T'northern English Definite Article

[@procrastinator99]

"...clitic words..." you know, there's a filthy language joke in there somewhere, but I can't quite put my tongue on it...

[@brokengothdoll6203]

phew! I thought I was the only one to have a little snigger at this.

[@jontyhamp01]

@@brokengothdoll6203 Never have I sniggered at t'clitoris in my life.

[@hannah-mariachisholm8082]

Amazing

[@brokengothdoll6203]

@@jontyhamp01 clitoris is a good word....

[@Ungstein1]

Had a quick glans over your comment. You seem to have combined two sayings together: "I can't quite put my finger on it" and "It's on the tip of my tongue". Either one works, tbh.

[@MarkALong64]

When I was 7, my teacher mocked me because I though that the two forms of "the" were separate. They have been dead for years and I doubt that they remembered me but I feel vindicated.

[@PeterPaul175]

Although Simon Roper starts every video with the disclaimer that he is not a linguist, one day I would like to see him as the JRR Tolkien professor of language at Oxford.

[@watleythewizard2381]

PeterPaul175 Simon would make a great hobbit

[@ferkinskin]

Jimmy Carr does a great gag. His favorite Yorkshire phrase is tin tin tin, which means, it isn't in the tin!

[@dominicdoherty7208]

Tin tin tin 'T int int tin (I)t i(s)nt int(he) tin

[@MrLeemo176]

As a northerner I can confirm that's a perfectly understandable sentence

[@girv98]

You know, for how well known that phrase is, I don't think I've actually heard anyone say it like that IRL. For example, I would say "i' in' in tin" or /ɪʔ ɪnʔ ɪn tɪn/. A lot of the time, I'd even drop the pronoun

[@ravtastic9802]

i'in'in'tin

[@robinmorton9162]

To me (from South Yorkshire) starting with the /t/ from the end of the 'it' would be something I'd only expect from an older person from mebbe Barnsley. Younger people (and those from bigger cities) would usually reduce 'it' to /ɪʔ/ (potentially with an extra-short vowel) or just /ʔ/.

[@CL-tv7pz]

I'm sat here learning about the definite article on a Saturday night with Mr Roper. Rock and roll.

[@charlisparkles]

😂 and I just shared with several friends ... party animals

[@nostalgiakarlk.f.7386]

*about't definite article*

[@charlisparkles]

@@nostalgiakarlk.f.7386 I like your comment, despite't criminal misspelling of "definite"

[@sadfaery]

I'm American, but I did my postgraduate studies in Manchester, and the first time I ever heard t' in place of "the" was at a talk I attended in Eyam, Derbyshire given by an older man from Sheffield. I never heard it anywhere else until I started noticing it on the occasional British TV show here and there more recently. This was a really interesting discussion and examination of its use!

[@bsmith5404]

What was’talk about? ‘Plague?

[@sadfaery]

@@bsmith5404 Actually, no. It was about a nearby reservoir. It was intended more for regular residents of the village (where I was living at the time) rather than for tourists.

[@nikkiwordsmith]

It is such an unusual sound.

[@tombackhouse9121]

I've been rambling about this to my friends for years, southerners joke about our abbreviation of 'the' to 't' but they never seem to mention the glottal stop. I'm glad to see at least somebody else cares! I also love the fact that we voice the word 'glottal' with a glottal stop.

[@katharinesherman2173]

I vividly remember being about 6 and arguing with one of my classmates about whether it was pronounced "thee" or "thuh", and now I feel like a part of my life has been resolved after learning that words can have strong and weak forms.

[@herrfister1477]

Someone please tell the writers of programmes etc set in the the north - they aren’t set in t’north ( as you might write it) - they are set int north.

[@thatladfromsheffield]

I used to hate it when someone would call't internet the tinternet

[@davestockbridgeAWE]

The joy I feel at seeing a new Simon Roper video is hard to put into words. I have learned more from you than I did in all of schooling. Thanks again!

[@nikkiwordsmith]

He's a good teacher isn't he? A natural!

[@gilesfarmer5953]

Well done Simon for explaining how the glottal stopped northern " 't" is pronounced in a concise and clear way. Yorkshire person here now living in Australia. My accent had smoothed out over the years and has become "cosmopolitanised", but you can still tell that I'm from oop North, and from time to time I can go a bit ethnic especially after a drink. Funnily though, when people try and take the piss out of us, instead of glottalising the T, they emphasize it instead, usually for comic effect. An example of this is the episode of The Goodies, Ecky Thump, where the characters don flat caps and ponce about as northern stereotypes smacking one another with black pudding. Silly 70s humour of course. Ironically, one of the troupe, Bill Oddie, is northern, Lancashire, so he should have known better. Again, great channel. You and Jackson are in the same league and both some of my favourites. Cheers. Giles

[@frogandspanner]

The Goodies got that from their days on I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again - listen to episode 4, series 6 Trouble at T' mill. It's fascinating that after leaving the north 50 years ago I too have a definite Northern sound. Partly because I refuse to sound poncey with "Barth", partly because I wonder if it's a genetic things. My father was Dutch, and moved to UK aged 30. 64 years later he still had a strong Dutch accent (although when he spoke Dutch his sisters claimed he had a strong British accent). My baby brother was 3 when we moved from Leeds, but has a stronger Yorkshire accent than I.

[@mrtactica]

Hello Giles Also a pom, and my accent I think has disappeared but my children and wife think I sound foreign! Mt T's are occasionally stopped and other speech 'defects' pop out. The strong (ie proper) U sound and certain slang terms hang about and even my grandchildren copy me to make fun of the old pom! They ask me to translate the occasional English TV show - ha ha.

[@pixelfrenzy]

As for /θ/, my dad with his Lancashire accent would say things like "I'll put th'oven on" or even "Your tea's in't th'oven", although maybe the latter was a deliberate caricature. "Put t'wood in't th'ole" (put the wood in the hole) was his humorous Lancashire way of telling someone to shut the door.

[@helenamcginty4920]

Put t'wood in th'ole was common even in my home town of Blackpool witj its mix of folk from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Scotland etc who moved thinking, (mostly wrongly) there was money to be made out of holiday makers.

[@rjmun580]

Thank you for yet another fascinating talk. I come from east Lancashire and we might be in t'garden but we'd go in thouse. The glottal stop has gone and a new word has arrived. Of course we didn't live in a house - we lived in a nouse at top o' thill.

[@AwareWolf_]

My maternal grandmother was from northern England. Her English was completely unique as she had married and relocated to northern Montana. So when I hear your explanations of sounds and evolution of dialects I appreciate the lesson.

[@milosit]

As a Bradfordian, I heartily applaud your breakdown. There's even further reductions in words such as "wa'n'' i"' ie: "Wasn't it?" where the "s" has vanished along with "t".

[@SLINKEY666]

Wannit, gorrit, avvit, dooit. I do love the Bradford accent, not as much as I love hearing people in Northern parts of Leeds area trying to pretend they don't have a Yorkshire accent though.

[@chrisnewman9693]

@@SLINKEY666 ha you are right! (That’s where I grew up). Though at the time, in the sixties, having a northern accent was seen as uncouth and so my parents tried to iron it out of me. It didn’t work, though after 40 years of living in London I now catch myself saying ‘barth’ instead of bath, which I swore I could never do.

[@mew11two]

According to WIktionary, t' comes from the neuter definite article þæt, so it actually comes from this final t rather than being a reduction of 'the'.

[@charlisparkles]

Too niche?! I've never clicked one of your uploads so fast - also the first video of yours I've ever shared with friends to watch. Thank you 🙏 So much. You're among my favourite youtubers 👏👏

[@girv98]

There's a Michael MacIntyre bit on this that's always slightly annoyed me as he renders the first Narnia book as "tut lion, tut witch, tut wardrobe"; which in my accent would mean "to the lion, to the witch, to the wardrobe".

[@orangew3988]

This has always frustrated me! It shows so little understanding of what people are actually saying because you're right, it doesnt mean the, it comes out 'to the'.

[@summertilling]

I believe this is a lazy comedy staple that goes back a long time. It's definitely annoying (and I'm a southerner).

[@katelee1434]

people always seem to get that wrong for some reason

[@thomasrothers8021]

I was literally thinking of that while watching the video lol

[@ChavvyCommunist]

The weird thing is that later in that same routine, he actually does the definite article reduction correctly whilst doing a Yorkshire accent. So he was intentionally doing it wrong.

[@robinpayne125]

An appreciable reduction of the definite article is present in other Germanic languages: in Allemanic German dialects (notably Swiss German), das is very often reduced to simply 's in a lot of normal speech, and of course the contraction "ins" for "in das" is widely used. You also meet 't in Dutch as a variant of "het". None of these, of course, carries the odd th to t transformation as in Northern English.

[@loulounya]

The Swiss German example is actually what it reminded me of

[@Hilde_mann]

Native Allemanic Speaker here (upper rhine/black forest area) ... You're totally correct. Somehow it didn't occur to me until I read your comment. It's exactly the same thing, except there's still a distinction between genders. So there's not only _'s_ for das, but also _de_ [də] for "der" (masculine) and _'d_ for "die". _'D_ Mama hett gsait, _'s_ Huus isch z klei fir sie un _de_ Baba. [d̥ ˈma.maː hɛ⁠t gsaɪ̯t s huːs ɪ⁠ʃ ts glaɪ̯ fɪ⁠ɐ siː ʊ⁠n də ˈba.ba], roughly. Mama hat gesagt, das Haus ist zu klein für sie und Papa. Mum said, the house is too small for her and dad. Notice how the definite article is used before names, contrary to standard German and English. Personally, I definitely feel like the article is attached to the preceding word rather than to the noun itself.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@Hilde_manneigentlich ist der bestimmte Artikel bei Eigennamen zulässig und entspricht dem Standard, da Eigennamen keine eigenständige Kategorie im Standarddeutschen sind. Was aber auffällt, ist der Schwund des Genitiv-s bei Eigennamen, wenn es sich nicht um possessivische Bedeutung handelt und ein Artikel gebraucht wird. Da heißt es dann „Das beste Brot des ausgehenden Europa“ oder schon früher aus dem Niederdeutschen bei der Kopie des Buches „Die Leiden des jungen Werthers“ wurde das Genitiv-s weggelassen.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410, yes, true. ð > d (faðir > fater/Vater). But actually it was /d/ before (ð > d > t). þ > d (þ > t > d) as in bruoþar > Bruder.

[@aliceestate3899]

s'Baby (neutrally) as well as s'Auto. but dr Papa (male article, high german der) dr Gamer. d'Mama (female, high german die Mama) southern german dialects still today: i gang en d'City ... ;) is so

[@37372]

Very interesting, thanks for this. I'm from South Yorkshire and speak like this without even realising it, much to my friends amusement who come from elsewhere. "Am guin t'shop"

[@TheMichaelK]

I did not know this existed in English. Would be by accident, but this brings it a bit closer to how things are in many dialects of Low Saxon. Ik gå in't huus, as short for: Ik gå in dat huus. Meaning: I'm going into the house. Ik gå to't huus, as short for: Ik gå to dat huus. Meaning: I'm going to the house. In'n park givt 't planten, as short for: In den park givt dat planten. Meaning: There are plants in the park. But in Low Saxon there is clearly a t in the word dat and an n in the word den.

[@SLINKEY666]

Im from Yorkshire and Reading that language in a Yorkshire accent feels like im saying it in English (well eest/South Yorkshire English anyway) wonder if it has anything to do with the amount of Daines that settled in Yorkshire

[@TheMichaelK]

​@@SLINKEY666 That's interesting. I'm not too much into English, dialects, but actually the language of my examples is today most often called Low Saxon or Low German, but it is indeed the modern Saxon language, and should in theory be closest to the dialects of Wessex, Sussex, and those regions. The name changed as there was a Holy Roman Emperor in the middle ages, and because he was mad at the Duke of Saxony (who was very powerful at the time) for not helping him in struggles with Italy, he decided to dissolve the Duchy of Saxony and give the title Duke of Saxony to someone living outside of Saxony. That was actually a quiet big punishment and comparable as if an English king would have totally dissolved Wales, Ireland or Scotland and taken the name from that region and given it to another region. That is why we today have a state in Germany called Saxony, that has no closer connection to the original Saxon people in the north west of Germany, and why on the other hand after a few centuries names like Low German and Low Saxon came up for the original Saxons (in contrast to Upper Saxon or just Saxon of the "new" Saxons). But all this being said: The dialect I wrote my examples in is Northern Low Saxon. And especially this dialect has undergone Danish influence when parts of Germany belonged to Denmark. For example it has lost the word "it" (which meant it just like in English) and replaced it with "dat". That makes it similar to Danish/Swedish/Norwegian, which also use "det" instead of something like "it". Maybe there was some more influence on Northern Low Saxon than just this.

[@sorrysirmygunisoneba]

"Gå in" is very similar to gannin which is "going/ going in" in the North East. Really makes you wonder if the North Eastern accents are still close to original Anglo-Saxon roots.

[@afunnyman]

Tom Scott would be going to town with this stuff.

[@iSyriux]

Ha! Right? T'first thing I imagined about after hearing this spectacular information was Tom Scott, he'd go nuts after learning all this

[@ChavvyCommunist]

Especially considering he's from a place (Mansfield) that has that dialect feature.

[@blazerboy233]

@@iSyriux I don't know if he doesn't know it already. He is a linguist by training.

[@SchmulKrieger]

be going t'town. 😉

[@JamesOfTheYear]

Thanks for this! Just finished watching This Is England (+ the TV series) and the character named Woody uses this all the time and I was confused as I'd never heard it before.

[@TheStarBlack]

Nottingham is a really interesting accent because it's not really in the North, it's in the Midlands but they have loads of Northern inflections. It's amazing to hear a fairly clear gradient of "Northerness" in accents as you travel up the country.

[@acatonawall3938]

@@TheStarBlack In addition, Woody is played by Joseph Gilgun, who is from the very Northern town of Chorley.

[@Messier45_Pleiades]

My grandma was from Bolton. She talked like this.

[@DanH34]

Speculation: In North-Eastern dialects, in which the definite article is usually reduced to "th'"; when speaking quickly, the phoneme often seems to be realised as a dental-alveolar 'd' with a brief dental fricative preceding it. The tongue noticeably slides upwards and slightly forwards while the sound is pronounced. This is only apparent when paying careful attention to speech, and takes some spotting - it may be that the dialect has "d'" and "dh" as allophones in some situations. Perhaps something like this was intermediate to t'current situation. Note that we do not think of ourselves as using "t'", it being especially associated with Yorkshire and generally considered humorous. "The" is always spelled out fully, even in informal dialectal writing.

[@Ulysses_S_Grant_18]

I'm From.west Yorkshire and I'd always say t' is "to the" I'm going to the shops = I'm go t' shops The would just be a catch in my throat like a glottal stop

[@zooblestyx]

Wrong day of the week, wrong hour of the day for this. I shall return tomorrow. Cheers

[@joelandersson8504]

Swede here, fåglarna (the birds) happily survived your pronunciation!

[@annecasserstedt4749]

Yes your pronounciation of the Swedish fågel - fågeln is perfect

[@patmanchester8045]

And people say modern English is hard to learn! I don't care if you are a linguist or not. I find your vlog to be one of the best I watch.

[@Xanomodu]

This is very similar to Frisian. In Frisian, the neuter definite article " it " gets reduced to " 't " after prepositions. An example: yn 't noarden (in the north).

[@pixelfrenzy]

Is it the same in Flemish? Loads of Flemish migrants moved to the North-West of England to become weavers before the industrial revolution. Lancashire dialect also includes Flemish words like "oud" for "old" etc.

[@Xanomodu]

@@pixelfrenzy I don't know enough about Flemish to answer that, unfortunately!

[@goombacraft]

@@pixelfrenzy I don't think Lancastrian dialects contain "oud" because it's retained from Flemish/Dutch. That seems unlikely given that Frisian retains "âlt" and German "alt", all from Proto-G "*aldaz". What seems more likely is vocalisation of L in both languages (like how a Cockney speaker might pronounce "old"), as this is fairly common cross-linguistically (compare Polish, Serbian, Brazilian Portuguese). Hope this helps!

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Germinate consonants are 'allowed' in English and are very common. They only occur across word boundaries and are not phonemic. Think of the difference between "This handle" (in an -dropping accent) and "this sandal". In connected speech we'd get [ðɪsændl̩] vs. [ðɪs:ændl̩]. I think there's a 3-way distinction in operation with "At't pub": 'a pub' [əˈpʰʊb], 'at pubs' [əˈp:ʰʊbz] and 'at the pub' [əˈp::ʰʊb] As for your mate saying "In the park", I'd suggest that [ ɪnʔpʰɑːk] isn't the correct analysis, since the /n/ in 'in' clearly assimilates to the following /p/. I would propose [ɪmˤp:ʰɑːk] instead.

[@louisebentley4886]

I was born and raised in Brisbane by immigrants from Leeds. When I was 5 I recall telling my mum that no-one at school would talk to me and it wasn't until we were in a taxi and I said, "Mam, wind't winda up." and the driver commented that you could tell I was from England that my mum realised I had an accent broader than the Dales XD

[@albertusjung4145]

Simon, perhaps the northern english reduced definite article 't has been influenced by Dutch or has developed paralletl to the Dutch unstressed definite neuter article ''t (reduced from ''het'', which is the same neuter definite article as in the scandinavian tongues.) This Dutch unstressed neuter article 't is used not only in the spoken language, but also in the written language. Thus ''in 't huis'' (short for ''in het huis'') means ''in the house''. This 't is the unstressed form ONLY of the neuter article ''het'', not of the masculine/feminine article ''de'' (which is cognate to the English ''the''). Perhaps some northern english dialects took the unstressed neuter article over from the Danish tongue, and then replaced even the native masculine and feminine definite article with it, and not only the neuter?

[@goombacraft]

Influence from Dutch or Danish is pretty unlikely, however you're on the right lines. English had an article of this form of it's own. "'t" may have come about with the reduction of the article "þæt" (pronounced "that"), by only retaining the final "t". However, it's just a theory

[@seancoleman5021]

This is what I had understood too.

[@ashcatlt]

Ash Blackwater This sort of things happen in southern us dialects too, but “t” is very often used in place of either “at” or “to”, and it’s sometimes tough to tell which was meant. If one says “t’home”, you kind of have to look at the context to tell if the subject actually is home or not or maybe they’re talking about “the” structure itself.

[@staceycope7364]

Loving this channel.. got down a rabbit hole and can't stop watching. Making my way through the videos.. must say I work in a supermarket never studied anything like this but I am finding it so interesting im addicted and I am loving Simon you keep me hooked.. also love this video i'm from bolton and say in park like the guy!! Keep them coming before I run out of videos to watch..🥰😀

[@FeeBerry]

I have never been particularly interested in linguistics or old languages until i encountered your videos, and i enjoy them very much, and it has sparked an interest in what you have to say. I see the disclaimer at the beginning of every video that you are not a linguist and are just a passionate amateur and archaeology student...but I must admit that the more i watch of these videos the more i answer your disclaimer with...*why not?* Why AREN'T you following the passion which leads you to spend your free time producing videos on this subject for us...? You seem to have a talent for explaining these things and making them understandable, and have a considerable number of fans on KZbin. I'm not saying you should be guided by our wish for you to continue to do that... but if you're willing to spend time doing them for free, it seems that it is something you were meant to do.

[@jeffreyjoshuarollin9554]

Another great video Simon. Reduction of an article after a preposition is by no means unprecedented: French has “au(x)” (same pronunciation for both in isolation) for “*à le(s),” Spanish has “al” for “*a el” (both meaning “to the,” with the masculine singular - though “aux” is plural, both genders,”) and Italian has an entire series, like al, agli, alla, alle, nel, nella - forms of “a(d)” “to” and “in” “in(to)” with various forms of the definite article accounting for masculine singular, feminine plural, etc. It also has/had a whole series which fell/are falling into disuse like “col” (con il), “with the,” “pel” (per il) “for the,” etc.

[@StorminNormanTheMormon]

The gluttal stop you describe is very prevalent in the Southwest/ Mountain West USA (Arizona, Utah, Idaho), but in an odd way. The word "Mountain" for example becomes "Mao--n". It affects nearly all strong T sounds and is more common in rural areas.

[@acchaladka]

Thanks for that, another interesting topic. I happen to know a number of dramaturges and literature types studying Sir David Lindsay's A Satire of the Three Estates (circa 1558), and wonder how far north these prononciation effects extend. Could you comment- maybe in Q&A - on the border lands and determining where or when Scots starts, its transition from middle Scottish to the modern type, or other issues you find interesting about the area and influences of one on the other?

[@patriciaadams3010]

The notion of a single glottal stop being understood as placer for a definite article in any dialect of my own language is a little mind-blowing. For some reason, I just don't think of English as being a language that ever has those sorts of subtleties within it.

[@ulrikschackmeyer848]

Well think again, sis!

[@davidemmett8191]

Simon, I have watched many of your videos (particulary on northern dialects, old English and old Norse) and they are fascinating. I wanted to ask about a comment in this video. You said you can still hear 'th' for 'the' in some parts of Lancashire, which is perfectly true. However, the example you gave was 'th'garden'. I have only ever heard (or used) the reduction 'th' where the following word starts with a vowel or an H (which is silent in Lancashire): th'orse. th'ouse, th'animal, th'een (the eyes), th'ullets (the owls). I know you went to uni in Preston, did you hear 'th' over there with nouns starting with a consonant too? (I'm from the very east right on the borders of Yorkshire, so our dialect is more akin to Yorkshire than Lancashire.

[@TechWeb68]

In Wigan I have never heard "th''garden' or anything of the like. Moreover we'd say "I saw it on th'internet" and not "on t'internet". And I can't imagine people on Bolton, including Peter Kay, would actually say "t'internet" . They would say "th' internet". But I live abroad and I can't check my theory.

[@TheJohnblyth]

How about a contraction of a now-forgotten structure such as “in it, the house” as a possible candidate for the ancestor of this phenomenon? Especially for people adapting to a prestige language or dialect from elsewhere, specifically here from two different varieties of Celtic, various varieties of Scandinavian, and indeed possible collisions of different varieties of Middle English. Gaelic (either Scottish or Irish) still has all sorts of constructions like that.

[@laamonftiboren4236]

Good idea. Or possibly “in *that* house” i.e. perhaps “that” replaced “the”?

[@goombacraft]

@@laamonftiboren4236 You've the right idea, another theory regarding how "'t" came about was through the reduction of OE article "þæt" (pronounced "that"), by only retaining the final "t".

[@marzcorp]

interesting what you say about "them" also being condensed to "t'em", as I often hear it said like that after a word ending with "t": e.g. "get them" would become "get t'em" (sounds like gettum). I actually go the step further and replace the whole sound with a glottal stop (ge-um).

[@jamiel6005]

I hear this even in south England and also in South Wales, I’ve never heard gettum, but definitely ge’um.

[@girv98]

This could actually be a different phenomenon. In many accents, the 'th'-sound /ð/ tends to assimilate into the preceding consonant. So: _in the_ becomes _in ne_ (/n‿ð/ > [n̪n̪]) _till they_ becomes _till ley_ /l‿ð/ → [l̪l̪] etc.

[@SkepticalChimp]

I live in South Wales and around my area we usually use an r so it would be "gerrum" instead of gettum.

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@NicholasLong1189, /t/ is easier to pronounce after d, t, th, h ...

[@GandalfTheGay98]

Spacco Slack Daxon same in Nottingham

[@karlijnlike4lane]

okay, I'll bite: You often make the disclaimer that you're not a trained linguist, but rather your study is archaeology. The very necessity of the disclaimer highlights your awareness that a youtuber like yourself is likely to be regarded as an expert in your topic of choice. So, as you're aware you could be presumed to have expertise unless you disavow it, (1) why aren't you using the platform to talk about topics in archaeology (no disclaimer needed), and (2) how does it come to be that you're so compelled to publish, and in such detail, on a topic you have to disclaim expertise in? Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I love them both. Follow-up: how do these parallel interests inform each other, for you? Edit: P.S. Thank you for finally explaining (to a yank) this phenomenon that I've seen so much of in 19th c. English lit without ever having heard it.

[@RickBarker-c6p]

Can we get the motorway road signs changed fro 'The North' to 't'North'?

[@chrissammis3521]

Hey Simon! If you do end up making a Q&A of sorts, I would love to hear more about your studies in your field of archaeology. I don’t recall you talking much about it in your videos before. I think that’d be very interesting. I would love to see a Simon Roper reboot of Time Team...

[@nikkiwordsmith]

Yes me too. I am a lapsed archaeologist :-)

[@GenyoSevdaliya]

Thank you so much for an interesting material, Simon. I've watched the whole video with a great interest and attention.

[@HPB1776]

I'm not quite sure how I came across this video ( randomly popped up as I was looking up something about definitive articles in Spanish 🤣) I love it, especially as a Mancunian with family all from Lancashire going back to the 1700s. We all speak like this. V interesting. Explains places such as Halli'th'wood in Bolton too.

[@michaelschiller7871]

Great video! Could you maybe talk about germanic borrowings from latin, and whether we know anything about the spread of these words? Words like the english wine from vinum, and wick from vicus. Do all Germanic languages have examples like this, or did it occur more in the West than in the East? Thank you!

[@alanwindypics]

It's not always just 'The' that gets abbreviated, but also 'To the' e.g. "I'm goin t'pub!, or "I'm goin t'shop!". Many southern actors portraying northerners frequently overemphasise the 'T' which should always be soft and flow into the word and not hard and separate, always a giveaway. My favourite northern expression has always been "Shintin" (She isn't in!") :-)

[@mikecarlton4051]

Hey great video analysis. I live and have grown up in East Lancashire and there seems to be a shift in this every 5 miles or so a lot of people will say 't' whereas some (like myself) use the glottal stop. Which I've had to 'unlearn' for learning German. I found my way to your channel from the 'Old English' Challenge. Best of luck with Uni

[@rachelk6733]

This was so interesting, I don't think I've seen a video like this before that actually gets it right, but this hit nail on't head, so to speak! I love hearing about aspects of my own accent in linguistics terms :)

[@SteveW139]

As an Oldhamer I’d say that it hits t’nail on th’ead.

[@jonntischnabel]

When I was in Belgium (Ghent) there was a flyer in the hotel lobby called "jazz in't park), and my friend Chris who lived in Amsterdam for many years said that the Dutch had no problem understanding our northern (dark peak District) dialect.

[@nomadicmonkey3186]

TIL why I find Northern dialects lovely. I love glottal stops since IMO they are like unsung heroes (not so far as schwa, but still) doing lots of heavy lifting in speech in a lot of languages, helping them flow naturally by reducing bulky consonants.

[@sterlingkuhlmann6270]

Very interesting. Always enjoy your videos

[@fenham]

Found this interesting, well more interesting than normal. I was born in Newcastle in the mid 50s and regard myself as a Geordie. Had a Newcastle accent when I left England in '83. Having lived in the area around Canberra since then my accent now is a mish-mash. My dad was born in Newcastle but my mum was born in Barrow-in-Furness in the mid 1920s. I remember when I was a kid (late 50s) her Cumbrian accent was still strong. Of course like mine, hers faded over the years she lived east of the Pennines. One phrase she used frequently was "Put wood int 'ole" meaning "close the door". It's the only non-Newcastle dialect phrase I can clearly remember her using. On the occasional visits we made to Barrow all my Cumbrian relatives were mostly unintelligible while I was a kid 😆 Thanks Simon

[@SchmulKrieger]

It is the same what happened in German over times ð > t (faðir/faeðer > fater > Vater) but bruoþar > Bruder (þ > d).

[@ibbobo5162]

how do you explain people in North Manchester - where I was brought up saying "I had to take a little bottle to the hospital" as "I had ta tek a lickle bockle to the hospickle". But my mam was from Yorkshire so we weren't allowed to say that or we'd av got a right crack...

[@ibbobo5162]

@Bighill 'obbit ha yes exactly!

[@linguisticalmom6815]

My grandmother (1882-1977), who immigrated in infancy from an Appalachian county in Georgia to rural southeast Texas, routinely said the phrase "one or t'other" instead of "one or the other."

[@a40a40]

Maybe your Great grand parents came from Lancashire?

[@linguisticalmom6815]

@@a40a40 My great grandparents were also from the general area of Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, but a lot people immigrated to those areas from northern England, Scotland, and Ireland. The dialect (and some of the folk music) imported in the 18th and 19th centuries is supposed to have influence the Appalachian--and general southern--dialects still spoken somewhat today, and especially by my grandmother's generation.

[@eigenvectornormalized8843]

Have you read The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth? What is your opinion on Kingsnorth's attempt adapt Old English into something that is readable to modern English speakers? Does it capture the zeitgeist of the Norman invasion?

[@MyChannel-rf8ic]

Excellent analysis. This may be too much of a broad question but If possible, could you please explain how the various accents came about such as Liverpool, Yorkshire, Cockney etc. Enjoy your videos. Thanks.

[@silverandcoldone]

Simon Roper in a hoodie? Wait, that's illegal :'/

[@pesnevim1626]

A friend of mine knew Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks very well and he said there is no 'The' because Pete was from Leigh and they don't tend to use the definite article.

[@harbourdogNL]

0:50 The bane of my existence, is that here in North America, initially just in the US but because of that great leveller of culture, American TV programming, now also here in Canada, the 'e' is now invariably given the short pronunciation even when the following word begins with a vowel. It grates on my ears and I cannot fathom why people who pronounce it that way do not realise how awkward and clumsy it sounds. Drives me nuts!!

[@LimeyRedneck]

Fascinating! 🤠💜

[@nina241085]

My favourite northern terms are owt, nowt and summat. Anything, nothing and something, respectively.

[@glynnsmith4560]

I made a visit to a nursing home in Cumbria to test an item of patient lifting equipment. I asked the carer if I she had the sling for the hoist and she told me "it's on (t)back of(t) doer (door)" which sounded exactly like the dialect from east Rotherham in South Yorks where I was born. When I explained this to her she told me she was Whitehaven born and bred and had a Whitehaven accent. The (t) was the full glottal stop where you do everything but pronounce the 't' sound. The accent varies every few miles in S. Yorks so a canny taxi driver could get you to within half a mile of home if you had memory loss. He would take the young lady to East Rotherham.

[@efthimiossakarellos7150]

Hey Simon, for your Q&A or maybe a future video: Do you think eventually we will have an Anglic language family of languages that descend from modern day English similar to how we have Romance languages? And how does the globalisation of media impact the divergence of dialects? I don't think Romance languages would have diverged as dramatically if the world had TV and internet in "standard" Latin (of course, that didn't exist).

[@maggiebrinkley4760]

This is so interesting! My hubby is from Preston (b.1954) and he recognised how people where he grew up said 'th' for 'the' and said it was a distinct sound, not at all like what he heard in London when he went to Uni in '72.

[@ravtastic9802]

it's ...definitely... attatched to the previous word. that word will also often be reduced and have the last consonant swallowed ie: of the = o't. for the = fo't. with the = wi't. around the = aroun'. although i only do this or heard this from those who also glottalise the t exclusively. i guess pronunciation of t rather than glotallisation is quite old fashioned. personally, i would use ð at the start of a sentence that also starts with a vowel. "th'arras" = the arrows. but "the darts" would always just have a the. oddly though, if there is some vacuous noise being made prior to answer say then a glottal article will get attatched so "uuuuh't darts" if saying "the cat sat on the mat" then i have no issue glottalising the start and essentially starting with "uuh't cat" but from silence that just is so wrong i cant bring myself to do it; so it would be THE ca'sa'on'ma'; rather than uuh'ca'sa'on'ma'.

[@Gregorus]

What are the most interesting archeological sites in Britain both in general and phonologically? Also, I've always been interested in sound changes in names. Do you have any interesting insights into that topic?

[@owoodward72]

Hi Simon. A few questions for your Q&A if you don’t mind. What would be a good introductory book for linguistics as a whole and English dialects specifically? What would be a good introductory book for Anglo-Saxon culture? Finally what would be a good way for someone to start learning Old English if they don’t have the benefit of taking a course at a local university? Thanks in advance for answering any or all of these.

[@richardmiller7887]

"At't top of`t ill" = South Yorkshire "At the top of the hill". Saves 6 letters!

[@buddharuci2701]

Enjoy your studies. And greetings from New York City. Fun to watch your videos. Our James Joyce reading group added Chaucer, then Beowulf, to our zoom agenda. I’m amazed at the spelling variants in ME, even within the Chaucer manuscripts. This leads me to try not to attach too readily to the pronunciations these variants might suggest; that is, a dozen spelling variants don’t point to a dozen pronunciation choices. What can you say on that? Thanks. BTW, I have a good deal of Danish somewhere in my brain which doubles the OE and ME fun.

[@LuckIsMySkillGM]

Does the definite article get reduced more in some grammatical cases than others? Or, perhaps, only after prepositions? I spent some time in the North and can't imagine someone actually saying "I have t'picture" or "It is t'road" so could postulate that genitive and dative cases have something to do with it. That would then mean it's a far more interesting sound change than we think, with Germanic reasons behind it, rather than just a 'lazy' reduction.

[@broketheceling]

This is a topic I am very interested in! Thanks for another great video! For the Q&A: What words, if any, have changed the least (or most) from Old English to modern English? Also what would modern sports sound like with commentary in Old English?

[@paulguise698]

I like all Simon vlogs, Simon could you please tell me where you get the woman saying the poem on the last part of The pronunciation of later Cumbrian?

[@varana]

I was a bit surprised that you were surprised by the θ > t shift. I'm not sure how they're realised in contemporary English (or your dialect specifically), but they're usually both dentals, one fricative and one not. Both t > θ and θ > d/t are main features of the various Germanic consonantal shifts (faθer - Vater, moθer > Mutter), and are quite common in several variations of English, as far as I can tell.

[@simonroper9218]

It wasn't that I was surprised by the shift - as you say, shifts from interdental fricatives to alveolar/dental plosives are common. It was just the fact that this change didn't seem to have occurred in an environmentally conditioned way (without looking at older literature), and it's unlikely to have been a contraction (because /ð/ does not contain /t/).

[@Chris-kp3rc]

​@@simonroper9218 Been away for a long time and just catching up with your older videos. I'm not a linguist but a native Yorkshire speaker originally from near Halifax. I've considered this a lot over the years and on this point, it occurs to me that drawing the tongue back slightly behind the teeth when saying "th" produces a soft "t" sound and also forces a natural glottal stop if you give it a little effort, so "the" to "t'" to full glottal stop seems like a natural progression to me. Apologies if someone else has probably already said this but I don't have time to read all the comments.

[@NWEuroLangs]

Thanks for an interesting video, Simon . How does the adding of an r in a word happen? I'm thinking of the word drawing being pronounced as drawring . There are others but I can't think of them right now . :) I'd like to ask has a vocabulary comparison between Old English and Modern Dutch ever been made . There seems to be a large concordance between the two . :) I have some Lancashire and Yorkshire connections and would like to include a sentence in both dialects Yorkshire . Put wood in t'oil . Lancashire . Put wood in th'ole . Literally it means Put the wood in the hole which is a dialect way of saying Close the door . :)

[@goombacraft]

It might well have to do with the fact that the letter R is only pronounced at the start of syllables or intervocalically in non-rhotic dialects (for example: "over there" is pronounced without a rhotic sound, but "over it" is pronounced with a rhotic sound). What's notable for the word "drawing" is that if a Northerner was to say "Ta, okay", they would pronounce a rhotic sound in-between "ta" and "okay". Drawing can be analysed as draw-ing, where a vowel directly follows another; in this case a rhotic sound may be inserted to ease pronunciation. If you can read IPA: /ˈd͡ʒɻɔːɪŋ/ -> /d͡ʒɻɔːɻɪŋ/ in the same way that /tʰaː ɞu̯kʰɛi̯/ -> /tʰaːɻɞu̯kʰɛi̯/ Hope this helped!

[@TheStarBlack]

This may just be my local experience in my little section of the North but I feel like 't' is rarely or never used at the start of a sentence. We would say "I've been to t'pub" or more accurately "I've been tut pub" but it doesn't feel natural to me saying "T'pub down the road" or "T'pub down t'road". I've lived in Yorkshire all my life and that just doesn't sound right to me. We'd normally say the full 'The' if it's the first word of the sentence. We also have local evidence of an odd older 'th' version in a pub called 'Cat I'th Well' presumably 'Cat In The Well'. Why is it always about pubs with us?!

[@robhulluk]

I'm from West Yorkshire but I've never spoken with the local dialect. But I think when "The" is the first word of the sentence, it's just omitted completely.

[@TheStarBlack]

@@robhulluk yeah it definitely can be omitted, may be not always though

[@girv98]

I omit it in positions where I can't realistically pronounce it. Though if having the article in these cases is necessary, I'll often just resort to Standard English 'the' or really /də/ So I'd say *_"pub down' road"_* usually, but if I wanted to be specific I'd say *_"d'pub down' road"_*

[@zeddeka]

In the North East for example, 't is never used at all. It's always the standard "the"

[@SLINKEY666]

There is a pub near me called "The new pot oil" and for years I thought it was referring to a new pot hole. It was only after a refit I saw a picture above the name and it was an oil pot.

[@phwbooth]

Besses o' th' Barn (a station on the Manchester Metro)

[@homoerectus8148]

I live in a part of Salford called Irlams o'th height.

[@kevinortiz120]

I love this very much!! Thank you so much!! May I ask what part of England are you from?

[@ChristopherJRobin]

6:20 - When you hear Harry Enfield do an impression of a Northerner, it's clear he doesn't understand this. I've heard other people not from the North, making this error and as you said, it's probably difficult to hear to a non-native.

[@Joakim7471]

Simons pronunciation of ’fågel’ and ’fågeln’ is actually spot on. 😉👍🏻

[@philroberts7238]

Simon, I haven't had time yet to scroll through all the other comments yet, so forgive me if I'm repeating somebody else's point. I'm not sure you're entirely correct when you say that the foreshortened "the" to "t" only happens with the definite article. In the North, Yorkshire especially, the use of the second person singular has persisted longer than elsewhere (other than in the Church of England and perhaps the Forest of Dean!) So, to use a cliched example: "Wheer hast tha bin sin' I saw thee - On Ilkley Moor bar t'at?" Bar t'at (or bar't 'at, if you prefer) stands for "without THY hat" and not "without THE hat". I've always vaguely assumed that a lot of the northern "t"s were shortened forms of "thee" and "thy". Would you agree?

[@legalvampire8136]

I had always wondered what bar t'at meant

[@SLINKEY666]

I use "Tha" to mean "your" so like "al tell tha father if ya dunt stop it lad" and "Thev" to mean "They have" not used "thee" or "thy" that much though but I think you could be right with it being to do with thee and thy rather than the itself.

[@georgio101]

@@legalvampire8136 It's wrong. It's not bar t'at, it's baht 'at. Baht is a word meaning 'without', from 'by-out'.

[@aborigine3716]

Simon, could it be that the [ð] of th>t used to be pronounced somewhat as "the" in some American accents ("what da..." or "on da tree")? It's similar to how you pronounced "the tiger killed them" - it wasn't a pure [ð] but rather a [d͡ð] or just a stop almost between the teeth - perhaps it could get devoiced in "weak" positions (the tree > d(uh) tree > t(uh) tree).

[@jamesstridgen6320]

We would say Likkle bokkle, hospikle and kekkle (little bottle, hospital and kettle )were I come from in Lancashire. We also drop our Hs so would say th’ ill for the hill because the first letter would become a vowel, does that make sense?

[@malloryanderson9098]

Almost never used but I have occasionally heard t’aint and t’isnt from older people. Always saw it as normal if unusual. Fun to hear.

[@isaac.g7421]

I love your videos. Id be really interested to see what you make of the accents in the northeast of england (Geordie being the largest but obviously not the only one), the danelaw and the great vowel shift had some pretty unique effects on the phonology up here (I mean just think of how a Geordie would say "Rollercoaster" - "Roolahcoostah").

