Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. What we're talking about today
is the London accent, and it's called "Multicultural London English"
by linguists, but I'm going to call it "Real London English".
It's the accent that a lot of people speak... Speak, like, if you come to London and you're
just walking around the street, you're going to hear this accent a lot. Yeah? And I made
a different video about this accent, all the words that you can use to sound like this,
all the slang and stuff. I made... That's a different video. But in this video I'm going
to talk about the grammar, because you know what? A lot of people when they hear this
kind of accent, they say: "Oh, that's... That's lazy speech or they're not speaking correctly."
But actually this is a variety of English. It does has its own rules of pronunciation
and grammar. It's not like people just make it up themselves and they're all just sounding
a bit wrong. You know, it's a... It's a style of English, like you've probably heard of
RP is a particular style, a posh style of English, this also has rules. So I'm going
to tell you some of those rules.
What I'll mention first is it's a London accent, but the London accent you've probably heard
of is Cockney English, and I would say that not so many people speak with a Cockney accent
anymore if they're... If they're a youngish person, they don't really speak with a Cockney
accent. It's kind of dying or is dead. And this accent has replaced it. But what we see
in this accent is a lot of similar details that we have in the Cockney accent, so I'm
going to tell you all about those similarities.
First I just want to talk generally about the qualities of this accent. What do you
actually hear from this accent? So, the pace of the accent is quite slow, you don't really
rush what you're saying. Although, if it's in a hip hop track or a grime track and you're
listening to music, it can be really, really fast as well. But in general, the pace is
slow. If you can, you got to make your voice lower. You got to speak from not high in your
throat. You got to low... You got to lower what you're saying, speak from your lungs,
speak low. Keep it deep. Also, I'm going to say it's sharply iambic, that means you go
up, down, up, down. When you're speaking it's like there's different steps in what you're
saying; stress, unstress, stress, unstress, stress, unstress. And I think that altogether
it gives this a musical... A musical quality on my ears, anyway, as a native speaker.
It's not... It's not a very harsh-sounding accent. It's... Cockney on the... Cockney, on the
other... On the other hand is a lot sharper and like spoken higher in the throat. Yeah?
And it might be the kind of accent that gets on your nerves. No offence, Cockneys, I'm
just making a comparison between the music of the two... Of the two varieties.
So, bearing this in mind, what are the actual rules of speaking like this? So, a "t" sound
becomes a "d" sound at the beginning of words. So, instead of saying: "that" with a "t" at
the end, it's: "dat"; "there", "dere"; "them", "dem"; "then", "den".
Also, these words here,
I'll say them in proper English: "something", "nothing", "anything". Compare these to Cockney
English: "somefink", "nuffink", "anyfink" because in Cockney English you change the
"ing" to a "k", and you change the "th" to an "f", so in Cockney English it's like that.
"Somefink", "nuffink". But in this accent we're putting a glottal stop in the middle
of the word, so instead of saying: "something", "su-in", "nu-in", "anytin". So, it's quite
different to Cockney English in this respect, saying those words.
But it's the same as Cockney English in that for both varieties, both these different accents
we do something called "h" dropping, we don't say the "h" all the time at the beginning
of words. So, for example, the word "have" becomes "ave". "Ave you seen dat?
Ave you seen dat?" That was the word "that".
"Have you seen that?" Not grammatically-sounded
English, but something that could be said in this variety.
And I mentioned to you just now a glottal stop. Maybe you don't know what a glottal
stop is. It's when we don't say a "t" sound in London accents. So, Cockney English, this
accent, also the accent that I have which is called Estuary English sometimes, quite
a lot I'm not saying "t". I just make a sort of absence of sound, not saying something.
And instead of "t" there's nothing. So, for example, this is: "What you got?"
I said that with t's. I'll say it without t's now. "Wha you go? Wha you go?" "O" with no "t". So,
we're very keen of glottal stops in London. We don't like to say t's that much. Is it
lazy pronunciation? Well, we must all be lazy because you go around, that's what you hear,
glottal stops. And in comments on my other videos people have always left quite funny
comments where they say things like:
"When I came to London I remember standing at the
bus stop, and this guy came up to me and he said: 'Have you got a ligh-er?'"
