@@Suebee1988Never came across that anywhere in England, but I have heard it from people from Belfast. Probably also the surrounding area, although I wouldn't like to guess what radius. :)
@@flowsnake8732 It's something I've noticed in the speech of actor Tim Curry and Digging for Britain host Dr. Alice Roberts...if that's helpful at all. :D
@@Suebee1988 • I used to associate it most of all with the Royals, especially Prince (now King) Charles. It was very pronounced in his younger days. He also says "Pelliss" not Palace, and "hice" for house. Nowadays I associate it with Alice Roberts who I enjoy watching, but not listening to. I know that she was born and brought up in Bristol, and have read that her accent is "soft Bristol," but I only know one person from there, and he doesn't say "groind" when talking about the ground. 😁
Really enjoyable 30 minutes, thanks! I'm one of those people that can distinguish between different London accents and I would be able to do impressions for you but very hard to describe on paper (I guessed number 2 easily) I grew up by Southend Airport; the Son of a Scottish Mother and Geordie Father. My Mum always retained her Aberdonian lilt but my Dad found that no one could understand a bleedin word he said at work in Basildon New Town in the late 60's. He was a keen amateur actor and great at accents so he just spoke old RP to get by. Somewhere along the line he stopped speaking Geordie altogether an always sounded like David Niven. My local Essex mates thought he was posh but he was born on the platform of Northumberland mining town railway station. I'd say we had a lower middle class upbringing as both my parents worked in office jobs and they bought their semi-detached house. Interestingly my little Brother who made it to university and 100% middle class now thinks he's working class but speaks like an 80's actor (he's another am drammer) I on the other hand ended up in a working class occupation and talk like a typical Essex boy; I was heavily influenced by my peers and adopted the fashion, accent and attitude to go with it. I'd say most families in my small town had a real Essex accent and the few ex East Enders that moved there really stood out to me. Southend main town had a much higher percentage of Cockney migrants and it was no accident that West Ham supporters club was right outside Central Station. When I moved to London in the early 90's I noticed a few times South Londoners particularly though I was Australian. My girlfriend at the time was from East Ham and thought I sounded like a nice North London boy. We used to go drinking a lot in pubs from Brick Lane to Bow and back then the real East End accent was there in all it's glory when you got chatting to the regulars. If I had to try and differentiate the sound I'd say their pronunciation was more deliberate and less mumblecore than my East Essex estuary English. The ladies would have a real twang but the gents had a more rounded, enunciated sound. Very different in old Elephant and Castle or Bermondsey pubs, they sounded a bit flatter if that makes any sense on it. My mates who came from out past Hammersmith way sounded different again, sort of like they were in an old Ealing Comedy. You can still hear the old East End Cockney dialect every other Saturday at the "London Stadium" but you have to be on a train arriving from Essex to hear it. I think you'd be fascinated. I agree that London accent is now near impossible to pin down as no one sticks to their areas anymore. As for MLE; it will keep spreading the way Estuary did until it becomes uncool for a generation somewhere down the line. I guess we all choose our accents according to how we identify ourselves.
I grew up in Dagenham with parents from Lambeth and Bermondsey, so should have had a standard working class accent . However, I had a speech defect and had five years of state ‘RP’ speech therapy. This had two effects, the first was no one at school believed my Dad was a docker (some fights ensued) and the other was it was very easy to move into the middle classes and become a Chartered Architect.
Not sure what is the moral of the story for me: more kids should have speech defects, dockers' kids should have certicates of their fathers' workplace to keep them out of fights, or I should be very polite with Chartered Architects. I'm glad your story had a good ending nonetheless 👍
Very interesting Gideon, thanks. I’m a West Londoner in my 60s who moved to East Anglia ten years ago. In my village there’s someone of a similar age, who grew up a mile or two from me and has retained his accent whereas I’ve largely lost mine. It’s quite funny listening to him.
My family grew up in West London and my Gran never lost it, even though they moved out in the 60s. My dad also still has a west london twang. I've lived in West London myself for 25 years, and just have a bog standard estuary accent My daughter was born in West London and has somehow developed an almost RP accent. She is so well spoken, no idea where she gets it from
18:00 is spot on, given the variety of people you meet as a Londoner, most people have multiple accents, as a child of immigrants the way you speak with your parents is usually more deliberate and towards a ssb accent, when your with your friends you speak MLE, however as you work and interact in more professional environments you modify your MLE to become more "recievable" to non MLE speakers. its not just the vernacular, which commonly changes across other places too, but the accents itself, which i think is fairly unique to London.
