• West Midlands accents do not have the
TRAP–BATH split much like
Northern England English, so
cast is pronounced rather than the pronunciation of most southern accents. The northern limit of the in many words crosses England from mid-
Shropshire to
The Wash, passing just south of
Birmingham. • Much like
Northern England English as well, there is no
foot–strut split in the West Midlands, except for
Herefordshire and most of
Shropshire, with words containing like
strut or
but being pronounced with , without any distinction between
putt and
put. This is often realised as [ɤ] in the Birmingham and Coventry areas, though the more sterotypically northern [ʊ] is found from Nuneaton northwards. • Some lexical sets in Standard English do not correlate exactly with the West Midlands dialect. A few commonly used words in Standard English's GOAT set have retained an older, pre
toe-
tow merger quality of [ʊw], which forms a separate lexical set along with some vowels in the Standard English GOOSE set which are immediately followed by an /l/. For examples,
going and
rowing do not rhyme in the West Midlands dialect, being pronounced as [gʊwɪŋg] and [rɐwɪŋg] respectively, and
crew and
cruel are not minimal pairs as their vowels differ - [kɹɵɥ] and [kɹʊwɫ] respectively. •
H-dropping is common, in which the sound is usually omitted from most words. • There is no
NG-coalescence. Cases of the spelling -ing are pronounced as rather than . Wells noted that there were no exceptions to this rule in Stoke-on-Trent, whereas there were for other areas with the pronunciation, such as Liverpool. • Dialect verbs are used, for example
am for
are,
ay for
is not (related to ''ain't
), bay
for are not
, bin
for am
or, emphatically, for are''. Hence the following joke dialogue about bay windows: "What sort of windas am them?" "They'm bay windas." "Well if they bay windas wot bin them?". There is also humour to be derived from the shop-owner's sign of Mr. "E. A. Wright" (that is, "He ay [isn't] right," a phrase implying someone is
saft [soft] in the
jed [head]).
Saft also may mean silly as in, "Stop bein' so saft". • The
Birmingham and
Coventry accents are distinct, even though the cities are only 19 miles/30 km apart, Coventry being closer to an East Midlands accent. • Around
Stoke-on-Trent, the short
i can sometimes sound rather like
ee, as very obvious when hearing a local say
it; however, this is not always the case as most other words such as "miss" or "tip" are still pronounced as normal. The
Potteries accent is perhaps the most distinctly 'northern' of the West Midlands accents, given that the urban area around Stoke-on-Trent is close to the
Cheshire border. •
Herefordshire and parts of
Worcestershire and
Shropshire have a
rhotic accent, somewhat like the West Country, and in some parts of these counties, the local accent mixes features with the
Welsh accent, particularly in places closer to the
English–Welsh border. • In
Warwickshire, the northern towns like
Nuneaton and
Bedworth have a similar accent to
Coventry – with the area in the far north of the county, around
Atherstone, exhibiting many features of East Midlands English – while accents in the south of Warwickshire share certain traits with
Southern England English, such as the
TRAP–BATH split. In some parts of south-western Warwickshire (e.g. around
Alcester), the accent bears similarities to those of neighbouring parts of rural Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, sometimes exhibiting
rhoticity. • Historically, and among some more traditional speech, there is a
horse-
hoarse distinction, with the vowel qualities being approximately [ɒː ~ ɔː] and [oə ~ ɤə ~ ʊə]. ==Varieties of West Midlands English==