Scouse, more formally known as Liverpool English or Merseyside English, is an accent and dialect of English associated with the city of Liverpool and the surrounding Liverpool City Region. The Scouse accent is highly distinctive as it was influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh immigrants who arrived via the Liverpool docks, as well as Scandinavian sailors who also used the docks, and thus has very little in common with the accents found throughout the rest of England. People from Liverpool are known as Liverpudlians, but are usually called Scousers; the name comes from scouse, a stew originating from Scandinavian lobscouse eaten by sailors and locals. The development of Liverpool since the 1950s has spread the accent into nearby areas such as the towns of Runcorn and Skelmersdale. Variations within Scouse have been noted: the accent of Liverpool's city centre and northern neighbourhoods is usually described as fast, harsh, and nasal, while the "Beatles-like" accent found in the southern suburbs of Liverpool is typically referred to as slow, soft, and dark. Popular colloquialisms have shown a growing deviation from the historical Lancashire dialect that was previously found in Liverpool, as well as a growth in the influence of the accent in the wider area. Scouse is often considered by other Britons to be one of the country's least popular accents due to its difficulty, but it conversely also performs very well in polls of British accents that people perceive as happy and friendly.

Etymology

The word is a shortened form of lobscouse, the origin of which is uncertain. It is related to the Norwegian lapskaus, Swedish lapskojs, and Danish labskovs (skipperlabskovs), as well as the Low German labskaus and refers to a stew of the same name 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 and familiar to the families of seafarers. 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 BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part (1965–1975), which featured a Liverpudlian socialist and a Cockney conservative in a regular argument.

Origins

Originally a small fishing village, Liverpool developed as a port. After the 1700s, it developed into a major international trading and industrial centre. The city consequently became a melting pot of several accents and dialects as sailors and traders from different areas (specifically Wales and Ireland) established themselves in the area. Until the mid-19th century, the dominant local accent was similar to that of neighbouring areas of Lancashire. For instance, the comedian and actor Robb Wilton (1881–1957), despite coming from the Everton district of Liverpool, spoke with a dry Lancashire accent rather than a Scouse accent. The influence of immigrants from Ireland (especially Dublin) and Northern Wales, as well as visiting Scandinavian sailors, 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 public health in the 19th century, by which the prevalence of colds among many people over a long time resulted in a nasal accent coming to be regarded as the norm and copied by newer incomers learning the dialect of the local area. Scousers tend to speak at a higher pitch than most other English speakers, sometimes approaching falsetto.

Academic research

The Victorian phonetician Alexander John Ellis said that Liverpool and Birkenhead "had no dialect proper", as he conceived of dialects as speech that had been passed down through generations from the earliest English speakers. Ellis did research some locations on the Wirral, but these respondents spoke in the traditional Cheshire dialect at the time and not in Scouse. The 1950s Survey of English Dialects recorded traditional Lancastrian dialect from the town of Halewood, finding no trace of Scouse influence. The phonetician John C. Wells wrote that "the Scouse accent might as well not exist" in The Linguistic Atlas of England, which was the Survey's principal output. An academic study of Scouse was undertaken by Gerald Knowles at the University of Leeds in 1973. He identified a key problem: that traditional dialect research had focused on developments from a single proto-language, but Scouse (and many other urban dialects) had resulted from interactions between an unknown number of languages.

Phonology

The phonemic notation used in this article is based on the set of symbols used by.

Vowels

Consonants

International recognition

Scouse is highly distinguishable from other English dialects. Because of this international recognition, Keith Szlamp made a request to IANA on 16 September 1996 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". Scouse has also become well-known globally as the accent of the Beatles. While the members of the band are famously from Liverpool, their accents have more in common with the older Lancashire-like Liverpool dialect found in the southern suburbs; the accent has evolved into Scouse since the 1960s.