Well, there may be one or two commenters griping or trying to rattle your chain, but I love your videos. They're all made with such love for the English language in all its weird and wonderful varieties.
Another interesting phenomena is that it is very common in London for male siblings to adopt a working class accent while the sister adapts a more middle class accent.
17:56 This point is absolutely crucial to understanding how Londoners speak - apart from the very, very working class or even underclass (horrible term I know) or the very upper upper middle class pretty much ALL Londoners code switch depending on context, mood, and social situation.
In South London we have people that couldn't code switch if they tried😂 They also use words most people wouldn't understand (rhyming slang but new ones arrive all the time). Funny thing is these "under class" South Londoners are richer than the people like me who they would term posh with my (white)kids speaking the multi cultural London accent which many youngsters speak picking it up off their mates.(Example Aks for ask which began 60 years back in the Indian community & Carribbean kids picked it up from them)
@@annabizaro-doo-dah ‘Aks’ for ask is older than that. Aks was correct and common pre-Chaucer. It stems from Germanic/Saxon/(choose your invader). Originally it was ‘aksen’. People criticise the current use of ‘aks’ instead of ‘ask’. But the criticism is not valid
A form of MLE is even taking hold in the inner city of other English cities. I am from Manchester and noticed some teenagers speaking in that London MLE twang rather than Mancunian . Maybe it will have its own regional twists but it is definitely spreading. In the suburbs the Manc accent still survives and with people over, say, 30 everywhere. Provisos, like in this video: socio-economic reasons, level of multiculturalism in school, which fashion, subculture or music tribe you adhere to etc., will affect the child's degree of adopting a certain accent.
Absolutely, there are MLE speakers, or at least those heavily influenced by MLE, in both Coventry and Birmingham. You can often tell if someone is white, black or Asian too by their voice (that’s not to say that there aren’t many white people who sound ‘black’ or black people who sound ‘white’ but there are differences).
Excellent fruity metaphor, Romanian people are a surprise in London for me, Portuguese people are from Portugal and Brazil? I'm practicing pronunciation on the ELSA app, I bit my tongue twice, the cool thing about the app is that we can use English from England and American, I really like it, your grandmother is quite angry, legitimate grandmother 😍 I'm curious about London's cultural mix, amazing video, the best you always produce. Gideon thanks a million!🤗
I just checked the stats. About 60,000 Brazilian residents in London. Probably a lot more if you include those studying and passing through. I hope the Elsa app is working for you. I added an extra bit of the video with a family story on the Patreon page. Many thanks as always.
My Saaaf London archetype is Danny from "Withnail and I" and his Camberwell Carrot. I was in a band with a guy who, to my ear, sounded just like Danny and later learned that he grew up working class in Balham and then moved over to Streatham by way of Denmark Hill.
Fantastic! First vid of yours I've come across - top class sir, top class! I'm a big language and accent fan, and have lived all my life in the South East (50+ years). I've heard directly the effects of the "Blitz migration" in Bucks, Berks, Surrey and Kent accents - thousands and thousands of Londoners were displaced and shipped out to the Home Counties and now each of those counties bears the imprint in their accent. I remember reading a thing about where EastEnders actors were from, and after then could tell the Essex actors from the real Londoners. Essex is what I'd call Estuary, it's hard to describe but it's almost like an exaggerated, put-on Cockney accent. Real Londoners do pronounce their Hs, for instance - not as crisply as a posh person, but it's there, like your clip of Michael Caine. I loved your description of the L disappearing into oo as well, the Lipoostree made me crack up! At the other end of the scale is the voice announcer on the Central Line who is so dainty when she pronounces Leyton 😆 New subscriber for sure.
Many thanks for your interesting comments. I'm glad you liked the video. Essex may well have a unique accent I'd just like to see it defined as they sound quite similar to other working class Londoners.
@@LetThemTalkTVmy sister’s ex is from Essex and he said that while people in both London and Essex say ‘mental’ as ‘men’oh’ the stress is on the second syllable of the word in Essex and the first one in London. There’s a vast difference in syllable length between hoe he said it normally and the impression he gave of a Londoner (I don’t know how accurate his theory is though, personally)
Thinking of MLE. I wonder how the huge influx of French Huguenots back in the day affected the London accent back then. It's fascinating to think that of course (pre recorded voices) we have no oral records - just written clues of how we might have sounded
The science on this is very dodgy. There were once 23 churches in the city of London from the Strand to Poplar. They'd all have chimed at the same time.
