I’d like to talk about the Cockney accent
This is the traditional accent of working class Londoners
and many Cockney speakers have now moved out of the capital to places
like Essex
and Kent
but you'll still hear this accent
from many black cab drivers in London
One of my students recently showed me a clip
from the television show "Eastenders"
This is a soap based in the East End of London
and many of the characters speak with this Cockney accent.
I’m going to show you a clip
see if you can understand it
[clip]
Did you understand? I'll play it again.
[clip]
I'll play it again twice, but in slow-motion:
[clip]
If you want to listen again, then go back
because I'm now going to give you the answer:
what she is saying is:
“shout all you like, you ain't gonna see her”
or a more formal translation would be
"you can shout as much as you want, but you are not going to see her!”
Let's look at how this breaks down:
First the word “shout”
In my accent the vowel is a diphthong
but in her accent it's a monophthong
and then she finishes the word
with a glottal stop
it’s not a “t” sound
“shout”
Notice that the word “you” becomes "ya"
and the vowel in the word "like"
starts from a much further back place compared to in my accent
“all you like”
In the second part with have “ain’t”
which is an informal way of saying "are not"
we have “gonna”
which is a contraction of "going to"
and we have the word “her” pronounced
without the "h" and without the ”r”
“you ain’t gonna see her”
Let's listen again to the whole clip.
“shout all you like, you ain’t gonna see her”
Hopefully you can now understand what she’s saying.
Have you ever had trouble understanding a Cockney accent?
Comment below and let me know!
Kat Slater!