Hi, I'm Carina this is English in Brazil.
But today I'm in London with...
Hi! I'm Matt. I'm and from British study senses.
Today we're gonna talk about
Cockney.
Cockney, the cockney accent.
Ok Matt, so what is Cockney and who speaks Cockney?
Cockney is a word used to refer to the people,
but also to the accent of people who come
from the east part of London.
The City of London is the oldest part of London.
That's where the banks are...
That kind of stuff.
I love that part of London, it's so beautiful.
It's amazing. It's really old.
And so the west of London is where all the glamour, the nightlife
Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, places like that.
That's the West End.
And then, to the East of the city is the East End.
And that's where Cockney's come from.
That's always been...
Quite a bustling, quite a poor part of London.
But a very interesting part of London.
That's where Cockney's come from.
But is it still spoken?
Cockney, I guess, is becoming
less and less common.
Many of the people
from that part of London have moved out.
Slightly into the East or into the South, in the areas around London.
This is where I was born. I was born in Essex.
Essex.
So around those, around those kinda places you,
you will still hear the language features of Cockney.
And what is the Cockney rhyming slang?
Because I think,
maybe, they have heard about it,
but it's... I don't know. It's so interesting.
But I don't know very much about it.
It's pretty strange.
It was a kind of slang that people developed
to be able to talk to each other
without other people knowing what they were saying.
Kind of a code.
So the idea is that you take a word that you wanna talk about,
and you find the word that rhymes with it.
So for example, phone.
They've got your phone.
So we need a word that rhymes with phone, bone?
What has a bone? Dog?
Dog on bone, phone.
So the cockney rhyming slang for phone is dog.
So they would call a phone a dog?
That's the idea, yeah.
Let me take my dog here.
Yeah! Excuse me, I'm on the dog.
I'm on the dog.
It's really a code, right?
-People can understand... -It's really a code,
but you can be kind of creative with it, you know?
You and your friends can make up words of your own, you know?
So only my friends and I are gonna understand this.
That's the whole idea.
Yeah, that's the whole idea.
That it was a kind of way of excluding other people.
And a way of...
People being able to communicate with each other
without anybody knowing.
Okay, interesting.
And what are some characteristics of this accent?
I mean the pronunciation.
Is there anything specific?
Yeah, there's lots of things.
The most common thing, I guess, is...
We don't pronounce the letter T very much.
No?
So...
We don't say be[t]er.
We might say be[ʔ]er.
Okay, glottal... Glottal stop.
A gotta stop, exactly.
"It's much be[ʔ]er."
"Much be[ʔ]er."
It's pretty good! Yeah! She's got it.
Cockney accent!
She's got it!
We also don't pronounce the [h] at the beginning of words.
So we don't say [hello], we say [ello].
[ello].
Australians usually do it too.
Yeah! [ello], mate!
They do this. Because I was in Australia
some months ago and they say, "[ello], mate!"
Well, of course,
there's lots of historical connections
between Cockneys and Australians, you know?
So the Australian accent is a bit of a mixture of Cockney,
and some Scottish, and some Irish.
So yeah, you're right.
These things have a lot in common.
So for example, [hʰospital]?
[ospital].
[hʰome]?
[ome].
So if you get a word that has an H af the beginning
and a T at the end...
So [hʰot], we say,
[ɒʔ]
Oh my godness!
Okay, [ɒʔ].
This is very [ɒʔ].
It's [ɒʔ] today.
It's [ɒt]...
No! no [t], no [t].
It's [ɒʔ] today.
It's pretty good.
It's so [ɒʔ].
I see. You got it, yeah!
That's so interesting.
So no [h] at the beginning of the words.
No [h], no [t]...
-At the end of the words, right? -At the end of the words...
No [t] at the end of words.
I see...
And also some of the sounds that and lots of
learners of English find difficult. So...
[θ] or [ð]
So hard for us Brazilians...
So hard for many people, yeah...
Londoners don't, just don't pronounce those words.
That's just amazing, isn't it?
You don't need to pronounce the [th] sound anymore.
It makes life so much easier!
So we don't say no[θ]ing,
We say no[f]ing.
No[f]ing with a [f].
So the the unvoiced sound becomes a [f].
So no[f]ing or... What else?
[f]hink. I [f]ink.
That's right.
A table for...
[f]ree?
For [f]ree, exactly.
Oh, my...
Linguists say that this sound is about to disappear.
Not about to disappear, it's going to disappear
in about 50 years or so.
I think that's probably true.
It's a difficult sound for most people to make.
Most London people,
you know, tends not to.
And as the London accent just spreads out
throughout the country, I think you're right
Yeah, so...
So if you have difficulty making that sound...
Just pronounce [f].
I mean the unvoiced one becomes an [f]
And what about the voice one? Like, [ð]is?
So...
In the traditional cockney accent, that would be [v]is.
[v]is.
With the [v] sound.
With a [v] sound.
[v]is is so nice.
[v]is is cool, yeah.
[v]is is cool.
[v]is is [ɒt].
No, [v]is is [ɒʔ].
This is hot?
[v]is is [ɒʔ].
Oh my God. So hard.
I guess we're kind of lazy...
and we want to talk quickly.
You know, we want to be cool.
So like, just not making too much of an effort.
Yeah, you sound like a Londoner in there.
Alright, so [th]is.