A fantastic video! I truly enjoy these types of topics. I'm American and I the accents in London, and the UK in general, are completely alien to me. I only know what I've been exposed to in classic black-n-white films or BBC comedy (or the classic Dr Who series.) Excellent video!
The census at 21:05 is super interesting. I speak English, Spanish and Portuguese and what is great about some pockets of London is that I can legitimately spend 24 hours here, shop, eat and party without having to speak a word of English! Also great breakdown overall!
23:25 again, bare in mind, John Boyega is a British-Born person from South London with Nigerian parents, and the most MLE is heavily influenced by the Jamaican accent and Patois, along with various Pidgin and Creole languages, as well as Asian, mainly Indian, accents. Linguistics is so fascinating and nuanced. I love it.
I understand your objection to RP, my problem with SSBE is it assumes the talker comes from the South of England - in reality this accent increasingly spills into the North, Scotland even Ireland and beyond.
Before the 1950s many 'Cockneys' I knew were born at home. So the presence of maternity hospitals is probably somewhat irrelevant to chances of being born within the sound of Bow Bells. There was a Cockney 'language' and culture in addition to an accent. I guess that's all either been appropriated or vanished along with longstanding families in the area, and as the sound of Bow bells got drowned out.
Thanks for your comment. Yes, that's really my point. You may have got a lot of babies being born within the sound of Bow Bells in the past but it's not really relevant in the 21st century. Sure the East End was a whole culture but there is far more mobility these days.
Brilliant video...chimes with 45 years of collecting accents. A couple of things: I think it's an over simplification to say Cockneys moved out of the East End and immigrants moved in. In fact migrants settled, and still settle, all over London, the South East, the UK. Secondly, MLE as spoken in the clip, retains some cockney features, but surely is most notably influenced by Caribbean dialect. The vowels you mentioned are very Jamaican. I'm 60, speak a variant of SSBE, and can "access" cockney as a credible second dialect. Now, I hardly hear cockney and everyone I know under 40 is moving towards MLE. Although John B is a Londoner (Peckham, I believe) variants of MLE are common around the UK and I wonder whether, like "posh", it is not necessarily a regional dialect, but one associated with youth, music cultures and diversity. My white kids are bi- or tri-dialectal: SSBE, Cockney, MLE. My black son, a few years younger, is MLE through and through, with access to SSBE for formal situations...
He's wrong. What he describes as a London accent is what we South Londoners (Croydon) would call a Cockney accent. Very different vowel sounds from us.
Great breakdown. MLE deffo originated from the multicultural (predominantly Black) working class council estates in south London and was heavily influenced by Jamaican patois. I was born in the early 80s and privileged to have seen this go from a form of English that was once looked down upon and stereotyped to now being 'cool' and acceptable especially in sports and entertainment. I believe the rise in internet access in the 90s and Social Media in 00s has a big part to play in the spread of MLE.
Thank you for this exposé 😊, the first time I’d met the idea of different U.K. English accents, was perhaps in 1342, when I was 11 or so 😂 and I’d watched a live representation of Cats and noticed each character had a different accent as well as personality, and somehow didn’t think it was a character trait but this specific artist’s accent, it just clicked for me right there and then 😊. Today it’s quite interesting to see how accents we know evolve as well …
MLE is much more widespead now in all of London and beyond, than East London. It also has a bit of a posh twang a lot of the time. You might like to do a survey on the increasing use of the random interjection 'like' and to a lesser extent 'wo-lah'.
Started everywhere in London. Harlesden Tottenham Hackney etc has more influences than 99% of south London. Be specific you mean Brixton. As Croydon Greenwich twickenham etc had no influence comparable to these communities outside of south London.
Many years ago I started a new job in central London. I noticed the guy on the desk opposite me sounded just like my cousin. I later learned that he came from Rickmansworth and my cousin was just 4 miles away in Northwood, North West London. I think there could me many more regional nuances to the London accent.
Great vid. Finally someone confirms what I've told students for ages about Cockney- it is indeed just the working class accent of the whole of London, never bought the Bow Bells nonsense. I'm from south west London and in the 70s you heard hard-core Cockney everywhere but at school we were told to speak properly, though not everyone was able to as the Cockney was so strong. I still wince when I have to say butter etc properly for students.
While the accents are similar, or maybe even practically identical, to be 'a Cockney' was still a reference to being from the East End. Unless you were regularly using 'Cockney rhyming slang', then what you would have been speaking in at School in SW London would have just been working class London English spoken by SW Londoners (as opposed to, say, working class English spoken by Cockneys, or Cockney rhyming slang spoken by Cockneys).
