General Northern English features The City of Manchester and most other areas of Greater Manchester, such as Stockport and Wigan, are
non-rhotic, meaning /r/ is not pronounced unless followed by a vowel. A few parts of Greater Manchester north of the city proper, such as Rochdale and Oldham, may exhibit some residual rhoticity, though this has been continuously declining due to non-rhoticity now spanning the bulk of urban Lancashire (Greater Manchester included).
H-dropping, i.e. the omission of the sound /h/ (e.g. pronouncing
head as [ɛd] rather than [hɛd]), is common in speakers of Manchester English, especially among the working class population.
Th-fronting, i.e. pronouncing the dental fricatives /θ, ð/ as labio-dental [f, v] (e.g. pronouncing both
three and
free as
free), is also found in Manchester, especially in younger speakers and among working-class men. Manchester English has also been described as having so-called "dark" (i.e. velarised) /l/ in both onset and coda position (i.e. at the beginning and end of a syllable, e.g. in
leap and
peel), though some speakers may still have a less dark onset than coda /l/. Mancunians have no distinction between the STRUT and FOOT vowels, and also the BATH vowel is the same as TRAP, rather than PALM. This means that
but and
put are rhymes, as are
gas and
glass (which is not the case in Southern England).
Unique Manchester features The unstressed vowel system of Manchester, specifically the final vowels in words such as
happY and
lettER, is often commented on by outsiders. Phonetically, both vowels are lowered and backed for certain Mancunian speakers. This means that the final vowel in
happY sounds most like the vowel in DRESS (rather than the vowel in KIT, as in Yorkshire or other Northern accents, or the vowel in FLEECE, as in many Southern English accents), and the final vowel in
lettER is often perceived as being similar to the vowel in LOT (although this has been found to be a slight exaggeration of the true pronunciation). The GOAT and GOOSE vowels show socioeconomic variation in Manchester. A fronter and more diphthongal GOAT vowel (less like the Lancashire and Yorkshire pronunciations) is positively correlated with higher social classes whereas a fronter GOOSE before /l/ is correlated with lower social classes. In other phonological environments, GOOSE-fronting is found across all social classes. Manchester is one of the very few areas of England where significant numbers of speakers still resist the
horse-hoarse merger, maintaining a distinction between the vowels in the and lexical sets, using a more open vowel (roughly []) in the former and a closer vowel (roughly []) in the latter. Therefore pairs which have become homophones in most of England such as
horse and
hoarse,
war and
wore,
morning and
mourning can remain distinct in Manchester. Another notable aspect of the
phonology of Manchester English is "velar nasal plus" or the retention of [ɡ] after [ŋ] (where it has been lost in almost all other modern varieties of English), such that the words
singer and
finger rhyme for Manchester speakers, both having a medial [ŋɡ] cluster. Word-final
ng clusters likewise often retain the plosive (or are otherwise reduced simply to [n] or sometimes [ŋ]), especially before a pause, where ejective [kʼ] is not an uncommon allophone. A further trait of Manchester English, especially among younger residents, is the pronunciation of /s/ before /tɹ, tj, tʃ/ as [ʃ] in words such as
street,
district,
stupid,
moisture and
mischief. This is a phenomenon known as /s/-retraction and is also found in various other varieties of English. Traditionally, the Manchester area was known for glottal reinforcement of the
consonants , similar to modern speech in
North East England. More recent research has found that /t/ most often undergoes full glottal replacement, being realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] rather than as an alveolar plosive with glottal fortification [ʔt], in a process known as
t-glottalisation. In 2021, Manchester Voices published heat maps of the Greater Manchester area highlighting key differences between the accents of Manchester, Salford, Trafford, Stockport and Tameside and the accents of the northern boroughs of Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham. Examples of these differences included
bear being pronounced as
burr and
bus being pronounced as
buz almost exclusively in the northern boroughs, where a more traditional Lancastrian accent is spoken as opposed to a more local Mancunian one in the southern boroughs. == Vocabulary ==