Southwest Tyrone English
A
traditional Mid-Ulster English dialect
Soundfiles
The dialect
Lexis
W. F. Marshall
Tyrone Irish
References
Here
are some sample
recordings, along with orthographic transcriptions, of the SwTE
dialect. Speakers are identified by a code (C = Catholic, P =
Protestant, F= Female, M = Male, the number refers to the speaker's
year of birth)
- PM00 remembers news of the hanging of Joseph Moan, the 'Trillick Murderer' (Derry Gaol, 1904; note that the victim's name was actually Rose McCann), and being lost as a child
- sample
- transcription
- Look out for his pronunciation of old ('owl'), searched ('sarched'), and they ('thee'); other characteristic
features of the SwTE dialect in this sample include 'left dislocation'
of a new subject (our Willie and, uh,
Tom Carney, they had ...), a-prefixing
for agentless passive verb forms (as in Moan's a-hanging 'Moan is being
hung'), mind for 'remember',
and the exclamation of surprise Boys
(used by the interviewer; often found in the fuller form Boys a dear)
- SM, BK, RG and RM discuss the dangers of slurry fumes
- MK describes how she once broke her leg
- CM26 tells how a priest caught a ghost in an ink bottle and hid it in hole in a bush, resulting in tragedy when the bush was cut down
- sample
- transcription
- Look out for his pronunciation of clergyman ('clargyman') and old ('owl'); other characteristic
features of the SwTE dialect in this sample include got for 'found, came upon', redding for 'clearing', and a zero
relative pronoun in there was
supposed to be a clergyman of ours caught the ghost; note also
his use of one of your men to
refer to a Protestant and a
clergyman of ours to refer to a Catholic priest
- PM26
talks about
playing in the local band and learning to play the bagpipes
- sample
- transcription
- Look out for his pronunciation of arm ('arrum'), easy ('aisy'), hold ('howl'), stopper ('stapper') and wind ('wine'); other characteristic
features of the SwTE dialect in this sample are till for 'to', the same forms used
for past tense and the past participle (e.g. blew for 'blown'), 'subordinating and' (as in if you squeeze and you
blowing 'if you squeeze while you are blowing'), and the lexical
item wee
('small')
- CF30 remembers a run-in with an unpredictable character from Fintona
- sample
- transcription
- Look out for her pronunciation of devil as 'divvel'; characteristic
SwTE words in this sample include again
for 'against', doll for
'woman' and handlings for
'situations'; also notice the double negative we never heared nothing, and the
non-standard past tense forms come
for 'came', heared for
'heard' and seen for 'saw'
- SC describes cutting and stacking corn
- DE describes storing turnips
- RM remembers keeping pet pigs in the house
- JMc describes older farming practices
- JK describes building an Easter House and boiling eggs with whin flowers