Agree, being a real from Cockney from the East End is one thing. I just meant that I don't see much difference from the working class London accent ( with the odd bit of rhyming slang) you hear or used to hear from all parts of London
11:32 quick distinction here for you to maybe research. Even amongst MLE speakers, the MLE speakers from East London have always been distinct to those from South or North London. For example comparing the rappers Wiley(East) & Dizzee Rascal(East) compared to Stormzy(South) & Giggs (South). There is a clear vocal difference, even proving there is in fact an East London cockney accent, one that even bleeds into MLE speaking East London natives.
Brighton is a funny one. Very much like London, but subtly different. In between the two cities of London and Brighton, Surrey and Sussex accents are quite different... but are only just clinging on.
I was born in Sutton, then in Surrey, but by the time I was a teenager, it became a London Borough. My accent is probably a local one to that area, as there were few people from other parts of the country living there. My sister was sent for elocution lessons and has a "posher" accent than I do, but not really SSBE. I ended up working with Americans, Aussies and Kiwis for a number of years and when I returned to visit the UK, my cousin told me I sounded like an Aussie! I found that people in Bedford sounded more Londoner than I did and when I moved to the Brighton area, again the accent was strange to me and sounded different to that I grew up with. I am sure there are subtle variations between major towns across quite a small area.
Fascinating insight. My own view is that there needs to be more research on variations between small towns. There may well be differences but it's difficult to put your finger on it.
@@LetThemTalkTV I agree that these days, it would be far more difficult. I always think it is fascinating when you hear your own voice recorded. Our ancestors would never have heard their own voices.
An ex of mine was from Watford but her nan was from the East End. She had a proper gor blimey accent that she still had (this was late 90s) and she was rehoused there when bombed out in WW2. A lot of those places round there were highly populated with displaced East Enders during/after the war and a lot of these older villages/towns were massively enlarged as part of the post WW2 "new towns" planning. I used to live in Hemel (apsley), which was a weird mix of really old, old and new (ish). I can't speak for the other new towns in Hertfordshire and Essex but I assume the same thing happened. My ex's grandad was a local of Watford and had a completely different accent, she used to refer to it as "farmer" so I assume it was far more rural and had some "ooh aar" to it.
I find it interesting listening to a lot of the old DJs from the rave/DnB scene, particularly old interviews. Goldie famously is not from London but his accent has changed a little over the years but he still has that brum twang mixed with MLE. I had family that were from Surrey (inside the M25) that sounded London to me but they ended up speaking differently to each other. The MCs in the scene mostly came from Dancehall so there was a lot of Patois mixed in but if you listen to them speaking now I wouldn't call it MLE but it has what I would class the genesis of it in there.
The older 2nd or 3rd gen black guys in London mostly just speak with the standard local accent they grew up in. Then at some point say under 40s or under 45s you get everyone (not really related to any particular community) speaking with this new accent or dialect even. West Indians had been here for decades by then so I don't know where it came from, possibly from the US and how some people started talking there as much as anything around here
@@InstrumentalsBeats 100% that was my first thought, it comes from Jamaican (with a bit of Indian ie Aks for Ask is originally Indian picked up by Carribbean kids) I don't know where he got east London from. In fact in the last 30 years it's been the preserve of the wealthy.
@@THuk44444 It's a mixture of Carribbean and Indian, with the Australian question mark thingy at the end of sentences. I very much grew up around it's genesis.
Brilliant. I grew up in a lower middle class North West London and it sounds similar to your accent. Are you from NW London too? Good advice on the use of terms RP and Estuary.Far more complex than one thinks. Well done
I grew up in a Hertfordshire new town in the ‘60s and ‘70s, long before MLE existed, but the working class accent was a lot like North London, as many moved there after the slum clearances. My brother lives in Wallington, on the London/Surrey border, and the accent down there is nothing like the same. “Ge’ ahht ov mahh pahhb”.
Re: North South East West London accents being different: It is definitely is a real thing. I hope someone does a youtube deep dive on the one but just as an instance think about how a South Londoner says the word South: 'Saaarf' - an extended 'a' sound and more of a pronounced 'r' sound than any other Londoner would use - so basically it has a hint of West country to it. Another example would be how the singer Jason Kay /Jamiroquai speaks - that is DEFINITY a West London accent and no one raised in any other part of London would speak like that.
