern England say it with a 'long' a; in America and Canada the r in far and port is generally pronounced, while in south-eastern England, for example, it is not. Everyone speaks with an accent, although some accents may be regarded as more prestigious or socially acceptable, such as 'Received Pronunciation' (the accent of educated people in southern England) in the UK.

 

[Gully]

Why do some people say scones, pronouncing the letter e and others say it without, is that regional?

 

[Fungus]

So what you are saying is that is because you don't sound any different to people where you are born you don't have an accent? But if you move away you do have an accent?
Surely you always have an accent wherever you live?
The people of Grimsby have an accent and I expect they recognise that they have accents amongst themselves.

Accent
1 A person's accent is the way he or she pronounces words. People from different regions and different groups in society have different accents. For instance, most people in northern England say path with a 'short' a, while most people in southern England say it with a 'long' a; in America and Canada the r in far and port is generally pronounced, while in south-eastern England, for example, it is not. Everyone speaks with an accent, although some accents may be regarded as more prestigious or socially acceptable, such as 'Received Pronunciation' (the accent of educated people in southern England) in the UK.

Jeez, it was only a joke about not having an accent. :thud:

 

[Southover Street Seagull]

Jeez, it was only a joke about not having an accent. :thud:

I wasn't responding to your post!!! I was responding to seagullsoversgrimsby's post!

 

[Fungus]

I wasn't responding to your post!!! I was responding to seagullsoversgrimsby's post!

Yes, and I was responding to your response to seagullsoversgrimsby's post, which was making the same point as my post!

 

[Chicken Run]

But if you listen to the old music hall recordings of Brighton's most famousest son, Max Miller, I still can't make out an accent and he lived here all his life.

(God Bless Him - invented alternative comedy, did our Max)

There's definitely ways of expressing words that I recognise but it's not really an accent. It's a type of southern English - definitely not estuary English and there's definitely a clarity in all the words and a sort of softness to the accent. The pronunciation of "our" as something more akin to "air"

See what you think:

[yt]qBUfMNBjBTI[/yt]


Piece of NSC trivia - I seem to recall reading an NSCer saying that Mary from the Dairy was about an ancestor of his

The song Buz was about my Girlfriends late Grandmother who lived above a Dairy somwhere in Brighton, her middle name was Mary, she died last year and the Argus did a small piece on it.

 

[Vatican Citys No.2 Keeper]

pronouncing "th" as V...like in Worving.

Always noticed that i pronounced it like that meself, and the bin/sin thing also, so i must have one of these brighton accents

 

[Mackenzie]

There most certainly is a Brighton accent, I think you notice it more when you haven't lived there for a while (in my case 17 years) and meet a Brightonian. We have a few Brighton visiting the pub from time to time and you can pick 'em.

 

[Chicken Run]

I think the best example of an urban south east south coast accent in Ian Hart!! I say south east south coast coz the original Portsmouth accent was akin to the west country!

 

[SULLY COULDNT SHOOT]

I am told 'dubrey' is a Sussex word.

 

[JJ McClure]

My flatmates and I worked out at Uni that it's all about how you swear,
Me (Sussex): fack
Neil (Co. Durham): Fook
Steve (Scouser): Foch

 

[London Calling]

It's that "air" sound again, LC. Apparently the way we say things like theatre. It's more thee-et-er rather than th-ear-ter.

I read somewhere that we tend to refer to people as "old" (bumped into ol' whatsisface yesterday).

Too true mate, its a weird accent, we tend to speak a fast yorkel accent. I know when I first moved up north to Nottingham and then Wakefield, I could turn many a head when I started to speak, the wakey lot had heard "cockneys" before, many during the miners strike, but not our yorkel southern vowels.

 

[London Calling]

i get taken the piss out for saying 'paul' or 'ball' up here.

i say twittens, but only learned it recently, people don't know what i'm talking about, they call hem ginnels up here but it's a bit of a different thing. never heard twittens i went to middle street school which is surrounded by twittens. or alleyways as i used to call them!

Ginnels tend to be more a passage betwee two houses, leading to the back of the houses, whilst twittens are basically alleyways. But originally I believe old footpaths.

It is a lot easier taking a gel up a ginnel than the twitten.