I’m actually surprised the numbers aren’t higher (i.e. high 90s%) in those parts of the country where the trap-bath split exists. I’ve lived all my life in Wolverhampton and can’t imagine anyone native to this area pronouncing words like bath, fast, laugh, etc. with a long ‘a’ sound. If someone said they’d just had a “barth” I’d assume they were joking around.
My mum’s from the East Midlands. My dad’s from the South East. I lived in the West Midlands when I was young and followed my mum’s pronunciation (i.e. ‘bath’/’grass’ like ‘trap’/’hat’). However, when we moved down south, my mum deliberately, but without making it known to us that she was doing so, made an example of saying ‘bath’/’grass’ with an ‘ar’ pronunciation so that we wouldn’t seem strange to our new schoolmates.
2 comments
I’m actually surprised the numbers aren’t higher (i.e. high 90s%) in those parts of the country where the trap-bath split exists. I’ve lived all my life in Wolverhampton and can’t imagine anyone native to this area pronouncing words like bath, fast, laugh, etc. with a long ‘a’ sound. If someone said they’d just had a “barth” I’d assume they were joking around.
My mum’s from the East Midlands. My dad’s from the South East. I lived in the West Midlands when I was young and followed my mum’s pronunciation (i.e. ‘bath’/’grass’ like ‘trap’/’hat’). However, when we moved down south, my mum deliberately, but without making it known to us that she was doing so, made an example of saying ‘bath’/’grass’ with an ‘ar’ pronunciation so that we wouldn’t seem strange to our new schoolmates.
Comments are closed.