Cockney speakers have distinctive accents and dialects and occasionally use
rhyming slang. The
Survey of English Dialects took a recording from a long-time resident of Hackney in the 1950s, and the
BBC made another recording in 1999 which showed how the accent had changed. One of the characteristic pronunciations of Cockney is
th-fronting. The early development of Cockney vocabulary is obscure, but appears to have been heavily influenced by
Essex and related eastern dialects, while borrowings from
Yiddish, including
kosher (originally Hebrew, via Yiddish, meaning
legitimate) and
shtum ( originally German, via Yiddish, meaning
mute), as well as
Romani, for example
wonga (meaning
money, from the Romani "wanga" meaning coal), and
cushty (Kushty) (from the Romani
kushtipen, meaning good) reflect the influence of those groups on the development of the speech. " by
Albert Chevalier, a music hall performer who based his material on life as a Cockney
costermonger in Victorian London. John Camden Hotten, in his
Slang Dictionary of 1859, refers to "their use of a peculiar slang language" when describing the
costermongers of London's East End.
Migration and evolution A dialectological study of
Leytonstone in 1964 found that the area's dialect was very similar to that recorded in Bethnal Green by
Eva Sivertsen, but there were still some features that distinguished Leytonstone speech from Cockney. Linguistic research conducted in the early 2010s suggests that today, some aspects of the Cockney accent are declining in usage within multicultural areas, where some traditional features of Cockney have been displaced by
Multicultural London English, a
multiethnolect particularly common amongst young people from diverse backgrounds. Nevertheless, the
glottal stop, double negatives, and the
vocalisation of the dark L (and other features of Cockney speech) are among the Cockney influences on Multicultural London English, and some
rhyming slang terms are still in common usage. An influential July 2010 report by
Paul Kerswill, professor of sociolinguistics at
Lancaster University,
Multicultural London English: the emergence, acquisition, and diffusion of a new variety, predicted that the Cockney accent would disappear from London's streets within 30 years.
Typical features As with many accents of the United Kingdom, Cockney is
non-rhotic. A final
-er is pronounced or lowered in broad Cockney. As with all or nearly all non-rhotic accents, the paired lexical sets COMMA and LETTER, PALM/BATH and START, THOUGHT and NORTH/FORCE, are merged. Thus, the last syllable of words such as
cheetah can be pronounced as well in broad Cockney. A broad
is used in words such as bath, grass and demand. This originated in London in the 16th–17th centuries and is also part of
Received Pronunciation (RP). The accent features
T-glottalisation, with use of the glottal stop as an
allophone of in various positions, including after a stressed syllable. Glottal stops also occur, albeit less frequently, for and , and occasionally for mid-word consonants. For example,
Richard Whiteing spelled "Hyde Park" as ''Hy' Par'
. Like
and light
can be homophones. "Clapham" can be said as Cla'am
(i.e., ). This feature results in Cockney being often mentioned in textbooks about Semitic languages while explaining how to pronounce the glottal stop. may also be flapped intervocalically, e.g. utter
. London are often aspirated in intervocalic and final environments, e.g., upper
, utter
, rocker
, up
, out
, rock'' , where
RP is traditionally described as having the unaspirated variants. Also, in broad Cockney at least, the degree of aspiration is typically greater than in RP, and may often also involve some degree of affrication . Affricatives may be encountered in initial, intervocalic, and final position. Cockney also demonstrates: •
Th-fronting: • can become in any environment. "thin", "maths". • can become in any environment except word-initially when it can be . "they", "bother". •
Yod-coalescence, in words such as
tune or
reduce (compare traditional RP ).
Phonemic correspondence • correspond to the RP sounds (though and are most commonly written with and , respectively). can be considered to be an allophone of (with both corresponding to RP ). also can be considered to be an allophone, a positional variant of (with both corresponding to RP ) – see below. • corresponds to RP . • corresponds to RP . • correspond to the centering diphthongs in traditional RP. is often missing from Cockney, being replaced with or a disyllabic . • corresponds to RP . • and correspond to relatively less diphthongal and in traditional RP. • correspond to in RP.
