The Cheshire dialect is a North-west Midlands English dialect which lies between the dialects of the surrounding counties of Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, Staffordshire

Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

 and Derbyshire

Derbyshire

Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...

.

History

The dialect has existed for centuries, distinct from standard English; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...

and the other works of the 14th-century Gawain poet

Pearl Poet

The "Pearl Poet", or the "Gawain Poet", is the name given to the author of Pearl, an alliterative poem written in 14th-century Middle English. Its author appears also to have written the poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness; some scholars suggest the author may also have...

 are written in this dialect, as is the religious poem St. Erkenwald

St. Erkenwald (poem)

St. Erkenwald is an alliterative poem of the fourteenth century, thought to have been composed in 1386. It has sometimes been attributed to the Pearl poet . It takes as its subject Erkenwald, the bishop of London between 675 and 693....

, which dates from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Cheshire author Alan Garner

Alan Garner

With his first book published, Garner abandoned his work as a labourer and gained a job as a freelance television reporter, living a "hand to mouth" lifestyle on a "shoestring" budget...

 states "Of course [the Cheshire dialect] has changed, as all living language changes, since the time of the Gawain poet. But when I read sections of the poem aloud to my father, he knew, and used, more than 90% of the vocabulary; and the phonetics of the vowels have scarcely changed."

Early references include English proverbs and dialect words collected by John Ray

John Ray

John Ray was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".He published important works on botany,...

 in the 17th century, and a glossary of Cheshire words, compiled by Roger Wilbraham in 1817 and expanded in 1826. These sources were expanded by Egerton Leigh

Egerton Leigh

Egerton Leigh DL, JP was a British soldier, landowner, Conservative politician and author.-Personal life:The member of an ancient Cheshire family, Leigh was the son of Egerton Leigh and Wilhelmina Sarah, daughter of George Stratton...

 in a glossary published posthumously in 1877, which was an attempt to preserve a way of speech that was already under threat from "emigration, railways, and the blending of shires." Leigh notes that some words collected by Ray had already disappeared. Later reference works include Thomas Darlington's Folk-speech of South Cheshire (1887) and Peter Wright's The Cheshire Chatter (1979).

Characteristics and usage

Cheshire dialect contains some words that are distinct from standard English, such as "shippen" for cattle-house. According to Leigh, most unique Cheshire words derive from Anglo-Saxon; "shippen" is from scypen. Other words derive from transposition, for example, "waps" for "wasp" and "neam" for "name". The British Library Sound Archive

British Library Sound Archive

The British Library Sound Archive in London, England is one of the largest collections of recorded sound in the world, including music, spoken word and ambient recordings....

 contains recordings of the dialect from various parts of the county. A number of authors have written in Cheshire dialect, including poetry by H. V. Lucas (Homage to Cheshire; 1939–60) and Rowland Egerton-Warburton

Rowland Egerton-Warburton

Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton was a landowner in Cheshire, England. He was a devout Anglican in the high church tradition and a local benefactor. He paid for the restoration of his parish church and for the building of two new churches in villages on his estates...

 (Hunting Songs; 1877), and prose by Beatrice Tunstall.