Scouse is a dialect spoken by people who are not as northerly as they think they are. :) - no, honestly, much work has been done on Scouse dialect. It's more the domain of modern sociolinguists than historical sociolinguists such as myself, because Scouse-proper didn't start to develop into something akin to what it is today until the Irish population began to arrive, as you've noted. It and Geordie are the two most studied dialects of English, due to their being the most unintelligible and lexically different - both Scouse and Geordie have lots and lots of actually different words for things, so people like to go mad studying them. I can understand proper Scouse, but I'm from Northumberland, and I've been much exposed to urban Geordie, which a) shares a lilt with Scouse, although Geordie has more of the Welsh (from the original Gaelic-speaking population) whereas Scouse has much more Irish, and b) means I'm already attuned to understanding heavy dialect. So I really don't know whether people from a place without a strong and colourful dialect - or indeed, southerners of any sort - can understand Scouse at all!
I do get that feeling, though, you know - you're on a bus, and suddenly you think everyone sitting around you is speaking a foreign language? That's bloody weird.
ETA: When I say 'modern sociolinguists study Scouse', I mean they start studying it from its 16th century roots, of course. But I am stupid and live in the eleventh century. *explicates*
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2008-12-17 03:53 pm (UTC)I do get that feeling, though, you know - you're on a bus, and suddenly you think everyone sitting around you is speaking a foreign language? That's bloody weird.
ETA: When I say 'modern sociolinguists study Scouse', I mean they start studying it from its 16th century roots, of course. But I am stupid and live in the eleventh century. *explicates*