Phonetic realisation The diphthong offsets are only fully close in and : . In all other cases, they are more similar to or . According to Beaken, and typically glide towards : , towards : , and the wide allophone of towards : , whereas and both towards : . According to Mott, do not occur at all as glides: (he does not show on his charts). Furthermore, Wells remarks on the laxness of the unrounded offset of , which is a kind of a centralised : . In the rest of the article, this is treated as a simple allophonic rule and only and are used for the diphthong offsets. In narrow phonetic transcription, their rounded and unrounded counterparts are written with and (phonetically and in fully narrow transcription). Only the central offglides and are transcribed as non-syllabic vowels due to the lack of appropriate glide symbols. Diphthong alterations in Cockney are: • is realised as : "beet" • is realised as : "bait" • is realised as or even in "vigorous, dialectal" Cockney. The second element may be reduced or absent (with compensatory lengthening of the first element), so that there are variants such as . This means that pairs such as
laugh-
life,
Barton-
biting may become homophones: , . But this neutralisation is an optional, recoverable one: "bite" • is realised as : "choice" • is realised as or a monophthongal , perhaps with little lip rounding, or : "boot" • typically starts in the area of , . The endpoint glides towards , but more commonly, it is completely unrounded, i.e. . Thus, the most common variants are and , with and also being possible. The broadest Cockney variant approaches . There is also a variant that is used only by women, namely . In addition, there are two monophthongal pronunciations, as in 'no, nah' and , which is used in non-prominent variants. "coat" • may all feature centering glides . Alternatively, may be realised as a closing diphthong . Wells states that "no rigid rules can be given for the distribution of monophthongal and diphthongal variants, though the tendency seems to be for the monophthongal variants to be commonest within the utterance, but the diphthongal realisations in utterance-final position, or where the syllable in question is otherwise prominent." Furthermore, the main difference between and is length, with the quality being secondary. The contrast appears only in the word-internal position, exactly where the monophthongal variants of are the most common. Thus, word pairs such as
his – ''here's
, merry
– Mary
, at
– out
and Polly
– poorly'' contrast mainly by length, though may be slightly higher than . • Disyllabic realisations of are also possible, and at least are regarded as very strongly Cockney. Among these, the triphthongal realisation of occurs most commonly. There is not a complete agreement about the distribution of these; according to , they "occur in sentence-final position", whereas according to , these are "most common in final position". • When diphthongal, and have higher starting points than in RP: . However, Beaken considers the former to be unshifted in comparison with traditional RP: . Other vowel differences include • may be or , with the latter occurring before voiced consonants, particularly before : "back", "bad" • may be , , or before certain voiced consonants, particularly before : "bed" • According to Wells, may be somewhat less open than RP , that is . Beaken, on the other hand, considers variants no more open than to be the norm: "cot" • has a fully back variant, qualitatively equivalent to
cardinal 5, which Beaken (1971) claims characterizes "vigorous, informal" Cockney. • is on occasion somewhat fronted and lightly rounded, giving Cockney variants such as , . • is realised as or a quality like that of cardinal 4, : "jumped up" • is realised as or a closing diphthong of the type when in non-final position, with the latter variants being more common in broad Cockney: "sauce"-"source", "laud"-"lord", "water." • is realised as or a centering diphthong/triphthong of the type when in final position, with the latter variants being more common in broad Cockney; thus "saw"-"sore"-"soar", "law"-"lore", "war"-"wore". The diphthong is retained before inflectional endings, so that
board and
pause contrast with
bored and
paws . has a somewhat tenser onset than the cardinal , that is . • becomes something around or even in broad Cockney before
dark l. These variants are retained when the addition of a suffix turns the dark l
clear. Thus a phonemic split has occurred in London English, exemplified by the minimal pair
wholly vs.
holy . The development of
L-vocalisation (see next section) leads to further pairs such as
sole-
soul vs.
so-
sew ,
bowl vs.
Bow ,
shoulder vs.
