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Today we are talking modern cockney, what is modern cockney? I will tell
you. People from the east end of London traditionally speak with a cockney accent,
although London is very multicultural nowadays, there are loads of different accents there.
A good example of a traditional cockney accent would be something like this:
However language evolves, accents evolve, so now we have a new kind of modern London
cockney accent that is spoken by a lot of different people and that is what we are
looking at today because as you know if you are learning English you need to be able to understand
loads of different accents because not everyone speaks English in the same way, this will improve
your listening skills and your overall fluency. So as you can tell I don't speak with a modern
cockney accent, so I'll need a little bit of help and I was thinking hmm who would be a good
example of a modern cockney speaker so I chose someone who normally has an American accent!
This is Moonknight it's a new TV series from Marvel on Disney Plus,
it's amazing if you like fantasy superhero stuff watch it so good, and in Moonknight,
Oscar Isaac plays the lead, he also does a modern cockney accent, however this isn't his natural
accent his natural accent is more like this: I remember sitting reading on his iPhone, the new
Star Wars movie while he was just sitting in front of me at this cafe in Paris. I believe he's Cuban
and Guatemalan but he definitely speaks with an American accent, so his modern cockney accent in
Moonknight is really useful for us to use because I can show you when he does it really really well
and when sometimes it slips a little bit so without further ado let's delve into this accent,
see some of the features that you might hear if you encounter this accent so that you don't get
confused, let's go! Okay so the first feature I want to draw your attention to is the T now with
modern cockney unless the T is at the beginning of a word most of the time we don't say it they just,
T is a sad little lonely child in the family who doesn't get much attention, much love,
unless it's at the beginning of a word so listen to how Oscar Isaac does it in this scene:
So he said morning Gus my little one fin, wonder my little little little, no T, no T it's not
little, little. This is so super common it would be the same if we said something like forgot we
wouldn't say forgot we'd say forgot so it becomes something like this: I forgot my little cat,
I forgot my little cat. However if you have a word like tattle we do say the T at the beginning but
not the others tattle tattle tattle, this is so super common in a modern cockney accent and in a
traditional cockney accent so you've got to get used to listening to this because I can imagine
it would be super confusing if you've never heard it before. Now let's move on to the TH now I want
you to have a listen to how Oscar Isaac does a voiced TH, a voiced TH is something like this:
so if there's vibration in your throat, that's voiced, so have a listen to how he does this one:
Bit hard with one fin innit? But he doesn't say that he says
bit hard with one fin init, with one fin, with one, with one, with, with, with,
so a lot of the time voiced TH's turn into a V, but not commonly at the beginning of a
word like I don't hear a lot of 'these' for example but if it's at the end of a word,
yes. This isn't all the time but it happens a lot, so get your ears ready to hear a V,
that's a W, to hear a V when it should be a TH. Okay now let's listen to an unvoiced TH so if a
voiced TH is an: unvoiced TH is: no vibration, no voice, so listen to how he does an unvoiced TH:
Okay so you might have heard there that the TH when it's unvoiced turns into an F
so he says ten thousand, like he has to get the ten thousand steps in, ten thousand, F F ten
thousand, thousand, so a lot of the time if you've got a TH beginning or end of a word it's going to
turn into an F if it's unvoiced, again this isn't all the time but it happens a lot so you need to
get ready to listen to it. Okay let's stick with the T sounds and listen to how he does this T:
Okay so this is not something that's just common in modern cockney, it's also in a lot of accents
in Britain, in the States, a lot of places, it's really really common, now this is something that
a lot of my students struggle with so we've got a word that ends in a T then a consonant straight
after it, don't know, what always happens is students struggle to be clear but also not sound
robotic because if we say I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know, it's quite hard to get that T
and the N in as well, don't know, it's very robotic. So what you do if you have a T followed
by a word that starts with a consonant is this go to make the T, so if you were going to say
where does your tongue go? Does it go to the top of your alveolar ridge here?
It should do, get your tongue in that position.
