Bristol

:This article is about the English city of Bristol. For other uses please see Bristol (disambiguation).

Dialect

Many Bristolians speak a distinctive dialect of English (known colloquially as Brizzle or Bristle). Uniquely for an urban area of Britain, this is a rhotic dialect, in which the r in words like car is pronounced.

Related Topics:
English - Rhotic

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The best-known and most unusual feature of this dialect, unique to Bristol, is the Bristol L (or Terminal L), in which an L sound is appended to words that end in a letter a. Thus "area" becomes "areal", etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in "Bristle" sound identical. Other typical examples include 'Americal' and 'Canadal', and, when unsure, the answer 'I have no ideal'. In the same way, the Swedish Ikea is known by many as 'Ikeal'.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another common Bristolian linguistic feature is the addition of a superfluous ?to? in questions relating to direction or orientation. For example, ?Where?s that?? would be phrased as ?Where?s that to?? and ?Where?s the park?? would become ?Where?s the park to??

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~