Due to the fact that London is both the political capital and the largest city within

England, Wells, (1982b) doesn’t find it surprising that it’s also the country’s
"linguistic center of gravity." Cockney represents the basilectal end of the London
accent and can be considered the broadest form of London local accent.(Wells
1982b) It traditionally refers only to specific regions and speakers within the city.
While many Londoners may speak what is referred to as "popular London" (Wells
1982b) they do not necessarily speak Cockney. The popular Londoner accent can be
distinguished from Cockney in a number of ways, and can also be found outside of
the capital, unlike the true Cockney accent.

Cockney is characterized by its own special vocabulary and usage, and traditionally
by its own development of "rhyming slang." Rhyming slang, is still part of the true
Cockney culture even if it is sometimes used for effect. More information on the way
it works can be found under the Cockney English features section.

Features of Cockney English:

Some of the more characteristic features of the Cockney accent include the
following:

 Monophthongization

This affects the lexical set mouth vowel.

 MOUTH vowel

Wells (1982b) believes that it is widely agreed that the "mouth" vowel is a
"touchstone for distinguishing between "true Cockney" and popular
London" and other more standard accents. Cockney usage would include
monophthongization of the word mouth

Example:

mouth = mauf rather than mouth

 Glottal stop

Wells (1982b) describes the glottal stop as also particularly characteristic of

Cockney and can be manifested in different ways such as "t" glottalling in
 final position. A 1970’s study of schoolchildren living in the East End found
/p,t,k/ "almost invariably glottalized" in final position.

Examples:

cat =
up =
sock =

It can also manifest itself as a bare as the realization of word internal

intervocalic /t/

Examples:

Waterloo = Wa’erloo
City = Ci’y
A drink of water = A drin' a wa'er
A little bit of bread with a bit of butter on it = A li'le bi' of breab wiv a bi' of
bu'er on i'.

As would be expected, an "Estuary English" speaker uses fewer glottal stops

for t or d than a "London" speaker, but more than an RP speaker. However,
there are some words where the omission of ‘t’ has become very accepted.

Examples:

Gatwick = Ga’wick
Scotland = Sco'land
statement = Sta'emen
network = Ne’work

 Dropped ‘h’ at beginning of words (Voiceless glottal fricative)

In the working-class ("common") accents throughout England, ‘h’ dropping

at the beginning of certain words is heard often, but it’s certainly heard more
in Cockney, and in accents closer to Cockney on the continuum between that
and RP. The usage is strongly stigmatized by teachers and many other
standard speakers.

Examples:

house = ‘ouse

hammer = ‘ammer

 TH fronting
 Another very well known characteristic of Cockney is th fronting which
involves the replacement of the dental fricatives, and by labiodentals
[f] and [v] respectively.

Examples:

thin = fin
brother = bruvver
three = free
bath = barf

 Vowel lowering

Examples:

dinner = dinna
marrow= marra

 Prosody

The voice quality of Cockney has been described as typically involving

"chest tone" rather than "head tone" and being equated with "rough and
harsh" sounds versus the velvety smoothness of the Kensington or Mayfair
accents spoken by those in other more upscale areas of London.

 Cockney Rhyming Slang

Cockney English is also characterized by its own special vocabulary and

usage in the form of "cockney rhyming slang". The way it works is that you
take a pair of associated words where the second word rhymes with the word
you intend to say, then use the first word of the associated pair to indicate
the word you originally intended to say. Some rhymes have been in use for
years and are very well recognized, if not used, among speakers of other
accents.

Examples:

"apples and pears" – stairs

"plates of meat" – feet

There are others, however, that become established with the changing
culture.

Example:
"John Cleese" – cheese
"John Major" – pager
 Estuary english

The term "Estuary" reflects the starting point for this dialect as being the
region along London’s River Thames and its estuaries. Rosewarne’s initial
studies were prompted by the lack of discussion surrounding accents that
existed between RP and the localizable English forms. He saw what he refers
to as a "particularly important gap in the descriptions of accents varieties in
London and the South East of England."

Variations do exist within Estuary English and its speakers exhibit a mixture of
"London" and General RP forms of phonemes (Rosewarne, 1994). Rosewarne does
suggest a number of phonetic/phonological features that differentiate Estuary English
from both RP on the one end of the spectrum and Cockney on the other.

 L vocalization
Use of /w/ where RP uses /l/ in the final positions or in a final consonant
cluster.

Examples:

Use of /w/ where RP uses /l/ in the final positions or in a final consonant
cluster. An Estuary English speaker may use an articulation like a /w/ instead
of the /l/ as many as ten times in the following utterance. "A real salesman will
always feel a fool if he fails to sell or his deal falls through."

 /r/ realization in Estuary English

Rosewarne, (1994) cites an aspect of Estuary English that he believes has not
received much attention since he first reported it in 1984. The realization of /r/
is different in EE versus in RP and in Cockney. In Estuary English realization
of /r/ the "tip of the tongue is lowered and the central part raised to a position
close to, but not touching, the soft palette." He describes it as sounding similar
to a general American /r/ but without the retroflection. He provides examples of
two British comedians, Tony Slattery and Paul Merton as exhibiting this
pattern.


 Stress and intonation

The intonation in Estuary English is characterized by "frequent prominence

being given to prepositions and auxiliary verbs which are not normally stressed
in General R.P.

Example: "Let us get TO the point."

 (Rosewarne 1994) cites an example of an interview where this change in
intonation caused communication problems. A person speaking Estuary
English was being interviewed on London Broadcasting Corporation and stated
that "Totters have been in operation FOR years." It was clear, given the
response of the interviewer, that four, rather than the intended for, had been
heard.

There also appears to be a narrower pitch of intonation patterns in Estuary

English than in RP. This is especially true where rises do not reach as high a
pitch as they would in RP, Rosewarne sees the overall effect as being
interpreted as one of "deliberateness" and possibly an "apparent lack of
enthusiasm." (Rosewarne 1994)

 Vocabulary

(Rosewarne 1994) sees certain lexical changes within EE

pronunciation. Cheers is often used in place of thank you, but it’s also possible
for it to mean good-bye. The word basically is used frequently in conversation.
An increased use of Americanisms can also be seen in EE and evidenced by
such examples: There you go being used in place of the more standard Here
you are and There is acts as an invariable form of usage in both singular and
plural contexts. In addition, sorry is often replaced with excuse
me and engaged in the context of the telephone, has been replaced by the
word busy.

 Grammar

Altendorf (1999) cites the major difference between EE and Cockney as being
grammatical correctness. Cockney speakers use more non-standard grammar
than do speakers of EE.

Examples:
EE - you were
Cockney - you was
One of the best known dialects of British English is the dialect of London - Cockney. Some peculiarities of
this dialect can be seen in the first act of «Pigmalion» by B. Shaw, such as : interchange of /v/ and /w/
e.g. wery vell; interchange of /f/ and /0/ , /v/ and / /, e. g/ fing /thing/ and fa:ve / father/; interchange of /h/
and /-/ , e.g. «’eart» for «heart» and «hart» for «art; substituting the diphthong /ai/ by /ei/ e.g. «day» is
pronounced /dai/; substituting /au/ by /a:/ , e.g. «house» is pronounced /ha:s/,«now« /na:/ ; substituting
/ou/ by /o:/ e.g. «don’t» is pronounced /do:nt/ or substituting it by / / in unstressed positions, e.g.
«window» is pronounced /wind /.
The Yorkshire dialect refers to the Northern English language varieties spoken in England's historic
county of Yorkshire. Those varieties are often referred to as Broad
Yorkshire or Tyke.[1] The dialect has roots in older languages such as Old English and Old Norse; it
should not be confused with modern slang. The Yorkshire Dialect Society exists to promote use of
the dialect in both humour and in serious linguistics; there is also an East Riding Dialect Society.
Yorkshire is generally not as stigmatised as other dialects, and has been used in classic works of
literature such as Wuthering Heights, Nicholas Nickleby and The Secret Garden. Studies have
shown that accents in the West Riding (that is, mostly, modern West and South Yorkshire) are
generally popular and are associated with common sense, loyalty and reliability.[2][3]

 Words such as strut, cut, blood, lunch usually take [ʊ], although [ə] is a middle-class variant.[11][12]
 Most words affected by the trap-bath split in Southern England - the distinction between the
sounds [a] and [ɑː] - are not affected in Yorkshire. A much smaller number of words, however,
such as can't, half, palm, and rather, are pronounced in a similar way to the South. With the
exception of Sheffield and Rotherham, the [ɑː] vowel is typically realised as [aː] or [äː] in
Yorkshire.
 In parts of the West Riding, none, one, once, nothing, tongue, among(st) are pronounced
with [ɒ] rather than [ʊ].[11] A shibboleth for a traditional Huddersfield accent is the
word love as [lɒv], pronounced to rhyme with "of".[13]
 Omission of final stops /d, t/ and fricatives /f, θ, ð/, especially in function words.[12] As in other
dialects, with can be reduced to wi, especially before consonants.[33] Was is also often
reduced to wa (pronounced roughly as "woh"), even when not in contracted negative form
(see table below).
 A glottal stop may also be used to replace /k/ (e.g. like becomes [laɪʔ]) at the end of a
syllable.