English language in Southern England

London and greater Thames Estuary accents are non-rhotic: that is, the consonant (phonetically ) occurs only before vowels. General characteristics of all major London accents include: • diphthongal realisation of and , for example beat , boot (this can also be a monophthong: ) • diphthongal realisation of in open syllables, for example bore , paw versus a monophthongal realisation in closed syllables, for example board , pause . But the diphthong is retained before inflectional endings, so that board and pause often contrast with bored and paws . • lengthening of in words such as man, sad, bag, hand (cf. can, had, lad): split of into two phonemes and . See bad–lad split. • an allophone of before "dark L" , namely , for example whole versus holy . But the is retained when the addition of a suffix turns the "dark L" clear, so that wholly can contrast with holy. Features of working- or middle-class Estuary English, spoken in the counties all around London in the 21st century, include: • Not as much h-dropping as Cockney, but still more than RP • Increased amount of th-fronting, like Cockney • lexical set| fronting to • can take the more RP variant of • has a low-back onset, , or the lowered/unrounded from , or or • can have an onset lower than RP but higher than Cockney: • fronted to • fronted • lowers and backs, different from both RP and Cockney It retains some aspects of Cockney, such as the vocalisation of (dark L) to , and yod-coalescence in stressed syllables (for example, duty ) and replacement of with (the glottal stop) in weak positions, or occasionally with d). Wells notes traditional aspects of rural South East speech as lengthened in trap words and use of or in mouth words. Cockney Cockney is the traditional accent of the working classes of the areas immediately surrounding the City of London itself (most famously including the East End). It is characterised by many phonological differences from RP: • The dental fricatives are replaced with labiodental , for example think • The diphthong is monophthongized to , for example south • H-dropping, for example house • Replacement of in the middle or end of a word with a glottal stop; for example hit • Diphthong shift of to (for example beet ), to (for example bait ), to (for example bite ), and to (for example, boy . • Vocalisation of (dark L) to , for example, people Multicultural London English Multicultural London English (abbreviated MLE), colloquially called Blockney, is a dialect (and/or sociolect) of English that emerged in the late 20th century. It is spoken mainly by youths in multicultural parts of working-class London. The speech of Jamaicans, or children of Jamaican parents, in London shows interesting combinations of the Jamaican accent with the London accent. For example, in Jamaican English, is replaced by , for example both . In London, word-final is realised as , as mentioned above. In Jamaican-London speech, glottalization of applies also to from , for example both of them . Hypercorrections like for foot are also heard from Jamaicans. John C. Wells's dissertation, Jamaican pronunciation in London, was published by the Philological Society in 1973. ==Berkshire and Hampshire English==

Berkshire and Hampshire are on the modern-day border between Estuary English and West Country English. Berkshire is predominantly non-rhotic today, but traditional accents may still be found across the county. Parts of West Berkshire may still be rhotic or variably rhotic today, though this feature is quickly becoming ever less frequent. In country areas and Southampton, the older rhotic accent can still be heard amongst some speakers, for example in the speech of John Arlott, Lord Denning and Reg Presley. Since the 1960s, particularly in Andover and Basingstoke, the local accent has changed reflecting the arrival of East Londoners relocated by London County Council. It can be argued that Hampshire is a borderline county moving East, linguistically. "Estuary-isms" can be found in Portsmouth or "Pompey" English, some of which may actually originate from Portsmouth rather than London. ==West Country English==

South West England or "West Country" English is a family of similar strongly rhotic accents, now perceived as rural. It originally extended an even larger region, across much of South East England, including an area south of the "broad A" isogloss, but the modern West Country dialects are now most often classified west of a line roughly from Shropshire via Oxfordshire. Their shared characteristics have been caricatured as Mummerset. They persist most strongly in areas that remain largely rural with a largely indigenous population, particularly the West Country. In many other areas they are declining because of RP and Estuary accents moving to the area; for instance, strong Isle of Wight accents tend to be more prevalent in older speakers. As well as rhoticity, here are common features of West Country accents: • The diphthong (as in price) realised as or , sounding more like the diphthong in Received Pronunciation choice. • The diphthong (as in mouth) realised as , with a starting point close to the vowel in Received Pronunciation dress. • The vowel (as in lot) realised as an unrounded vowel , as in many forms of American English. • In traditional West Country accents, the voiceless fricatives (as in sat, farm, think, shed respectively) are often voiced to , giving pronunciations like "Zummerzet" for Somerset, "varm" for farm, "zhure" for sure, etc. • In the Bristol area a vowel at the end of a word is often followed by an intrusive dark l, . Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle, and Normal (written Eva, Ida, and Norma). L is pronounced darkly where it is present, too, which means that in Bristolian rendering, 'idea' and 'ideal' are homophones. • H-dropping in South Devon and Cornwall, "''Berry 'Aid''" for Berry Head (in Brixham, South Devon) In traditional Southern rural accents, the voiceless fricatives always remain voiceless, which is the main difference from West Country accents. ==East Anglian English==

