A contrastive analysis of southern welsh and cockney accents

Gaida Saad Alqreeni, Abdulfattah Omar, Amjad Khaled Alharbi, Shada Alanazi, Hissah Nasser Alothman

Abstract


This study is concerned with comparing the pronunciation in Southern Welsh, a Celtic language, and Cockney, an English dialect, regarding the place of articulation. The study uses a comparative method to shed light on the similarities and differences between the two accents. The data were collected from YouTube videos of speakers of Southern Welsh and Cockney and the consonant sound systems were analysed and compared. This study answers two main research questions: Do Southern Welsh and Cockney accents have the same consonants? What are the phonological differences between Southern Welsh and Cockney regarding place of articulation? The findings show that there are some phonological differences between Sothern Welsh and Cockney in terms of bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, lateral, palatal, velar, and uvular sounds. However, they are similar in terms of post-alveolar and glottal sounds. Awareness of these phonological differences is important for EFL learners to develop strong competencies in dealing with these accents which are gaining an increasing popularity due to the unprecedented spread of social media networks and applications.


Keywords


accent; Cockney; place of articulation; phonological differences; Welsh

Full Text:

PDF

References


Carr, P. (2012). English Phonetics and Phonology: An Introduction. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.

Collins, B., & Mees, I. M. (2013). Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource Book for Students. London; New York: Routledge.

Czerniak, P. T. (2012). Autosegmental factors in the phonology of the Welsh dialects. (Unpublished MA dissertation), The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.

Davies, J. (2014). The Welsh Language: A History. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Ferragne, E., & Pellegrino, F. (2010). Vowel systems and accent similarity in the British Isles: Exploiting multidimensional acoustic distances in phonetics. Journal of Phonetics, 38(4), 526-539. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2010.07.002

Gick, B., Wilson, I., & Derrick, D. (2012). Articulatory Phonetics. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.

Gordon, M. (2004). The phonology of pitch accents in Chickasaw. Phonology, 20(2), 173-218. doi:10.1017/S0952675703004512

Grice, M., Ladd, D. R., & Arvaniti, A. (2002). On the place of phrase accents in intonational phonology. Phonology, 17(2), 143-185. doi:10.1017/S0952675700003924

Gussenhoven, C. (2008). The English Rhythm Rule as an accent deletion rule. Phonology, 8(1), 1-35. doi:10.1017/S0952675700001263

Hall, C., & Hastings, C. (2017). Phonetics, Phonology & Pronunciation for the Language Classroom: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hannahs, S. J. (2013). The phonology of Welsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hughes, A., Trudgill, P., & Watt, D. J. L. (2012). English Accents & Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles. London; New York: Routledge.

Iden, C. (2012). Variations in the Phonologies of Different English Varieties: Phonological Differences between Southern Standard British English and General American: GRIN Publishing.

Iosad, P. (2017). The phonologisation of redundancy: length and quality in Welsh vowels. Phonology, 34(1), 121-162. doi:10.1017/S0952675717000057

Johansson, C. (2016). Received Pronunciation, Estuary English and Cockney English: A phonologic and sociolinguistic comparison of three British English accents. Halmstad University, Lewes, UK.

Knight, R. A. (2012). Phonetics: A Coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kopřivová, J. (2018). Analysis and comparison of RP and Cockney accent. Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia.

Ladefoged, P. N. (2014). Phonetics. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Liberman, A., Hoptman, A., & Carlson, N. E. (2010). A Bibliography of English Etymology. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. London; New York: Routledge.

Miller, D. (2016). Social Media in an English Village: (Or how to keep people at just the right distance. London: UCL Press.

Mott, B. L. (2012). Traditional Cockney and popular London speech. Dialectologia, 9, 69–94.

Oppenheimer, S. (2012). The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain: Little, Brown Book Group.

Orelus, P. W. (2020). Other people's English accents matter: Challenging Standard English accent hegemony. Excellence in Education Journal, 9(1), 120–148.

Ortmeyer, C., & Boyle, J. P. (1985). The effect of accent differences on comprehension. RELC Journal, 16(2), 48-53.

Paulasto, H., Penhallurick, R., & Jones, B. (2020). Welsh English. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Podhovnik, E. (2010). Age and accent changes in a Southern Welsh English accent. The Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 8, 1-18. doi:10.2478/v10015-010-0006-5

Ranzato, I. (2019). The Cockney persona: the London accent in characterisation and translation. Perspectives, 27(2), 235-251.

Roach, P. (2009). English phonetics and phonology: A practical course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas, A. R. (1973). The Linguistic Geography of Wales: A Contribution to Welsh Dialectology: University of Wales Press [for] the Board of Celtic Studies.

Trudgill, P., & Trudgill, P. E. L. P. (1984). Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, B. (1985). Pitch and duration in Welsh stress perception: the implications for intonation. Journal of Phonetics, 13(4), 381-406. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30806-X


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies
ISSN 1305-578X (Online)
Copyright © 2005-2022 by Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies