TAAT. Where does the north end?

[ArseInTheCoOpWindow]

Where?

Sheffield? Birmingham? Below the Humber, Lincolnshire?????

I live in Sheffield. I think we are bottom of the North. Nottingham and Derbyshire which touch on us are Midlands.

Manchester is north but is Cheshire?

I am south of Birmingham and I would agree with that. Also I go on accent, Derby definitely has a northern accent, therefore is north!

I always think that with Derbyshire ish accents, they sound like a merge of midlands and northern. Like a transition region.

I'm from Northants and now live on the NW coast (and yes, Liverpool is north...it's certainly not the Midlands!). Northerners say I'm southern and southerners say I'm northern. Nobody wants us East Midlanders! 😩🤣

I'm in Liverpool and would say we are definitely in the north!

Derby is Midlands.

Accents vary in Derbyshire a lot. I can distinguish Mansfield from Chesterfield, for instance. Mansfield - definitely Midlands but Chesterfield verging on Northern. Among people in Chesterfield there is a difference of opinion about being Midlands and Northern.

I agree with what you’re saying, but Mansfield is in Notts.

They still say 'Me duck' in Mansfield, meaning it's firmly Midlands!

John o groats

North of Winchester I get a nose bleed and hear the sound of clogs

In our household, the M4! One of us was born just north of it, the other just south. And managed the same with our kids. We have regular joke fights about the merits of the northern half of the family vs the southern

Yes I realised that after I posted but it's only a few miles away from Chesterfield and Chesterfield is a similar distance from Sheffield. 3 counties but quite close together.

They say 'duck' in Chesterfield and Sheffield too.

I never noticed it much, if at all, when I lived in Sheffield.

Derby's in the East Midlands and the accent sounds East Midlands to me.

Anyway, what's a northern accent? Apart from easier to understand, obviously!

Anything north of the River Trent

When I lived in London anything north of the Watford Gap services was classed as up north.
Now I live in Leicestershire - definitely the midlands - and would probably say Derbyshire is north, Nottinghamshire is still Midlands.

I'm in north Lincolnshire and definitely identify as northern. I also don't get the whole "oop north" thing because I have yet to meet a northerner (or anyone for that matter) who pronounces up "oop". We say up the same as everyone else, just with northern vowels!

Never heard oop sound growing up! There is a hint of Yorkshire, maybe? Quite flat I think. Interesting - I can't quite describe it but I know it when I hear it. I'm sure my speech patterns have changed since leaving the area, and DH speaks posh so it tends to rub off a bit.

Living in Derbyshire/Notts for a while, I did hear ay up me duck, it was new to this Yellow Belly! Friends from Mansfield area say a egg not an egg. Some say aye not yes.

As for Lincolnshire, the old dialect has pretty well died out. That was amazing to listen to, all double vowels. Eg mee-at for mate. There is a recording of Lord Tennyson speaking "local". In the 1950s and 60s you would hear it in rural areas, but I think that there wireless has killed it off.

Is it Northern, though? Growing up in Grimsby felt like being a very long way from anywhere!!

It's really less of an 'oop' but if you're of the northern persuasion then you probably wouldn't hear it because it sounds usual to you.

I had Northern parents but went to school in the South. When I started teaching phonics in the North(ish) I found the u and a sounds problematic. I explained that I learned to speak in a different place and said these sounds differently (even when I tried to say it the same as them) and my 4 and 5 year olds understood. After all they hear different accents all the time on TV.

The u in umbrella or up isn't an oo sound. It's quite subtle. More like the u in put the most accents seem to use.

Yes, Sheffield don't really say 'duck' ime. It's more likely to be 'love' aimed at men and women, by men or women.

Yes, you're right it's more often 'love' in Sheffield but the boundaries are a bit blurred where I am.

I think it depends where you live. Birmingham is north to me...
South Walian here 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