Lancashire English

The county of Lancashire, in the North West of England, has a long history of social, political and cultural salience in the British Isles. Alongside this societal prominence, Lancashire varieties of English are linguistically significant in the context of United Kingdom varieties. Phonologically, Lancashire speech has many features typical of supralocal northern English varieties, such as a lack of contrast between Wells’ FOOT and STRUT lexical sets, or between BATH and TRAP vowels. Lancashire speech also has more locally specific phonological features, including a potential merger between the NURSE and SQUARE sets, and the retention of traditional rhoticity in some areas. Morphosyntactic variation includes variation in ditransitive constructions, and definite article reduction. Dialect surveys also reveal that some traditional Lancashire lexical items remain in use.