As the oldest English dialect still spoken, Geordie normally refers to both the people and dialect of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in Northeast England.
Anglo-Saxon roots
English is derived from a number of Germanic dialects brought to these shores roughly 1,500 years ago by settlers we now call Anglo-Saxons. The Saxons came from present-day northern Germany, and settled mainly in the south and West Country.
Variously referred to as the 'Queen's English', 'BBC English' or 'Oxford English', Received Pronunciation, or RP for short, is the accent usually described as typically British. Find out more about its origins and its current status in the UK.
Fun Facts about the Geordie accent
It's the oldest English regional dialect. The northeast is the only part of England where the original anglo-saxon language has survived from thousands of years ago. Other dialects have lost this heritage over the centuries with the gradual introduction of Latin and French influences.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.
The General Australian accent serves as the standard variety of English across the country. According to linguists, it emerged during the 19th century.
Geordie. As the oldest English dialect still spoken, Geordie normally refers to both the people and dialect of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in Northeast England.
Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon.
We can definitively say that English and Scots are very similar because they both developed from Old English (Anglo-Saxon). Because of the political divide, Scots was the primary language of Scotland until the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707.
Today, this means that there are three types of Australian accent. Some people speak with a “general” accent, which is more or less the way it has been for centuries. Other people speak with an accent that is closer to RP English. The third group of people have a “broad” Australian accent.
Cockney is an accent and dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term Cockney is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, or born within earshot of Bow Bells.
Anyone who has heard the Queen's speeches will recognise her distinctive British accent. This is RP – 'Received Pronunciation'.
The British Library has completed a new recording of 75 minutes of The Bard's most famous scenes, speeches and sonnets, all performed in the original pronunciation of Shakespeare's time. That accent sounds a little more Edinburgh — and sometimes even more Appalachia — than you might expect.
The first is isolation; early colonists had only sporadic contact with the mother country. The second is exposure to other languages, and the colonists came into contact with Native American languages, mariners' Indian English pidgin and other settlers, who spoke Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish.
Wolchover says the modern British accent is really only about 200 years old, initiated by nouveau riche South Londoners who, having become wealthy during the Industrial Revolution, wanted a linguistic way to distinguish themselves from commoners.
Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).
Four dialects of the Old English language are known: Northumbrian in northern England and southeastern Scotland; Mercian in central England; Kentish in southeastern England; and West Saxon in southern and southwestern England.
A population of Old English speakers isolated in the Scottish lowlands in the early Middle Ages are the ancestors of present-day speakers of a dialect of English called Scots. Being a direct descendant of Old English, Scots is the closest thing to it that you can hear spoken in modern times.
Greek is the third oldest language in the world. Latin was the official language of the ancient Roman Empire and ancient Roman religion. It is currently the official language of the Roman Catholic Church and the official language of the Vatican City. Like Sanskrit, it is a classical language.
2. Sanskrit – 1500 BC (circa. 3500 years old) With its oldest texts dating back to around 1500 BCE, Sanskrit is probably the second oldest language in the world still being used today.
The oldest living language, still in use to date, might be Tamil. This fact is widely debated across linguistic communities. Tamil is proposed to be first attested somewhere between 5320 BC and 8th century CE. The Dravidian language has speakers in Southern India and Sri Lanka.
Australian English is most similar to British English in spelling and sentence construction, although its accent and vocabulary are very distinct from the UK.
Aboriginal English is a dialect of Standard Australian English, in the same way as Scottish English and American Englishes and English Englishes all differ from each other. Aboriginal Englishes are the only regionally distributed dialects of Australian English in this country, which is quite unusual for any country.
Perhaps the most significant influencers on Australian English is that of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.