I'm from Feltham. I haven't lived in the UK for years. I went back to Feltham 2 years ago and got talking to a guy outside Tesco and my teenage accent returned, which is completely different from 'fancy' west London or places like Kingston. I can't even fake that accent anymore. My point is yes there's absolutely differences between different regions of London
@@PhatInAHat Well yeah, I think the middle class southern accent remains pretty much the same - it's in more working class accents that have the different flavours.
I left London 20 years ago and could also detect some accent and slang differences between the London areas, lost it after a few years away from it. The London accent has probably become more homgenous now anyway.
Agree! They are (or were) different. I would love someone to investigate this and find and compare south/north/west/east London speakers to assess the differences. That would be so fascinating. And not just the most pronounced working class accents either.
I'd love someone to do an explainer on the difference between the "posh" accent described here and what I'd call the "new" posh accent spoken by posh people in their Mid-30s and younger. For example Josh Berry (instagram comedian) and anyone on Made in Chelsea speak differently to Boris Johnson and Judy Dench. The first two would pronounce "sick" in a way that is somewhere between "seh-k" and "suh-k", where as Boris and Judy would pronounce the "i" and "u" as most other southerners would ("sih-k" and "suh-k"). Anyone agree?
For decades I've been working hard to become better with my RP. Now I hear that all the hardships I went through were in vain, it was SSBE all along. And nobody bothered to tell me before...
Failed the 'clips' test. You are right. Dame Judy Dench is from Yawk. You referred to the incomplete glottal stop as in Bu'/Bu. MLE however tends to sound more like the "incorrect" glottal stop. In fact it is pronounced more like bo (as in top) than bu
I can't claim to be a Londoner, though I have lived here over fifty years, having arrived with my family when I was nine in 1972. So, some reflections ... ** 'Estuary' I actually consider as a good catch all term. It doesn't have to be as specific as people living on the river, because it suggests an accurate picture of the post-war spread of the city's population as the original Old Kent Road mob headed out to Gillingham and Rochester, while the Mile End/Commercial lot migrated to Romford and the new towns. I sometimes joke that the vowel sounds have become ever more elongated, the further out families have moved. Spare a thought, by the way, for the sad erosion of the original rural Essex and Kent accents, trampled underfoot by the fleeing Londoners, or should that be, in Kevin Livingstone parlance ... 'Lunnenners'. ** Now, this video has been fascinating because it has given me an insight into what I regard as a very changed London accent. In some quarters, I'd almost call it a parody of its former self, the obvious example being the 'Eastenders' patois. When I hear Danny Dyer, for example, I'm hearing trace notes of Dick Van Dyke. I'm not for a moment suggesting he's remotely inauthentic, but its an indication perhaps of later generations clinging to the lost sounds of their grandparents. Bob Hoskins was an early example of this phenomenon because he grew up in and about Islington, yet when my father once shared a dressing room with him, before his great fame, he claimed to be a son of Bermondsey. Well, you can't be both and I think his somewhat exaggerated 'sarf lunnen' persona was an act of rebellion from a strict lower middle class father who wanted to follow him into accountancy. ** So, if I say the London accent has changed, how was it different from when I arrived. One of the first things to say is that Londoners were far more reserved as a population than they have become. Way ahead of the mobile era, there were no loud conversations conducted on street corners, rows were confined to indoors, and commuters boarded buses and trains in the stoniest of silences. In shops, indeed, a 'thank you' at the till could be gotten down to a single syllable, 'q'. I should say this was growing up in the North London suburb of Finchley which was a very genteel kind of a place, though not especially posh, or smart. Then, as far as I'm concerned, there was a a North London accent. I know this because of listening to my older brother. You see, coming from Ireland, our accents made us stand out terribly, and he hated that. He wanted to blend in and speak the same as his new mates when he'd be on the terraces at White Hart Lane. Hearing on the phone, we thought it was hilarious, though understandable; but yes, the North London access was softer and more restrained, compared to across the river or the East End. It was also informed by the different ethic groups of the times which were Italians, Greeks, Cypriots and Jews. ** A final observation. One of the big changes to the London accent has to be the sheer volubility of Londoners these days. Accents, it seems to me, are almost projected as a form of identity tag. Like a badge, or in some cases where it is like an alternative identifier. The phenomenon of what has been called 'jafakin' is an example, though I think that's on the wain now. As for where the accent goes from here, I'd actually propose a return to elocution classes ... [INTERNET STANDS BACK AND SCREAMS IN HORROR] ... I say this because I think it is important for young Londoners who are heading into the work place to have the versatility of a more standardised and neutral accent. Equally, that they should be able to project with clear and articulate diction. It's nothing, by the way, to do with class. It's all about effective communication and connecting with as many groups as possible. ** PS. The Bow Bells business. Just about everyone needs to take a rain check on this one, because in the old city of London, there were some some 23 different churches. Usually with their own peel, but with all of them going at once (allowing for difference of clocks), could someone five miles away really have picked out Bow?
