To wonder why many MNetters say oop north

[Topanga1]

Are you pronouncing oop to rhyme with loop?
I've never heard a northerner, or anyone else for that matter, pronounce up to rhyme with loop.

"I think it's meant to be oo as in book."

I'm Northern but I say "book" as "buck". DH says "boohk", but he's semi Scouse.

I'm in the NE and I've only ever heard Oop North, referring to the NW, never NE.

Doubtless someone will say "lighten up!" but I find "oop North" a bit patronising TBH. Northerners are saying "up" in their own accent, not "oop".

You wouldn't mimic the accent of another country's language, so why is it OK to do it to a different region?

I think everyone does it for every part of the country. It's not just an up north thing. People from other parts of the country copy me in a farmer style accent. It's just one of those things. It's not particularly funny but I don't think it's meant offensively.

Northerner here - yes, cook and book should rhyme with fluke! Live in Scotland now and they take that sound even further, remember when I first came to Scotland being surprised by newsreaders talking about President Boosh!

Book and cook rhyming with fluke sounds like North West to me (Lancashire?) but not further East.

My mum's from Tees-side and I must have picked up her accent as I remember being made fun of at school (age 6 or 7 I suppose) for talking funny. I spent most of my childhood in East Lancs but moved to S Yorks in my late 20's, so my accent is rather mixed up. I think on the whole I use the shorter vowel sounds, but it depends very much on who I'm talking to - I don't consciously change but tend to reflect their accent. After all, that's how we get our accents in the first place.

Book and cook have their own unique pronunciation in East Lancs.

Accents vary all around the North. It's a big place.

Bermingmm is how I would jokingly refer to Birmingham. With the stress on the ber. From the SW (Brizzle really is a place), lived in Sheffield and Manchester, DP from W. Yorks. Funnily enough, it was one of the things that first attracted me to him. At the beginning of our relationship he asked me if I'd be 'his lass'. Cue melting on my part. Now it gets on my nerves as he just sounds like his dad! Says munt instead of mustn't 😀.

I'm in Cumbria, down south is Manchester for us.

I'm from the north west of England like DM. DF is from NE England.
I say book, cook, hook, look, rook and took to rhyme with duck.

I would have said that oo is correctly pronounced as rhyming with loop. Pronouncing it as a short u sound is incorrect if you ask me.

I'm from Lancs and I find the word oop a bit confusing. I say up, not oop (as in loop) so who does actually say oop apart from piss taking Southerners? I'm all for a bit of ribbing but I have never heard anyone actually say the word oop in their normal accent.

I find people tend to do it when they think they're being a touch amusing.

They're invariably not

There's no correct or incorrect about it; it's just difference in accents. My NE English relatives call a skirt a "skort", again, just the way they pronounce it in their dialect.

If I said "book" to rhyme with "loop", I'd sound like the most Ma Boswell style comedy Scouser imaginable. I'm not Scouse, so I don't say it like that.

I always read 'oop' to rhyme with soup, which 'sounds' silly. See also 'fooking hell'.

I can't get my head round cook and fluke not rhyming. How can they not rhyme? This is as bad as bloody scarf/giraffe!

When southerners say 'oop north ', they are meaning the 'oo' sound like in 'book', not the one in 'loop'. I'm a southerner living in Cumbria so I'm surrounded by people who say 'oop'. It is totally different from the southern pronunciation of 'up'.

I would have said that oo is correctly pronounced as rhyming with loop. Pronouncing it as a short u sound is incorrect if you ask me.

It's not incorrect. It's a regional accent.

I find these threads really frustrating. We all hear different accents every day in rl, on t.v. and on the radio. And yet many people on MN seem to be incapable of grasping that various words can sound different in different accents without being 'wrong'.

Also, there are sooo many irregularities in pronunciation in the English language, that you can't often state that a vowel or collection of letters is even pronounced consistently in the SAME accent! ('Rough, cough, through, though, thorough, thought' anyone?).

"How can they not rhyme?"

In some people's accents they do, in other's they don't. Quite simple.

If cook must rhyme with fluke, then surely good must rhyme with food, following the same logic? Whereas in reality, bar some Scottish accents, they don't tend to. So, if good and hood can rhyme with mud, then cook, look etc. can rhyme with luck, not fluke. Nothing incorrect about it.

Oop North was a favourite phrase in the NME in the 90s, when all the best bands were from these parts.

Sorry, no I don't mean it was incorrect that they don't rhyme, I do understand people have different accents, but I genuinely couldn't think of a way of pronouncing cook that doesn't rhyme with fluke! Good also rhymes with food in my accent so I'm none the wiser! I'm going to pay closer attention when people use those words and listen for the difference

"I genuinely couldn't think of a way of pronouncing cook that doesn't rhyme with fluke!"

Cuck cuck cuck cuck cuck cuck cuck cuck cuck cuck… geddit?

Actually, it looks like a rude word that way.

Cook/fluke and good/food do not rhyme in the vast majority of southern accents or northern accents. Or in American accents, come to that. The only accent I can think of where they do rhyme is a Scottish one.

Cuck only sounds like cook in northern accents though. In a southern accent they sound completely different.