[v]is.
-[th]at? -[v]at.
Brea[th]e.
Brea[v]e.
Brea[v]e in,
brea[v]e out.
Brea[th]e in
-brea[v]e out. -brea[v]e out.
Brea[v]e in and brea[v]e out.
Okay, it's very different.
Mo[th]er?
Mo[v]er.
Fa[th]er?
Yeah, fa[th]er and bro[v]er.
But in London, we don't say bro[v]er, we say bro[v].
Bro[v]?
Bro[v].
Bro[v], he is my bro[v].
That's right.
Interesting.
So another aspect of
of the London style is using the double negative.
So we don't say
And we learned at school, "you shouldn't use double negatives!"
But it's very much easier.
That's right, it's really common.
Not just in cockney, but also, of course, in many American accents.
It's kind of a cool thing to do.
It's cool.
Because the London accent increasingly is becoming
kind of influenced by
by popular make American culture.
Especially hip-hop or things like that.
Then we kind of copy each other for a little bit, you know?
So more and more things are coming in to the
the London accent. In fact, the word "like"...
So you're starting to use, "I was like hmm and then she was like..."
"It was like that and I was like, you know, when he was like what?"
So it's
becoming very common here.
Really common.
And what about, "I was" and "you was"?
So you probably learn in school
I was, you were,
he was, we were...
Were!
With the American accent.
'Were", so beautiful.
You like that?
For the verb to be...
But in London, we just say "was" for everything.
For everything?
I was, you was, he was, we was.
Give me, give me an example.
So like, we was walking to the pub.
Yeah, we was like, you know...
But is this stigmatized?
Do people think it's a bad way of speaking?
Or it's just common? People will accept it.
I think London people are really good at
changing the way they speak
depending on who they're talking to.
That is very important.
I think we call that code-switching?
Code-switching. Yeah!
I think. So... Yeah, of course,
We have a very class conscious society
and the way that you talk gives us a real strong
indicator of who you are, what you're about,
where you've been, where you educated.
People are very aware of
of how each other sounds.
And so, I guess, there could be a little stigma attached.
But increasingly, this is the way that you see people on TV talking.
Even, sometimes, politicians.
Would they use "you was"?
They might not go that far.
But we heard, for example,
These are two of our former Prime Minister's.
They started to say
be[ʔ]er.
Be[ʔ]er.
"[f]hings are ge[ʔ]ing be[ʔ]er."
"Things are getting better."
Trying to appeal to the people.
-So sometimes they... -Do you think it's something cautious?
Yeah, in that case it was.
In that case it was.
So another feature of the London accent is
with making question tags.
Question tags! It's so hard to learn because
there's a specific combination
for every new sentence you make.
That's right.
You need to use the auxiliary verb.
You need to know a lot about the language
to be like very...
-Correct. -That's right!
So for example,
So this is the type of grammar you see in books.
That's right.
And people have to learn it,
and do exercises, and it's a lot of effort.
But if you come to London,
-you don't have to do it. -You don't have to do it!
What can you say in that case
In London, We just have one question tag,
which is...
It's our "né", "né"?
We use "né" for everything, in Portuguese.
So it's the same in the London accent.
That's right!
So, "innit".
That's right. So...
It should be "aren't you', right?
Okay, "innit".
It's so much easier.
So much easier.
Very good. So...
And is it also stigmatized? Like, people would say
"Oh, come on! You shouldn't be saying "innit" here, at work.
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess so.
I guess you always have to be careful about who you're talking to.
About everything we're discussing here.
I think that's always the case in the English society in general,
you know? That you always need to be aware of...
Of who you're talking to.
Besides for us.
I mean, if you're visiting the country,
It doesn't matter! Do whatever feels good.
I'll keep that in mind.
We're just happy that you're speaking English.
Because my husband, for example,
He was saying, "I'm sorry abou my English" and then
somebody says: "Well, your English is better than my Portuguese".
Because he was at least,
at least he was trying, you know?
So it's fine. People will be nice to you, right?
London people are pretty friendly.
Yeah, very friendly.
We're always trying to help you out, if you need some help.
And...
Most London people, most English people,
We don't speak other languages.
So we're just happy that you do.
We are trying.
And you were mentioning something about a change.
A certain change in the accent because of immigration.
Could you talk about it?
Yeah, that's true!
There's been lots of changes to the London accent,
over...
the last, sort of, 40 to 50 years, really.
London
has always been changed by immigration.
It's one of the big stories of London.
So the East End, which we talked about
as being the place where Cockneys come from,
so that's now inhabited a lot by people from the Caribbean,
people from India, people from Pakistan...
And of course from all over the world.
And so these people's accents and their style of talking
has changed the way that we talk.
So we said earlier, remember we said?
[v]is and [v]at?
So the modern accent people say [d]is and [d]ad.
[d]is and [d]ad.
just like Brazilians.
We Brazilians say "[d]is is beautiful".
We're trying to learn English.
I mean,
there are lots of Brazilian people here in London too.
London is always a city where people come...
People come from all over the world to London
to try and do something cool.
And they bring their own style with them.
And it all gets just mixed up together.
And our language is a representation of that.
It's a mix of everything.
Alright, so thank you very much for...
sharing your knowledge with us.
It was so nice! I've learned so much with you.
Thank you very much.
I hope you've learned as well.
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