"Aye, come you over by here now.
I do do that sometimes. Now, there's a thing."
Wenglish is the name given to the dialect of English spoken in the
valleys and townships of South Wales. Its idiosyncrasies can be
traced to the grammar and vocabulary of the Welsh language. Characteristics
include bringing additional verbs to the beginning of a sentence,
an excess of auxiliaries, strange emphatic repetitions, using unlikely
parts of verbs, literal translation of idioms and uses of non standard
prepositions. Wikipedia lists some of the features of Wenglish as:
Distinctive pitch differences giving
a "sing-song" effect.
Lengthening of all vowels is common
in strong valleys accents.
Pronouncing a short 'i' as 'eh' e.g.
edit would become 'ed-et' and benefit would be 'benefet'
A tendency towards using an alveolar
trill [r] (the 'rolled r') in place of an approximant [?] (the
'normal English r').
Yod-dropping does not occur after any
consonant, so rude and rood, threw and through, chews and choose,
chute and shoot, for example, are distinct.
Sometimes adding the word "like"
to the end of a sentence for emphasis, or using it as a stop-gaps.
The term "Wenglish"
was popularised by John Edwards, whose books on the peculiarities
of the Welsh/English dialect, Talk Tidy and More Talk Tidy are hugely
popular. The original books Talk Tidy, and More Talk Tidy, were
written in 1985 and 1986 respectively and though they have been
out of print for a long time, are now available once more. John
Edwards has also recorded a series of CD's demonstrating Wenglish
'in use'. All are available for purchase at his live talks, or direct
from him at his home address which is given on his Talk
Tidy website.