And the guy's maybe confused, doesn't know what he's talking about.
And finally he realized... Realizes
the guy was saying: "Do you have a lighter?" And then from that realizing: "Oh, maybe 't'
is not said here", so it's something to bear in mind, you people who dislike lazy pronunciation.
What else can we say? Shortened words. So a word like "enough" becomes one syllable:
"nuff". "Brother", when 10 years ago "brother" turned to "bro", but now apparently the same
word has turned to "bra", "bra". What you sayin', bra? What are you saying, brother?
Also the end of words, so this "ing" sound... We mentioned it over here for "somefink", "nuffink",
we're not... We're not saying it. We're just replacing that. Either we're saying
not... We're not saying "ing", "suhin". We're not... We're not using it at the end of words.
"Wanna" and "gonna" non-standard examples of elision where you put "going to"
and "want to" together as one word.
"Gonna", "wanna". "I'm gonna go der later.",
"I'm going to go there later."
So, in this kind of accent we always make contractions wherever we can just
to make all the sounds flow together really. Yeah, just to make it easier for pronunciation
so you can speak quickly.
And the last point I want to make is about double negatives. You've probably heard the...
This is non-standard grammar in English to put two negative words or a negative verb
and a negative in a sentence. So if you... If you've heard the saying: "I didn't do nothing"
is wrong, you're right, it's not standard pronunciation. But in this accent, you would
be expected to always use double negatives. You would be expected to say:
"I didn't do nuhin", rather than: "I didn't do anything." People just wouldn't say that. It would sound
a bit wrong. Double negatives are to be used in this kind of style of speaking.
These... These last couple of things, they're not rules, they're just extra little things
I think you should know. So we use this... I don't know why I'm saying "we", because
I don't speak like this, but I mean I'm speaking as a Londoner. "Ain't". "Ain't" means something
like "am not". "I ain't gonna do it.", "I'm not going to do it." "Innit" is just a way
of showing agreement. For example...
Oo, what am I going to say about "innit"?
That chicken shop is bare... Is bare peng...
No, no, no. That's really bad. I don't know. "Innit" means
"isn't it", and I can't think of anything people say about it. You want someone to agree
with you, you say: "I'm right, innit?", "I'm right, isn't that true?"
And also this is... You know the word "text", the verb "text" for when you send a message
to someone on your mobile phone, well, when I was at school this word came into the language
because before that we didn't do texting. And I remember when I was at school when people
started to use "text" as a verb, it was always the same. It didn't have a past tense. So
if you were talking about the past, you would say:
"I text him. I text him earlier. I already sent the message."
We didn't say: "texted". And what I noticed later is that when, like,
parents and everybody started texting, then it became "texted", but many, many people
still say: "I text", "I text" to talk about the past, and I have to... I have to say that
for me I'm more comfortable using the non-standard way to say: "I text", talking about the past
because it... To me it just seemed like other people came along and just changed the language
when it was already being said one way. Anyway.
That brings us to this one. Sometime... "Anyways" is not a standard word. You won't find it
in the dictionary, it would be wrong. But in this accent you can say "anyways". Anyways,
this lesson's finished now. This lesson's done. Do you get me?
So, what I'd like you to do is go and do the quiz on this lesson now.
I'm not telling you to speak like this.
I'm not telling you to speak like this, but I'm pointing out something
that exists if you come to London. Many people speak like this, so this is for your listening
benefit if you ever come here. Also just for your general interest to know a little bit,
just to even get that idea in your head that just because somebody doesn't speak correctly
like the textbook, it doesn't mean that they're just lazy or sloppy. They still have rules
in the way they speak, so something for you to consider.
I would like you to subscribe here on my engVid channel. Plus,
I would like you to subscribe on my personal channel because
I've got two YouTube channels.
And that's it for today, so I'm going to go now.
Do you know what I'm saying? I'm gonna go.
Gonna get me... Get me some fried chicken from that chicken shop,
so allow that. See you later.