In this clip from the animated movie The Plague Dogs,, at 2:34 in the video, the protagonists encounter two sheepdogs. What kind of sheepdogs are these? Are they Shetland Sheepdogs with the coats cut short?
Also, what dialect of English are they speaking in? All of the dogs in the movie speak with an English accent which varies based on what part of England they’re from - the fox supposedly has a “geordie” dialect. What are these sheepdogs speaking? It sounds kind of like a cross between an English and Irish accent, but they say “art thou” and “thy” and refer to sheep as “yows.”
Yorkshire or Lancashire - it’s hard to tell, because (I think) they’re not the native accents of the voice actors speaking the parts, and they’re not keeping it very consistent.
It’s supposed to be a Yorkshire accent, I’m sure. I hadn’t known that “yows” was also used in Yorkshire, but that makes enough sense.
Breed of dog? Sorry, I’m inclined to think the intent was Border Collie but someone got carried away with adding colour.
As for region matching accent, Border Collies are SO much the classic sheepdog that there is no need for them here to be a breed peculiar to Yorkshire.
Now, stand by for someone to come along and tell us that there is, in fact, a breed indigenous to Yorkshire and those dogs represent it perfectly. Seriously, that would be very a classic Straight Dope sort of thing.
Aye, lad, Mangetout is right, and seems to match up with my saying it is “supposed” to be Yorkshire. I have a notion that a real Yorkshire person might find that a pretty bad attempt, but I don’t really know.
We do have one or two Yorkshire Dopers, don’t we? Perhaps if we shout loudly enough, one will show up.
I agree - it’s meant to be Yorshire, but has elements of generic ‘up north’ thrown in, and is in any case probably a worthy nominee for the Dick Van Dyke award for Wanton Mutilation of Accents.
In the UK, accents change over fairly short (by US standards) distances.
Yorkshire has several differant accents, from the near Geordie up beyond the North York Moors, through to the Sheffield “dee-daa” accent.
These are supposed to be some sort of generic Yorkshire accent, but its not really possible to cram them together like this, you can go down Barnsley way and the accent is very very differant to Bradford (innit eh?)
The use of thee, tha, thou etc are much more common in South Yorkshire area, especially in the former coalfield towns such as Goldthorpe, but most folk in Yorkshire would use these terms to some extent.
It seems to me that the former mining villages have the most pronounced accents, this isn’t too much of a surprise as many of these communities were fairly isolated from the large cities and good transport links, and have very close communities.
Folk tell me that I have something of a Yorkshire accent, but where I’m from it seems pretty normal to me.
Castleford was very much a mining town, having 7 or 8 pits in close company, when they shut down the industry, whole swathes of this area collapsed economically and 20 years on, the scars are still very obvious, and that isolation of the small pit villages counted heavily against them in terms of bringing in new employment.
These former pit villages is where the accent is strongest, but you’d not find too many sheepdogs around them parts.
Seriously, that would be very a classic Straight Dope sort of thing. 
