To think the north of England offers a worse quality of life than the South or Midlands?

[DDRickyDD]

I was thinking of moving to Lancashire, but having done some research online, it seems a lot of people have negative opinion of it. I'm now set on Warwickshire or Leicestershire. Does the north in general offer a worse quality of life than the Midlands? I know its cheaper up north but is it much worse up there?

Sheffield neither aligns itself with Liverpool and Newcastle, or Birmingham and Leicester. It is Yorkshire through and through.

Most Sheffielders consider ourselves northern but truth be told , we have a lot in common with north Derbyshire and north Nottinghamshire too. Coalfield culture.

Would you say it’s a more rural version of a northern accent?

I lived in Yorkshire for 32 years and still work there. Hardly anyone drops the 'the' when they speak. They only time I've really heard it is when people are taking the piss out of the accent.

hey only time I've really heard it is when people are taking the piss out of the accent

Usually people who have an idea of Yorkshire from the TV?

Mind you, I can do a good Lancashire accent.

Most Sheffielders consider ourselves northern but truth be told , we have a lot in common with north Derbyshire and north Nottinghamshire too. Coalfield culture

Have you ever heard Tom Wrigglesworth's hang ups on Radio 4 (the whole series is on there). He lives in London but his parents live in Sheffield - very funny - and the parents are definitely Yorkshire folk

@SueEllenMishke it's really common to drop the "the" in north Sheffield and Barnsley.

Usually people who have an idea of Yorkshire from the TV?

Most definitely!

I'm a Yorkshire lass but married to a Mancunian. His accent is stronger and more noticeable than mine! Although my dad accused me of sounding 'all manchester' the other day.
Our 5 year old has a definite Manc twang so i'm now outnumbered.

it's really common to drop the "the" in north Sheffield and Barnsley.

My Sheffield and Barnsley colleagues must be putting on their professional voices at work then!!

Although, the south yorks accent is quite a distinct accent and if i'm honest that's the only place i've really heard the 'the' dropped.
it doesn't appear that common in west yorks.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it certainly isn't a uniform Yorkshire thing.....

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html

This is really interesting and quite accurate. Put me between the area where I grew up and where I live now.

That quiz got me perfectly as well.

Between where I was raised and where I have lived for a lot of my adult life

My partner has a real paddy mccguiness accent
I enjoy taking the piss out of it 😝

This is so personal, i lived in warwickshire and found it very dull. I prefer being near cities like London, Birmingham and Sheffield. You don't have to live IN the city, not many families do.

The Southeast has rural and semi rural too. Villages and nature are not a northern monopoly.

Northern regions do have a different socio-economic makeup to SE. Higher benefit claim rate (per DWP website, you need to compare against population no.) The impacts education, health etc. If you are on the higher set relative to others in any particular region in the UK you can enjoy a better quality of life.

I was just asking about the dropping of the “the” because we were once stuck in a service station on the M1 as the traffic was solid, and there was a whole family shouting at the kids because they’d lost something and it was like, “Have you checked in car?” “It must be in shop” “Doon’t do that with ketchup!” It was fascinating that they just didn’t use “the” really at all and we wondered where they were from.

I must listen to myself when I am out with DS and see if I use 'the' when talking a lot!!

Also, I wonder why the Liverpool accent and the Geordie one are so totally different to other northern accents, in the speed and the way they pronounce the vowels?

Scouse comes from Irish and Welsh mixed together, basically. The 'chhh' sound is actually a physical response to pollution. It's one of the most quickly evolved and evolving accents in the UK; didn't sound different to Lancs until the 1840s ish. We speak quickly so we can say everything we need to say .

Geordie has a hugely Scandinavian influence - this makes sense when you think about how viking that area was!

“The 'chhh' sound is actually a physical response to pollution.”

Really? You mean the pollution from when the shipbuilding Industry was at its height? That's very interesting. The Welsh have that kind of “ccchhh” sound too, I think? The Liverpool people pronounce the vowels very strongly too (or that’s how it’s sounds to me)?

The Geordie accent does sound like something else entirely. I can’t understand it sometimes. Maybe it is kind of Scandinavian, yes.

Yes - so the Welsh 'chhh' and the smog = scouse c and k consonants!
The vowels are quite distinct too - mostly based on the sound 'air'.
Skirt - skairt
Burt - Bairt
Mary - Mairy
Hurt - hairt....and so on

Often the 't' is very shushy as well and there are hidden 'd's inside 'r's.

There's a linguistics expression for that (having all your vowels the same) but I can't remember it!

Some people assume everyone in the North has a particular accent. Intsead it is like London - in London some people have an awful cockney type accent, dropping Ts etc and others don't. In Newcastle those of us at my private school didn't really have strong accents just as most children in London private schools don't. There was a lady XYZ in my class at school and she certainly didn't have any kind of accent other than normal speaking voice just as most people I deal with in London who have similar educational backgrounds have.

I think all areas have the good and bad parts. DH grew up in a rough estate (that featured on benefit street!) and his family all think he's very well off and the fact we live down south, but we really aren't, it's just a different world in that area he grew up in but you would find the same in certain parts of the Home Counties. Cost of living is definitely cheaper up north but for us, our jobs are tied to London so we would never move up there.

Yes there are different accents in London. You don’t really hear a cockney accent much and someone told me that’s because a lot of them moved out into Essex / Kent and now it’s kind of morphed with those accents (which are very distinctive)! There’s another kind of accent in North London going out into places like Hertfordshire, but it’s quite subtle. There’s obviously the Caribbean influence in a lot of areas and a kind of “street” lingo as well which a lot of young people appropriate that seems to evolve the whole time. There the super “posh” accent, but not many speak like that really, though a lot do speak a toned down version of this which does sound like a very soft and elegant way of English (much nicer than American English).

I was working on a site once where nearly all the crew were Geordies, some of them with a very marked accent. One day they had a special piece of equipment brought over from Holland with its 2 man crew. I remember going into the mess room and listening to them for a minute or two before I worked out they were speaking Dutch not just a strong Geordie accent, the tones were really similar.

@hablar the abbreviation of “to the” is a South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire dialect (and maybe others) For example you would say “I’m going to the shop” whilst a S/W Yorkshire person might say “I’m off t’shop”. It might happen In East/North Yorks and in other parts of the north but I spend most time hearing S/W yorks accent.

Not everyone in S/W Yorks speaks like that- it tends to be characterised by the broader accents.

Also in the north “book” and “luck” are the same vowel sound.

Ali on the Sewing Bee has a great Yorkshire accent and prone to saying "down t'middle" where the "t" is just a glottal stop or whatever you call it - in fact "downt middle" is more how it's said. Is that what you mean by dropping "the"? It's kind of contracted rather than dropped.
Growing up in Lincolnshire I heard this all the time but due to non local parents never picked it up, shame really as I love it.

Also in the north “book” and “luck” are the same vowel sound

Aren't they just about everywhere? I know some people say booook, but that's fairly rare isn't it?

I'm in a fairly southerly part of West Yorkshire, not far from Barnsley that's already been mentioned and I definitely say 'downt middle', 'oft shop'.