Hello again and welcome back to Britain under the Microscope. 閑話英倫 Hello, Anlan.
Hello everybody.
So what are we going to talk about today?
So today we're gonna be talking a little bit about accents again.
Ok.
So you remember we talked about accents and pronunciation and the difference before. So today we are gonna be taking a look at a very specific accent.
Oh, is it like RP or heightened RP?
No, we are gonna be going the other end of the range now and we're gonna be talking about Cockney.
Oh yeah Cockney! I have been waiting for this episode actually. Cockney, so if you still remember all these accents that we talked about in the episode about accents, about British accents, you would know Cockney is a London accent, right? It's East London if I remember correctly.
East and a little bit South London as well.
So is it … you said it's not just in East London?
No, the accent it comes around most of London actually and the accent can also be called Estuary English.
Estuary, but originally where did this word come from?
Well, originally it means Londoners who were born within earshot, so earshot means they can hear the bells of St Mary le Bow.
St Mary-Le-Bow is a famous church in the city of London.
Yeah so it's a church, it's quite close to St Paul's Cathedral and the idea is if you were a true Londoner or you were a true Cockney, if you were born and you could actually hear the bells from where you were born.
So it's like a short radius of St Mary-Le-Bow the church. By the way, is there a street or a district called cheap side, the actual cheap like expensive and cheap, cheap side?
No, cheap in this is actually an old English word, it means market.
Ah market side. That's basically where Cockney speakers are.
Well originally, now it's mostly banks and businesses. Cheap side is between St Paul's Cathedral and the World's Exchange and Bank of England.
So now it's super super rich, loaded with money, but before it was quite working class.
And Cockney is very much associated with people who are living in the east end of London, so which was for many many years, the main working class area of London.
For English people, for British people, when people hear Cockney, Cockney accent, what is the impression they get?
Well, the main stereotype of Cockneys are they're very friendly, they're very loyal to their friends, but they're not very cultured.
So, not like highly educated.
No, and they also there's a slight undertone of being a criminal as well.
This I've actually heard, so Cockney accent sometimes it's seen as 黑話。So it's like a secret language, like a secret code among criminals so that other people will not understand what they're saying.
Yeah, that's kind of where the words come from, that whole idea, we will talk a little bit about it later.
So Cockney essentially it's kind of like the Chinese very 接地氣，very 豪爽，but not like super well educated.
Yeah yeah. So they are kind of, as I say, like borderline criminal but it's not serious crimes.
So how is it different? I mean obviously we can hear it, but are there any special pronunciational rules that set Cockney apart from like Standard English RP?
Quite a few actually. Um this is actually a little bit of the London accent as well. So this is the type of accent that I heard and sometimes used when I was growing up. So for example, the letter 't' is sometimes not pronounced in the middle of a word. So for example, water.
So you are not pronounced the 't' sound.
So I come out as 'wa'er'.
Wa'er.
Almost. So for example 'butter', will come out 'bu'er'. So it's, it's in your throat so you stop saying that 't' so like 'wa'er', 'bu'er'
Is it just the kind of lazy pronunciation?
Oh, I think that's the same for many accents. So people always find the easiest way to pronounce something.
有點吞音。Actually we do have this in Chinese as well and many regional dialects they would swallow certain sounds.
Or certain difficult sounds. We might change a little bit. So for example the sound 'th' is pronounced as a 'v'or an 'f'. So for example mother is pronounced 'muvva'.
Uh, yes, I'm getting the street feel of the language. 'muvva', so it's like a 'v' sound. I've also heard 'somefing' instead of something, it's 'somefing' with the 'f' sound.
Or ' ofer ', other.
Um. OK, so 't''th' and?
Also the letter 'h' at the beginning of a word is usually dropped.
Oh~
So for example, instead of saying head, we'll say 'ead'.
Mind your 'ead'.
Mind your 'ead'. You notice as well for example, mind your 'ead', the words blend into each other, so they blend in together much more than you would in heightened pronunciation for example.
既有吞音又有連音。
For example I heard a sound.

I 'eard' a sound.
Almost, they flow into each other, so I 'eard'
Is this the type of accent you're likely to hear, for example, from people like bus drivers in London?
Yes, you would hear this type of accent is not purely Cockneys, is more the London accent and it's the area around London as well.
But it's mostly working class, like working class London accent. So apart from the pronunciational difference, there's also, this whole idea of it being criminal lingo. So there are a lot of almost like code, like a lot of what you call Cockney rhyming slang?
Yeah, that's originally developed in the mid nineteenth century as a way for thieves to talk without the police knowing what they were saying. But it's gone beyond that, it's actually now a type of dialect.
So rhyming slang means it's not just only slang, but it rhymes.
So the idea is that you have two words that set together and the second word rhymes with the original word in proper English.
OK. I mean this is very theoretical. Can you give us an example?
So for example boat race.
Boat race, what does that mean?
So the second word is race and that rhymes with face.
Oh, so boat race is just the Cockney rhyming slang for face. It's not related at all.
No no, and that's why race a little bit hard to know what it is.
Okay so you need to learn every single word then.
Yeah. So for example, let me give you a quick test. These are all body parts.
Body parts. Okay.
Plates of meat.
Plates of meat? Meat, meat, Feet?
Very good. OK, mince pies.
Mince pies, eyes.
Yeah, and loaf of bread?
Bread, bread … Head?
Yeah.
Oh, but obviously only because you told me they are body parts otherwise it's difficult for me. If you don't narrow it down, I don't think I would have gotten them.
So for example, there are some words that we do use quite often, but they also change quite a lot. So for example, the former prime minister in Britain, Tony Blair, that was actually for a short time Cockney rhyming slang for hair.
So obviously after Tony Blair's turn, then I guess this particular slang died. So it still keeps evolving?
Oh yeah, it keeps evolving all the time.
Does that mean still a lot of people still talk like this?
Yes and no. For example when I was growing up, people don't talk exclusively in Cockney simply because it's a little bit old fashion. We mostly use it for jokes. It's generally dying out, but you sometimes still hear it in films or TV.
If you mentioned films and TV, the first thing that comes to mind is Guy Ritchie. Guy Ritchie's Snatch, Guy Ritchie 這個導演他拍的Snatch，偷拐搶騙，and Lock Stock Two Smoking Barrels, 兩桿大煙槍，these are seen as primarily based on Cockney accents.
But Guy Ritchie is what we would probably say is a Mockney.
Mockney, that's mock and Cockney, so it's not real Cockney. What does that mean? That's not his original accent?
No it isn't, and it is actually becoming relatively common. So in our previous episode about class differences like being posh is not seen as a good thing many of the times in the UK, so actually people who come from that sort of upper middle class background, they might try to put on this type of London accent to show that they are …
I'm one of the people.
Kind of yeah.
Well, that is really interesting. If you think about English learners in China people want to speak with a perfect the old timing BBC Received Pronunciation or even heightened Received Pronunciation because those are standard and they are high class. However you get actual upper class or upper middle class British people trying to be more street.
Well yeah, and that's the thing I don't really understand because as I say so many students they do try to speak with this very heighten RP, this received pronunciation which even British people don't really either use or they don't want to use. It is not popular.
So that really shows that accent is never just about language, I mean pronunciation language. Accent is always linked with culture, with specific cultural groups. So when you want to pick up or try to train in an accent, make sure you understand the cultural background that is associated with it. On that note we will wrap up. So if you feel like there's anything interesting about accents you would like to share, whether it's English accents or it's Chinese accents, regional accents or specific accents that are tied with certain cultural groups, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section.
See you next time.
See you.

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