Proud To Call Myself A Brissle Bird!

"'Ow bis me babber?"

The Bristolian Dialect, strange that it maybe to the non Bristolian!

Older Bristolians and those that live area's which have a less of an influence from students and immigration, such as Southmead and Hartcliff speak a distinctive dialect of English, known as Brizzle or Bristle.

Bristolian is rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car is pronouced, which is why outsiders call it 'farmers speech'

The most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L. Us Bristolians like to add the L sound to end of words that end in a.

So idea would become ideal

Additionally, -al is drawn out as -awl, and an l may be added within a word with an aw. Thus "area" becomes "areawl", "cereal" becomes "cereawl", "drawing" becomes "drawling" etc.

This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in "Bristle" sound identical. Other examples include 'Americawl' and 'Canadawl', and, when unsure, the answer 'I have no ideal'. In the same way, the Swedish Ikea is known by some as "Ikeawl", and Asda supermarket as "Asdawl". This is how the city's name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final 'L' sound: Bristol

And that was the history of the 'Bristol L'


Now we go on to other feature of the Bristolian dialect.

Another feature is the addition of S to verbs in the first and third person. Just as he goes, in Bristle 'I goes' and 'they goes'. As with other west country accents, H is often dropped from the start of words, th may become f, and -ing become -en. Bristolians often add a redundant "mind", "look" or "see" to the end of sentences: "i'm not doing that mind". A redundant "like" may be placed in the middle of a sentence, a feature that has become more common throughout the country. Another Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of a superfluous "to" in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, "Where’s that?" would be phrased as "Where’s that to?" and "Where’s the park?" would become "Where’s the park to?".


Now the interesting bit along with adding letters, and words mid sentance, we also have what non Bristolians would call Wurzel speak (made famous by The Wurzels) which is not true Bristolian, more somerset, but it is still part of the Bristolain dialect if you live south of the river.


With sayings like 'ow bits the' and 'Don't tell I, tell 'ee' You can understand why our dialect is unusual.

(Bold text is Bristolian, standard text English)


Bissn't = Aren't

Bist = Are

Cassn't = Can't

Girt = Great

Babby/Babber = Baby/Friend

Yer = Here/hey or Excuse me

More words from the Bristolian Dialect can found here

But the funny thing is in some cases, many of these forms are closer to Standard German than Standard British English is, e.g.


Standard German

Ich bin

Du bist

Er ist

Bristolian

I be/A be

The bist

He be

British English

I am

Are You

He is


So now you can see why we Bissle people are truely unique! (and if you speak german, you can understand us!)

Propper Job!