Editing Berwick-upon-Tweed (section)

=== Berwick dialect ===

The local speech of Berwick-upon-Tweed shares many characteristics with both other rural [[Northumberland]] dialects and East [[Central Scots]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dsl.ac.uk/INTRO/intro2.php?num=16 |title=Phonetic Description of Scottish Language and Dialects |work=Dictionary of the Scots Language |page=16 |access-date=9 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120612121445/http://www.dsl.ac.uk/INTRO/intro2.php?num=16 |archive-date=12 June 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dsl.ac.uk/INTRO/map.php?num=2 |title=Sound Map 2 |work=Dictionary of the Scots Language |access-date=9 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140416181355/http://www.dsl.ac.uk/INTRO/map.php?num=2 |archive-date=16 April 2014}}</ref> In 1892, [[Linguistics|linguist]] [[Richard Oliver Heslop]] divided the county of Northumberland into four dialect zones and placed the Berwick dialect in the "north-Northumbrian" region, an area extending from Berwick down to the [[River Coquet]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Simmelbauer |first=Andrea |year=2000 |title=The Dialect of Northumberland: A Lexical Investigation |publisher=Carl Winter |isbn=978-3-8253-0934-3 |page=17}}</ref> Likewise, Charles Jones (1997) classes the dialect as "predominantly North-Northumbrian" with "a few features shared with [[Scots language|Scots]]".<ref>{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Charles |year=1997 |title=The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0754-9 |page=512}}</ref>

Features of this dialect include the "[[Northumbrian burr]]", a distinct pronunciation of the letter [[R]] historically common to many dialects of [[North East England]]; and predominant [[Rhotic and non-rhotic accents|non-rhoticity]]: older speakers tend to be slightly rhotic, while younger speakers are universally non-rhotic.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Stockwell |editor1-first=Peter |editor2-last=Mullany |editor2-first=Louise |editor3-last=Llamas |editor3-first=Carmen |year=2006 |title=The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics |url=https://archive.org/details/routledgecompani00llam_704 |url-access=limited |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0415338509 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/routledgecompani00llam_704/page/n27 7]–8 |quote=Non-rhoticity appears to be (near-)categorical for all speakers. Even the eldest speaker uses non-rhotic pronunciations almost 90 per cent of the time. These data suggest, then, that Berwick English is now effectively established as a non-rhotic variety and has thereby converged on mainstream [[English English]].}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/ss17/contributions/abstract.php?paperID=560 |last1=Llamas |first1=Carmen |last2=Watt |first2=Dominic |title=Rhoticity in four Scottish/English border localities |date=3 April 2008 |access-date=23 October 2008 |quote="[it] could be argued based on the data in Watt (2006) that Berwick English is increasingly convergent with other non-rhotic English varieties in northern England, and increasingly divergent from Scottish varieties with which it has traditionally shared numerous properties. |archive-date=26 November 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091126140705/http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/ss17/contributions/abstract.php?paperID=560 |url-status=live }}</ref>

A sociological study of the [[Anglo-Scottish border]] region conducted in 2000 found that locals of [[Alnwick]], {{cvt|30|mi|km|-1|abbr=off}} south of Berwick, associated the Berwick accent with Scottish influence. Conversely, those from [[Eyemouth]], Scotland, {{cvt|9|mi|km}} north of Berwick, firmly classed Berwick speech as English, identifying it as "Northumbrian or [[Geordie]]".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Llamas |first1=Carmen |last2=Watt |first2=Dominic |year=2010 |title=Language and Identities |url=https://archive.org/details/languageidentiti00llam |url-access=limited |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-3577-1 |page=[https://archive.org/details/languageidentiti00llam/page/n244 230]}}</ref>