I think the London Underground station announcements are one of the last remnants of old RP. I swear she pronounces Warren Street as if it was Wharren Street (and of course pronounces the 'h' in the 'wh'). Must have been recorded a few years ago.
When helping my SO to improve her English, and being towards the fringes of 'London accent', I was conscious of not dropping my 'H' and 'T', and distinguishing 'th' from 'f'.
I'm originally from NW London (Essex for years now) and no good at spotting where other London accents come from but I can spot a NW London accent straight off the bat. Don't know why but it's music to my ears, though I'm guessing I'm talking about an accent from 1950s to 2000s. Accents are now all over the place.
Having grown up in Devon and now living in Australia, I am fascinated by accents,. I remember someone telling me that Australians often using tripthongs instead of dipthongs in such words as sport which becomes spor-or-t.😀
Sadiq Khan's accent (which doesn't sound working class to me) sounded most like my Nan's accent - Nan was born in Warren Street, St Pancras, and grew up just around the corner in Whitfield Street. My grandfather, however, had a much "posher" accent and a very erudite vocabulary, despite being born to a working class family.
Really good video, I grew up in London in the late 70's/80's. The section on the London accent very closely describes the older people I knew growing up, however I would say I have lots of elements of MLE in my speach.
English is a very diverse language and accents are still very common. I love English for that. Sadly in my native language (German), mostly old people still speak with an accent or dialect. It's dying out, especially in the cities. Only in some rural areas of eastern Germany or Bavaria young people grow up with their local accent but that will probably be gone in one or two more generations.
I think that there is a definite south London accent that has a particular strained, nasal quality to it (e.g. Jools Holland, Ken Livingstone). Michael Caine is an interesting one because even though he is from Elephant and Castle his accent seemed to be very Cockney especially in the 60s, which may of course have been deliberate. One of the best things about being a Londoner is that you are surrounded by millions of unique stories that go to make up this incredible mix. It can be exhausting but it’s never dull.
Btw in Ian Nairn's 1966 classic Nairn's London he talks about having a drink with real Cockneys in Fulham. Disregarding what Fulham represents today it seems that Cockney then just meant a working class Londoner - so looks like the idea of Cockneys being East Londoners might be quite recent if so it would be really interesting to find out where this idea came from. I have a feeling it my have emerged from the blitz and though obviusly 1966 is a long time after the Blitz Nairn's understanding if the term of the term would have predicted it.
I think it was a class perspective. Cockney meant sounding working class to other classes. But I was definitely brought up believing that it meant born within the sound of Bow Bells and still get slightly irritated when Michael Caine is described as a Cockney. To me he has a distinctive drawn out South London accent.
Maybe there should be a collection of how railways announcers pronounce their station before being homogenized. My home town is Southampton and I’m long gone. But when I lived there the announcer said Thi i sow am un shtashun
So interesting! Fascinating! I don´t know if you´ve already done one on the Mancunian accent. The other day I was listening to former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher and his accent is just wow. I couldn´t understand a single word of what he was saying lol Cheers Gideon!
Pretty interesting! This video has reminded me that this summer, at a swimming pool next to my parents' home in the south-east shore of Spain, a clearly brittish woman was playing with her kids (lots of Brits summer in that zone). During the game she was just counting something "one, two, three" and so on, and when she reached nine, she said something like "noin" instead. I was kind of shocked, it was completely unexpected. I had never heard that pronunciation. Now I've learnt that that may have been just Estuary accent...
@@janegill8990 Thank you! However, it's not clear, because from other youtube videos, I've realized that there are other accents that have this feature. Brummie and West country may be examples. West country I doubt in this case, because it was clearly a non-rotic accent, but Brummie could perfectly be... This "noin" was very clear, not subtle at all...
@angeljimenez3362 it may be because it's my accent that I think it's subtle 😂 I don't have a 'thick' Essex accent. It's not RP by any stretch of the imagination, although other people say I speak' posh'. To RP speakers I'm definitely very Essex. So, Maybe I'm just not hearing it as obvious as those who don't speak it?
