Northern English U vs other U

KeltKilla   Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:13 am GMT
I'm from the North of England and the 'u' sound found in Put and Strut are homophones, the other 'u' sound (the one that sounds vaguely like an 'a' doesn't exist in our vocabulary.. i was wondering if anybody knows which 'u' is the original?
Herman   Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:43 am GMT
The FUCK U is the original.
Steak 'n' Chips   Tue Mar 09, 2010 6:51 pm GMT
I don't know much about the development of old English, middle English, etc into modern English, so I can't answer your question directly. There are quite a few people on this forum who do know about that stuff, though.

I'm not sure, however, what you mean by "original"? Perhaps the Anglo Saxons who dominated the North of England (was it the Mercians?) or Viking and Dane influences, may have introduced a different "original" set of phonemes used with similar old "low-German" and Nordic languages. Maybe there are several "originals", is what I'm saying; the invaders of England didn't all speak a unified, homogenous language after all.

In addition, I'm not sure what the written evidence documenting the evolution of English (since we don't have any sound recordings..) will tell us about the sounds of the vowels in different dialects... perhaps there are clues?