Scouse

Etymology

The word "scouse" is a shortened form of "lobscouse", derived from the Norwegian lapskaus, Swedish lapskojs and Danish labskovs (or the Low German Labskaus), a word for a meat (including fish) stew commonly eaten by sailors. In the 19th century, poorer people in Liverpool, Birkenhead, Bootle and Wallasey commonly ate "scouse" as it was a cheap dish. Outsiders tended to call these people "scousers".

In The Lancashire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore, Alan Crosby suggested that the word only became known nationwide with the popularity of the programme Till Death Us Do Part, which starting in 1965 featured a Liverpudlian socialist and a Cockney conservative in regular argument.

Origins

Originally a small fishing village, Liverpool developed as a port, trading particularly with Ireland, and after the 1700s as a major international trading and industrial centre. The city consequently became a melting pot of several languages and dialects, as sailors and traders from different areas, and migrants from other parts of Britain, Ireland and northern Europe, established themselves in the area. The Scandinavians introduced the dish Scouse.

Until the mid-19th century, the dominant local accent was similar to that of neighbouring areas of Lancashire. The influence of Irish and Welsh incomers, combined with European accents, contributed to a distinctive local Liverpool accent. The first reference to a distinctive Liverpool accent was in 1890. Linguist Gerald Knowles suggested that the accent's nasal quality may have derived from poor 19th-century public health, by which the prevalence of colds for many people over a long time resulted in a nasal accent becoming regarded as the norm and copied by others learning the language.

Phonology

Scouse is notable in some circumstances for a fast, highly accented manner of speech, with a range of rising and falling tones not typical of most of northern England.

Words such as 'book' and 'cook' can be pronounced with the same tenser vowel as in GOOSE, not the one of FOOT. This is true to other towns from the midlands, northern England and Dublin English. The use of a long /uː/ in such words was once used across the whole of Britain, but is now confined to the more traditional accents of Northern England and Scotland.

Oddly enough words such as 'took' and 'look', unlike some other accents in northern towns, revert to the type and are pronounced 'tuck' and 'luck'. Not all Liverpudlians are brought up to speak with this variation but this does not make it any less Scouse.

The Scouse accent of the early 21st century is markedly different in certain respects from that of earlier decades, The Liverpool accent of the 1950s and before was more a Lancashire-Irish hybrid. But since then, as with most accents and dialects, Scouse has been subject to phonemic evolution and change.

Changes have taken place in Scouse vowels, which show length and exaggeration at times in words like 'read', conversely shorter than standard in a word like 'sleep'. A final 'er' is a sound that, although pronounced as a schwa in surrounding Lancashire and Cheshire, is emphasised as strongly as the 'e' in 'pet' /pɛt/. In a strong Scouse accent, the phoneme /k/ can be realised at the ends of some words as [x] or sometimes [k͡x].

Even if Irish accents are rhotic, meaning that they pronounce /r/ at the end as well as at the beginning of a syllable, Scouse is a non-rhotic accent, pronouncing /r/ only at the beginning of a syllable and between vowels, but not at the end of a syllable. The last condition may not apply if the next word begins with a vowel and is pronounced without a pause, so the sentence "the floor is dirty" is often pronounced [ðə ˈflɔːr ɪz ˈdɛːtɪ], while "the floor... is dirty" is pronounced [ðə ˈflɔː | ɪz ˈdɛːtɪ]. See linking R.

The use of the glottal stop as an allophone of /t/ can occur in various positions, including after a stressed syllable. This is called T-glottalisation and is particularly common amongst the younger speakers of the Scouse accent. The letter /t/ may also be flapped intervocalically (in between vowels), /t/ and /d/ are often pronounced similarly to the fricatives /s/ and /z/.

The loss of dental fricatives, /ð/ and /θ/, is commonly attributed to Irish English influence. They are realised as [d̪] and [t̪] respectively.

Lexicon and syntax

Irish influences include the pronunciation of the name of the letter "H" as /heɪtʃ/ and the second person plural (you) as 'youse/yous/use' /juːz/.

The use of me instead of my is also attributed to Irish English influence: for example, "That's me book you got there" for "That's my book you got there". An exception occurs when "my" is emphasised: for example, "That's my book you got there" (and not his (or hers) ).

Other Scouse features in common use include such examples as:

International recognition

Scouse is highly distinguishable from other English dialects and because of this international recognition on 16 September 1996 Keith Szlamp made a request to IANA to make it a recognised Internet dialect. After citing a number of references, the application was accepted on 25 May 2000 and now allows Internet documents that use the dialect to be categorised as 'Scouse' by using the language tag "en-Scouse".