I’m from the east end and was spot on with knowing number 2 was the east Londoner I’d be hard pressed to define how I knew, but I think the east London accent is a little more raw/rougher around the edges than the other ones… really hard to explain but, I just knew…
Fascinating stuff. I am an accent nut and have always been interested in various accents including my own which is Cockney, although over the years it has been tempered by 'proper' english. I recall that my Grandfather who originated from Camberwell South London or Surrey (as it was back in the day) sounded like Uncle Albert from the Fools and Horses sitcom and he pronounced 'yes' as 'yus' His wife my Grandmother who was from Limehouse pronounced 'yes' as 'yurse.'
Re Cockney. My mum from Stepney, near Middlesex Street said they were 'bloody' cockneys. Closer to the docks, so poorer and rougher, they were 'bleedin' cockneys. She was critiquing Shaw's Pygmalian's Eliza Doolittle's English. She held that she would have said 'bleedin' not 'bloody'.
I think it’s much harder to tell people apart these days. 30 years ago, when I first moved to London there was a very clear distinction between East-end and South London. Ray Winstone v Michael Caine, basically.
I enjoy your video every time. Fantastic work! I respect & admire how much work and effort you put in making your videos. By the way, I am guessing that “innit “ will be used worldwide very soon because you don’t have to think about subject, its number, time, or positive/negative etc, which would be perfect for young people ! lol . Japanese language has “deshou(writing)” or “janai(verbal)” for the expression and you add them at the end of a sentence regardless of subject/time/number just like “innit”. 30 years ago I learned the expression and the grammar in English class. I hated that I had to use the brain even to the end. I still hate it! I cannot remember what I was going to do a minute ago. I cannot remember what things are called and call everything “that one”. Speaking a sentence and remembering all those variants feel like too much work for me.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked the video. Personally, I use "innit" to mean "isn't it" that's fine but when it's used to mean "aren't you", "can't he" etc that's beyond the pale.
The accents are similar but the words people use are different depending on where in London one is based. I grew up easily recognising which borough where people were from a lot of the time.
I'm from inner South London and the number of different accents I hear are amazing. If I go down to the bottom of my street I'm surrounded by MLE and cockney, if I go up my street, just ten minutes from the bottom, it's all RP and posh accents. Maybe that's why my own accent is so weird... I'm a high-ranking cadet in the Sea Cadets, therefore when I'm speaking to officers I sound INCREDIBLY posh and middle-class without actively trying. But when I'm on the phone to my friends or in a corner shop I'm bog-standard working class (my friends all say I sound posh but I think that's psychological, because I'm from the 'city paved with gold' and all that, and they're largely not. They probably think everyone lives in like Piccadilly lol!). And when I'm pissed off my cockney roots come majestically to the surface! Fascinating video, thanks! :) PS My dad's grandmother was apparently very aspirational-middle-class, and he says that she pronounced Highgate (near where she lived) like the Tube announcer, more like Higg't than Highgate.
My cousin Charlotte who's always claimed to be a Cockney, was born in Queen Charlotte's hospital in (I think) 1956. Perhaps it was quieter in those days so that you could hear the Bow Bells from there. Of course not everyone is born in a hospital, as I wasn't.
You're right. My point is that this "born within the sounds of Bow Bells" thing no longer applies in the 21st century (or indeed any time after the 1960s).
Interestingly, there’s an unrelated phenomenon of people from Manchester, Nottinghamshire and parts of London alike pronouncing the ‘ou’ phoneme as ‘aah’. Grew up in the East Midlands and didn’t make the connection until recently.
To say that we Londoners couldn’t recognise different London accents is unfair. I grew up in Streatham, south London . In our teens , in the60s, ‘going up West’ of a weekend we could sort of tell north London, eastenders, and south London accents apart. If a linguist were to have asked us (unlikely) what were the differences , we would have had no idea how to respond. IT WAS INTUITION! - Maybe north London had a more nasel Mediterranean and Jewish twang, East? Old school Dickensian cockney, Sawf London? A higher pitched whine. Ha! Trubba not.
I totally agree. I'm also a born and bred South Londoner and spent my formative years growing up in Battersea. I can hear different London accents, but couldn't describe how they differ! One thing I will say though is that as soon as you tell someone you're from South London, their first response is often to say, "Oh, SAAAF London". But I think the way we pronounce south is more like "saayuf", not "saaf".
New Yorkers have similar accents between five boroughs and even within some boroughs and Noo Joisey. The immigrants that brought them come from the same places as Londoners.