Features which can be found in East Anglian English (especially in Norfolk) include: • Yod-dropping after all consonants: beautiful may be pronounced , often represented as "bootiful" or "bewtiful", huge as , and so on. • Absence of the long mid merger between Early Modern English (as in toe, moan, road, boat) and (as in tow, mown, rowed). The vowel of toe, moan, road, boat may be realised as , so that boat may sound to outsiders like boot. • Glottal stop frequent for . • The diphthong (as in price) realised as , sounding very much like the diphthong in Received Pronunciation choice. • The vowel (as in lot) realised as an unrounded vowel , as in many forms of American English. • Merger of the vowels of near and square (RP and ), making chair and cheer homophones. • East Anglian accents are generally non-rhotic. There are differences between and even within areas of East Anglia: the Norwich accent has distinguishing aspects from the Norfolk dialect that surrounds itchiefly in the vowel sounds. The accent of Cambridgeshire is different from the Norfolk accent, whilst Suffolk has greater similarities to that of Norfolk. Essex The East Anglian feature of yod-dropping was common in Essex. In addition, Mersea Island (though not the rest of Essex) showed some rhoticity in speakers born as late as the early 20th century, a feature that characterised other rural dialects of South East England in the 19th century. Th-fronting, a feature now widespread in England, was found throughout Essex in the 1950s Survey of English Dialects, which studied speakers born in the late 1800s. Many words are unique to 19th-century Essex dialect, some examples including bonx meaning "to beat up batter for pudding" and hodmedod or hodmadod meaning "snail". Several nonstandard grammatical features exist, such as irregular plural forms like housen for "houses". Modern Essex English is usually associated with non-rhotic Estuary English, mainly in urban areas receiving an influx of East London migrants since World War II. The Essex accent has an east–west variation with the county's west having Estuary English speech features and the county's east having the traditional Essaxon and East Anglian features. ==19th-century Kent, Sussex, and Surrey English==

The region largely south of London, including Surrey, Sussex, and once even Kent, used to speak with what today would be lumped under a South West England or "West Country" dialect. In all these counties, front , front , and high (or even round) Still, it is possible that some Sussex and Kentish rhoticity lasted until as recently as the early 21st century in certain pockets. The vowel (as in ) is very occasionally used for the vowel, normally ; it has been reported as a minority variant in Kent and Essex. In the 18th and 19th centuries, in Essex, Kent, and east Sussex, plus several other South East areas including London, Suffolk, and Norfolk, was pronounced as in pre-vocalic position: thus, village sounded like willage and venom like wenom. In the 19th century, across all of Southern England, arter without an f (non-rhotically, ) was a common pronunciation of after. The pattern of speech in some of Charles Dickens' books pertains to Kentish dialect, as the author lived at Higham, was familiar with the mudflats near Rochester and created a comic character Sam Weller who spoke the local accent, principally Kentish but with strong London influences. Modern Estuary dialect features were also reported in some traditional varieties, including L-vocalization e.g. old as owd, though it has now almost entirely died out. It was first documented by Granville W. G. Leveson Gower (1838–1895), of Titsey Place, during the 1870s and first published by him in A Glossary of Surrey Words in 1893. Gower described certain standard English words with nonstandard pronunciations in the Surrey dialect: Gowers mentions: ''Acrost for across; agoo for ago; batcheldor for bachelor; brownchitis (or sometime brown titus) for bronchitis; chimley or chimbley for chimney; crowner for coroner; crowner's quest for coroner's inquest; curosity and curous for curiosity and curious; death for deaf; disgest for digest, and indisgestion for indigestion; gownd for gown; scholard for scholar; nevvy for nephew; non-plush'd for non-plussed; refuge for refuse; quid for cud, " chewing the quid; "sarment for sermon; varmint for vermin; sloop for slope; spartacles for spectacles; spavin for spasms. I knew an old woman who was constantly suffering from "the windy spavin;" taters for potatoes; wunst for once; wuts for oats, etc., etc."'' as well as the increasingly disappearing feature of rhoticity. Many old Sussex words once existed, thought to have derived from Sussex's fishermen and their links with fishermen from the coasts of France and the Netherlands. A universal feminine gender pronoun was typical, reflected in a joking saying in Sussex that "Everything in Sussex is a she except a tomcat and she's a he." ==See also==