But don't release that just get your tongue in that place
like someone is stopping you halfway through a T, okay? That's all we do and it should sound a
little bit like this- I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, so hear that little gap
in the middle where I'm going I don't know, rather than holding that on for 10 seconds,
just do it for as long as it takes you to throw something and catch it, I don't know,
I can't catch, so it's very hard to illustrate this because I can't catch, I don't know,
so I'm starting the T, but I'm not completing it or we might say something like um a fat dog,
a fat dog, a fat dog, fat dog, don't do the whole T, just do half of it and that's how you
sound not robotic and you sound like a native! Okay let's move on to another feature of the
modern cockney accent and that is the fact that it is a non-rhotic accent, if you don't
know what a non-rhotic accent means, basically accents can either be rhotic or non-rhotic,
rhotic means we pronounce our R's, so we say avatar, avatar like that,
however non-rhotic, hello! It means we only pronounce an R if it comes before
a vowel sound any other R we don't say it, so in a word like this we would say avatar, avatar,
avatar like that is just open, open, open, however if the R was at the beginning of a word like road,
we do still say an R, R, road. So listen to Oscar Isaac's non-rhoticism:
Hear that? So he says avatars avatars blue people avatars, avatars and he also says blue people.
this is a really common feature of cockney, so he doesn't say blue people with a dark L,
blue people, he says blue people, people, people, it's like an OW sound, people, people,
OW, and this is the same for a lot of dark L ending words, so we've got things like, little
or crumple or small or well, so where you would normally have a dark L, if you're listening to
a modern cockney or a cockney speaker it's going to sound a lot more like an
OW, that kind of sound okay? Now I want to talk about the times where the accent isn't as perfect,
I'm not trying to be offensive Oscar Isaac you do you did a very very very good job
I could not do an American accent, you're doing fabulous and also if you watch the TV programme,
he's not supposed to have a perfect British accent, I don't want to spoil it for you,
but watch it and you will see why it's kind of very correct that his accent shouldn't be perfect
because it's part of the story but I don't want to ruin it for you, so we're just going to look at
some little times where it's not quite correct so that you can see what is correct and what isn't.
So have a listen to this little sentence and I'll tell you where it just went a little bit wrong:
So this is almost perfect but for my liking I think he pronounces the G a little bit too much
on coming and for RP or standard English, that would be fine, coming in coming in, we link the
sound coming in with like a nasal link. However modern cockney speakers don't like that G
they cut it out a lot, coming in, so we take it away completely, coming in,
when I was coming in this morning morning morning, like it ends with an N, so when you have ING,
a lot of cockney speakers will remove the G, not all the time, but a lot of the time.
Listen to this next clip and see if you can hear something that isn't quite right.
So what he does here is a lovely liquid U, he says super super group super, and this is a feature
that would have been really really common a long time ago you know if we think back to
maybe the 1910s or something I'm sure we would say a lot of super and tune and Tuesday, however
with accents like modern cockney that liquid U is just disappearing, they would say super
super, su, rather than sue, can you hear the difference there? Or they would say something like
Tuesday instead of Tuesday or tune instead of tune, so it's not
incorrect to make that sound but with a modern cockney accent you won't hear it very often, it's
dying out bit by bit. Okay now this next quote is possibly the most British thing I've ever heard
in a Marvel production, it's it's just feels so real, it really made me laugh because I
was like wow this is Marvel and they're saying this! So have a listen to this little phrase:
So he says bonkers bruv, bonkers bruv, bonkers just means crazy, wild and bruv is just a way of
saying like mate and it's really common in London, however the way he says bonkers is annoying me,
so if we take away the S and we say bonker, it's not a word but let's imagine it is, so let's say
we can have one bonker and two bonkers, it's not really a thing but we're going to pretend,
we would do the open R sound that I was telling you about earlier, so we would say bonker bonker
bonker, however when you put an S on the end to make it plural, we don't keep it as open as that,
we don't say bonkers which is slightly what he's doing, he's going like bonkers bonkers,
what you want to do is make it UZ, bonkers bonkers UZ, UZ, short it's little, it's not bonkers
bonkers bonkers, same with water, waters, and this again is the case with a lot of UK accents,
definitely cockney, but also most UK accents as well. Okay let's look at one more why not?
Again this is almost perfect I'm just slightly concerned with how he says demon, he says
demon which is quite American, demon demon but we want demon demon, same with like m-o-n Monday,
money, that sound, that schwa is so common in modern cockney and in a lot of accents in the UK,
uh-uh-uh Monday Monday. And there you go I hope this was useful for you I hope I have
helped unlock an accent for you so that it's a bit less crazy and a bit less confusing,
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so there: and if you want an online one-to-one English lesson with me or my partner Bez,
the link for that is down below, thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time,
tata!