Why in your aerial?

The words ‘in your aerial’ have featured in our strapline since 2002. It’s a handy play on a unique feature of Bristolian English – the terminal L – as Wikipedia explains:

The 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. Additionally, -al is drawn out as -awl, and an l may be added within a word with an aw. Thus “area” becomes “areawl”, “cereal” becomes “cereawl”, “drawing” becomes “drawling” etc. This may lead to confusions between expressions like area engineer and aerial engineer which in “Bristle” sound identical. Other examples include ‘Americawl’ and ‘Canadawl’, and, when unsure, the answer ‘I have no ideal’. In the same way, the Swedish Ikea is known by some as “Ikeawl”, and Asda supermarket as “Asdawl”. This is how the city’s name evolved from Brycgstow to have a final ‘L’ sound: Bristol.

Christian Wach has written 34 articles