Posted by Peter H on September 28, 2003 at 13:45:03 from 81.135.52.93 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: - Disney; wholesale removal posted by Prue Eckett on September 28, 2003 at 09:02:15:
Hate to be pedantic, but although it may be OK now to speak of a ‘Cumbrian accent’, such an accent did not exist when AR wrote the books. The locals in the ‘Lake’ books would have spoken either with a Westmorland or Lancashire accent, depending on whether you reckon the true location was Windermere or Coniston. There was a ‘Cumberland accent’, but this would relate to Cumberland, which started roughly on the Cockermouth-Penrith axis. No doubt all these accents would sound the same to an outsider, but AR had an ear for accents, and I imagine that Mr Dixon’s accent, for instance, is really the softer North Lancashire accent rather than the harder Cumberland, which sounds a bit more like Northumberland. These are all big generalisations, and if anyone has more detailed knowledge of Lake accents ‘pre-Cumbria’, I would welcome hearing more about them.
(All 3 counties were merged into 'Cumbria' in, I think, 1974)