odour , while associated vowel neutralisations may make
doll a homophone of
dole, compare
dough . All this reinforces the phonemic nature of the opposition and increases its functional load. It is now well-established in all kinds of London-flavoured accents, from broad Cockney to near-RP. • in some words (particularly
good) is central . In other cases, it is near-close near-back , as in traditional RP. The dialect uses the
vocalisation of dark L, hence for
Millwall. The actual realisation of a vocalised is influenced by surrounding vowels, and it may be realised as , , or . It is also transcribed as a
semivowel by some linguists, e.g., Coggle and Rosewarne. However, according to , the vocalised dark l is sometimes an unoccluded lateral approximant, which differs from the RP only by the lack of the alveolar contact. Relatedly, there are many possible vowel neutralisations and absorptions in the context of a following dark L () or its vocalised version; these include: • In broad Cockney, and to some extent in general popular London speech, a vocalised is entirely absorbed by a preceding : e.g.,
salt and
sort become homophones (although the contemporary pronunciation of
salt would prevent this from happening), and likewise
fault-
fought-
fort,
pause-''Paul's
, Morden
-Malden
, water
-Walter
. Sometimes such pairs are kept apart, in a more deliberate speech at least, by a kind of length difference: Morden
vs. Malden''. • A preceding is also fully absorbed into vocalised . The reflexes of earlier and earlier are thus phonetically similar or identical; speakers are usually ready to treat them as the same phoneme. Thus
awful can best be regarded as containing two occurrences of the same vowel, . The difference between
musical and
music-hall, in an
H-dropping broad Cockney, is thus nothing more than a matter of stress and perhaps syllable boundaries. • With the remaining vowels, a vocalised is not absorbed but remains phonetically present as a back vocoid in such a way that and are kept distinct. • The clearest and best-established neutralisations are those of and . Thus
rill,
reel and
real fall together in Cockney as ; while
full and
fool are and may rhyme with
cruel . Before clear (i.e., prevocalic) the neutralisations do not usually apply, thus
silly but
ceiling-
sealing,
fully but
fooling. • In some broader types of Cockney, the neutralisation of before non-prevocalic may also involve , so that
fall becomes homophonous with
full and
fool . • The other pre- neutralisation which all investigators agree on is that of . Thus,
Sal and
sale can be merged as ,
fail and
fowl as , and
Val,
vale-
veil and
vowel as . The typical pronunciation of
railway is . • According to Siversten, and can also join in this neutralisation. They may, on the one hand, neutralize concerning one another so that
snarl and
smile rhyme, both ending , and ''Child's Hill
is in danger of being mistaken for Charles Hill
; or they may go further into a fivefold neutralisation with the one just mentioned, so that pal
, pale
, foul
, snarl
and pile'' all end in . But these developments are restricted to broad Cockney, not being found in London speech in general. • A neutralisation discussed by Beaken (1971) and Bowyer (1973), but ignored by Siversten (1960), is that of . It leads to the possibility of
doll,
dole and
dull becoming homophonous as or . Wells' impression is that the
doll-
dole neutralisation is rather widespread in London, but that involving
dull less so. • One further possible neutralisation in the environment of a following non-prevocalic is that of and , so that
well and
whirl become homophonous as . Cockney has been occasionally described as replacing with , for example, ''
(or fwee
) instead of three
, instead of frosty''. Peter Wright, a
Survey of English Dialects fieldworker, concluded that this was not a universal feature of Cockneys but that it was more common to hear this in the London area than elsewhere in Britain. This description may also be a result of mishearing the
labiodental R as , when it is still a distinct phoneme in Cockney. An unstressed final
-ow may be pronounced . In broad Cockney, this can be lowered to .
Perception The Cockney accent has long been regarded as an indicator of low status. For example, in 1909 the Conference on the Teaching of English in London Elementary Schools issued by the
London County Council, stating that "the Cockney mode of speech, with its unpleasant twang, is a modern corruption without legitimate credentials, and is unworthy of being the speech of any person in the capital city of the
Empire". Others defended the language variety: "The London dialect is really, especially on the South side of the Thames, a perfectly legitimate and responsible child of the old Kentish tongue [...] the dialect of London North of the Thames has been shown to be one of the many varieties of the Midland or Mercian dialect, flavoured by the East Anglian variety of the same speech". The Cockney accent often featured in films produced by
Ealing Studios and was frequently portrayed as the typical British accent of the lower classes in movies by
Walt Disney, though this was only so in London.
Spread Studies have indicated that the heavy use of
South East England accents on television and radio may have caused the spread of Cockney English since the 1960s. Cockney is becoming increasingly influential, and some claim that in the future, many features of the accent may become standard.
Scotland Studies have indicated that working-class adolescents in areas such as
Glasgow have begun to use certain aspects of Cockney and other Anglicisms in their speech. infiltrating the traditional
Glasgow patter. For example,
TH-fronting is commonly found, and typical
Scottish features such as the postvocalic are reduced. Research suggests the use of
English speech characteristics is likely to be a result of the influence of London and
South East England accents featuring heavily on television, such as the popular BBC One soap opera
EastEnders.
England Certain features of Cockney –
Th-fronting,
L-vocalisation,
T-glottalisation, and the fronting of the GOAT and GOOSE vowels – have spread across the south-east of England and, to a lesser extent, to other areas of Britain. However,
Clive Upton has noted that these features have occurred independently in some other dialects, such as TH-fronting in Yorkshire and L-vocalisation in parts of Scotland. The term
Estuary English has been used to describe London pronunciations slightly closer to RP than Cockney. The variety first came to public prominence in an article by David Rosewarne in the
Times Educational Supplement in October 1984. Rosewarne argued that it may eventually replace
Received Pronunciation in the south-east. The phonetician
John C. Wells collected media references to Estuary English on a website. Writing in April 2013, Wells argued that research by Joanna Przedlacka "demolished the claim that EE was a single entity sweeping the southeast. Rather, we have various sound changes emanating from working-class London speech, each spreading independently". ==See also==