What in God's name was the dialect of young Philip's family? (This was in the flashback scenes, starting in the second episode). I couldn't understand a word they were saying, even with subtitles turned on. I've never 'eard such a thick accent before in me life. In what part of bloody olde England do they use such a dialect (or was it all just made up for the movie??).
The dialect belongs to those living in the Forest of Dean, where Dennis Potter was born, in Gloucestershire. Although I'm no authority, I'd say it was some form of West Midlands English ... thee and thou. I believe the dialect may be called "Black Country", but I associate that with Staffordshire, and the variability of dialects in England is quite amazing ... even a few miles from one place people will have a distinctly different accent.
Where is it in England? It's around the southern edge of the border with Wales. Even as an Australian, as I am, I didn't find it too difficult to understand.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I'm from Seattle, USA, and I couldn't understand hardly any of it. Just chalk it up to lack of dialect familiarity, I guess...
It is a very thick accent that takes some getting used to. The Forest of Dean is something of a world of its own, and the accent is peculiarly its own. I've lived in England for many many years, and I've visited the Forest of Dean, but I can't understand some bits that are said.
shareThe DVD subtitles and the published screenplay are both very helpful for getting acquainted with that dialect.
Just cut them up like regular chickens.
This link may help with those thick North Staffordshire coal miners' accents.
http://www.staffspasttrack.org.uk/exhibit/coal/
Remember, Philip's father couldn't leave the coal fields in disk 1 because of war time demands for coal to fuel industry? This was a fact of life in WW2 Britain. So Philip and his Mum had to set off alone on the train. No wonder she wept.......
That whole way of life is now finished with the closure of the pits.
those thick North Staffordshire coal miners' accents.
The area in question is the Welsh borderlands, so a mix of English and Welsh dialect.In the UK, there's a different regional accent approximately every 15 miles, Some cities can feature a wide range of accents,North and South London for instance,could be worlds apart, not just a few miles.
i would never join any club that would have me as a member - Groucho Marx
Does anyone know of any other movies that are set in the Forest of Dean, or use the same accent? ..I kinda love it. haha
sharePennies From Heaven and Blue Remembered Hills are also set there.
I live near the Forest of Dean. The accent you hear in the film is an actor's idea of a Herefordshire/Gloucestershire accent. It's close, but not quite right. The thees and thous are presumably because of their Christian background as well as it being set in the 1940s. Not everyone speaks like that (I don't!) but it's very Gloucestershire.
''The area in question is the Welsh borderlands, so a mix of English and Welsh dialect''
Most of the Welsh is actually very minor. Welsh doesn't permeate many of the West Country dialects as some would expect, but it has Welsh influence certainly (and influence the English language that is spoken in Wales too). It is mostly a very archaic form of English, much like that which is written in Shakespeare and Marlowe's plays (''thou'', ''thee'', ''thy'', ''doest'' etc. none of which is from Welsh... very few of the core words in the dialect are). The language even preserves many features from the language of the West Saxons.
Many pop-linguist try to tie far too much English (and by this I am talking about the language as a whole) into the Brythonic languages in a vain attempt to show that the majority of English people are actually ''native'' (as they often ignore the presence of people here before the Brythons... or try to say that the Brythons were mostly those pre-Brythonic people) to the British isles and not ''immigrants'' (aka Anglo-Saxons... from what is now northern Germany and the Low Countries)... despite the fact that genetics is irrelevant (yes, most people here are bound to be part Brythonic as well as Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Indian etc.)... soon they'll claim we are descended from dinosaurs to distance ourselves even more from the ''continentals''.
Formerly KingAngantyr