[@neileyre6019]

Fantastic vids mate. Would love to see one on the use of thee and thy and their numerous variations in the Yorkshire dialect. Although the variations between Rotherham, Thee Thy, and Sheffield’s Dee Da would probably take a long while......and then there’s Barnsley!...Awesome dialect ! just subscribed. Tek care o thisen owd lad!

[@FredFredFive]

I adore your videos they are incredibly, insightful and fascinating! I really hope you go a PHD and your lectures are recorded!

[@elissafanzo1124]

I scrolled through the comments and I don't think anyone else made this point. Modern Northern Germanic languages (with the possible exception of Icelandic and/or Faroese) have also reduced th to t or d, while Old Norse had thorn and eth. Could this be something we inherited from the Viking occupation? I have heard the theory that Middle English could have started out as a Creole of Old English and Old Norse, and find that concept fascinating.

[@andrewbrendan1579]

Simon, you've started me thinking about how people talk in my own area and even in my own family. In my family people might say "pry" instead of "probably". Someone told me once how in his family "probably" was "prolly". One side of my ancestry is English from way back. One side of my family came from Germany much more recently and though Catholic talked with what might be called something of a Yiddish lilt or style which has diminished over the years. I know this is off-topic and much more recent but would you ever consider discussing how people of different social classes in England spoke or speak? I was born in the U.S., speak only English, was brought up to speak in clear manner, yet when I heard the one recording of the voice of Virginia Woolf, made only 24 years before I was born, I found her speech almost unintelligible. Oddly I had no difficulty understanding the recording of the voice of Virginia's sister Vanessa. I'm curious also about how the very upper-class English had such high-pitched speaking voices. Maybe you or one of your viewers could comment on this.

[@nurmihusa7780]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

[@summertilling]

That's interesting. I've seen prolly written down and I always found it strange because I've never knowingly heard it in real life.

[@Henry_L]

In the Midwest, particularly the Lake States, "prolly" seems to be used nearly more frequently than the full word itself in informal settings unless one is trying to enunciate. However, I have noticed the use of "pry /pry-e" as well to a lesser extent and have always wondered why some folks prefer that slang to the far more common "prolly." I too have rarely heard either word used east of the Ohio. Is this truncation simple slang or the result of German, Scandinivian, or other languages as it does seem to be quite regional?

[@DieFlabbergast]

@A S "probbly" is ...er... probbly very common all over the English-speaking world. "Probably" is a fairly long and not so easy-to-pronounce word, and it's used VERY often. Words like that are almost certain to be abbreviated.

[@twelvelegs]

Could this ‘t be a reduction of “it” used for neuter nouns in Frisian having been introduced by seafarers and surviving in some parts of England?

[@kevinortiz6355]

I loved it! I appreciate your video and your effort on making it!!! I am new at this. What part of the UK are you from? I like your way of speaking! ;)

[@karlpoppins]

7:20 Actually, consonant gemination _is_ a thing in English, but only between words or in composite words. The phrase "ten nails" is pronounced /tɪn:eɪlz/, not /tɪn neɪlz/ or /tɪneɪlz/, which would instead be how you'd say "ten ales".

[@MichaelMcAlexander]

If the north is where 'the' was shortened to 't', it c-c-c-c-could be b-because it's f-f-f-f-freezing, and th-th-th-the article was sh-sh-shortened to t-t-t-t' present northern accent. /s >> Just kidding. Love the channel; it is fascinating to follow the intricate nuances of etymology, if even from a professed nonlinguist. Language is not only a method of communication-- it is an art form of self-expression, honed by particularity and, well, pedantry. Cheers.

[@Nemophilist850]

Could it be that it was the word "to" that was first reduced, not "the"? I know that where I'm from it's much more common to say something like "I'm off't shops" rather than "I'm at't shops".

[@girv98]

The t' in "off t' shops" is really a reduction of "to the" rather than just 'to' (pronounced /təʔ/). Consider: I'm in' shops - I'm in the shops I'm off in t' shops - I'm off into the shops

[@Nemophilist850]

@@girv98 Surely the fact that you'd say "I'm in' shops" rather than "I'm in't shops" proves the discrepancy, if anything. "Into" also has "to" in it, when the "'t" returns.

[@girv98]

@@Nemophilist850 no no. The ' is the glottal stop in what I'm writing. t' is "tuh" followed by a glottal stop "I'm in' shops" is /am ɪnʔ ʃɒps/ "I'm off in t' shops" is /am ɒf ɪn təʔ ʃɒps/ So if you take "I'm off t' shops", the t' is a contraction of "to the" or /tə/ + /ʔ/

[@saulknights6635]

To add an extra layer of complexity, I've heard people around Lancashire (especially Bolton and Wigan) elide the definite article using an unvoiced /θ/ into words beginning with /h/, but only words beginning with /h/. So they would say, as you noted, "in the park" as /ɪnʔ pʰa:k/. But "in the house" would become /ɪnʔ θəu̯s/ or "on the hill" would be /ɒnʔ θɪɫ/, or "go up the hill" would be /go: ʊ̞ʔ pθɪɫ/ which features a /ʔpθ/ cluster. I've always been curious about this, and I wondered whether it was an combination of the glottalised /t/ plus the initial /h/ to create a /θ/, because that's how written "th" is normally pronounced?

[@felisityfoxx7224]

Saul, and we say t' th'infirmreh (to the hospital) 🙂

[@georgio101]

I would say we do this 'th' form before any initial vowel sound. It just so happens to coincide with our H-dropping, so many words beginning with H start with a vowel in practice. I might get th'oover from 'th'ouse, but I would also go up in th'attic or put summat in th'oven.

[@AllotmentFox]

Question: English and Welsh are Indo-European languages, so it migrated here at least twice. Could a third language have come here earlier with everyone's favourites the Beaker folk or did they bring some sort of proto-Celtic? What is your view?