Thankfully I was brought up in Rural Surrey, not far from London. I learned to speak proper English. Very good when I worked abroad. Outside the UK foreigners learn "Oxford English" which is nothing near cockney London English As an aside the bells from bow church were stored in Lincoln cathedral during WWII So many cockneys could not have been born within sound of the bells.
Hey Gideon, I don't suppose you could make us a lesson about * The historical present, also known as the dramatic or narrative present * could you by any chance as long it's no trouble of course . I'll promise ya, I 'll be your friend till I kick the bucket. Greetings from Casablanca 😉
I come from Lincolnshire and began teaching 40 years ago in Eastern Essex, I had a problem when trying to understand the children saying ball, wall etc. They fell about laughing at my "grass" and "class"
Pretty nice video, though I dont fully agree about the Cockney thing. Nowadays, as you say, the Cockney accent has somewhat transformed into the ‘Essex Accent’ which is distinctly different to any of the ones you presented in this video. You can hear different variants of it in people like Tommy Skinner (from The Apprentice fame) and the tiktoker ‘Beavo’
I do like your channel! However, with this one it would have been nice to get more and longer examples of cockney, MLE etc, rather than just middle class speakers talking about those accents. Keep up the good works 😊
- 'lower' middle class, please! There are 7 clips in the video. I have to be careful about longer clips as they could be subject to a copyright claim. You walk a fine line when using media in TH-cam videos. Thanks for you comment.
I grew up surrounded by the Thames Estuary. On Canvey Island, where alongside the Cockney diaspora, there is now a community of Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews, who moved there from Stamford Hill in North London.
the more i hear this conversation the more i think about more things to say about it 100% agree that there is a generic inner london accent that only differs from each other is with age and dialect depending on industry and local communities sayings etc dialect not accents themselves i’m from camden town but i couldn’t tell where another working class inner londoner comes from apart from characteristic of an area , example “i often can tell someone from south east london because of the speed …my experience they speak faster “ to me ,east end stops at bow flyover but the accent doesn’t stop after mile end where the east end turns into East london i ignore the famous map of the range i cant see how for me , mile end is more working class inner london then camden town in accents as the latter is nearly two miles closer to bow bells then mile end like the yiddish influence of east end ,north londoners tend to speak the same accent but use more irish expressions or finsbury park might have more greek turkish gestures wether that’s to do with industry and community i don’t know like wise east end …when i was growing up , they tended to use more jewish/ yiddish expressions regardless of the background which later grew to include all of london i think home counties dialect is different but obviously related because they have normally parents or grandparents that came from london but it’s just not the same as inner london i can tell someone from say “ beyond the north and south circular rd as they speak with a country twang if they were born there but can’t tell if someone’s from either shepard’s bush or wanstead if they have working class inner london accent only by unique area characteristics as i said same accent but different dialects the influence of the accent will grow the more people move out but i feel the london accent will go altogether once my generation passed on as im in my 60s and am still living in somers town the only people talk like me are the older generation
I think it's worth noting that even MLE is different depending on the region of london you're from - I guessed John Boyega was from south, which is roughly where I grew up, and it turns out he's from camberwell, but this is different from the MLE heard in East or even West london (probably because of local immigrant communities) - his MLE is different from the MLE I've heard from my south asian cousins in dagenham
"There are no maternity hospitals within earshot of Bow Bells and there hasn't been one since the 1950s" - What's your source on that assertion? Royal London Hospital on Whitechapel Road has a maternity ward and is only 1.5 miles away. The map you showed displays only the sound with the wind from the south west. A wind from directly west could stretch it to there, as even on that view it is only just out of range. Plus the map is as of 2012 - quite a lot of the development of skyscrapers further east in the City like The Gherkin started in the 2000s, so it seems eminently believable that at least until the 90s the Royal London still fit the definition.
Ok thanks, that's a good point. Though even if you include it it's still a long way from the original 1617 quote about the sound of Bow Bells which would have carried 5 miles at that time.
RP has morphed. If you listen to the late Queens early speeches you'll really hear it. That fellow Altricham said she sounded like a priggish school girl. Herr later speeches, say xman speeches becomes super mid class as the years wore on. I think it wd make an excellent dissertation to study the change.
Born and bred in London bording school at 10. Had to lose my London accent to fit in. Moved to Devon at 38. Leared a new accent. Now in Somerset, maybe I need to learn the Bristol L?
what would London sound like 200 years ago ? To my family say far less african heritage of course, likewise indian subcontinent didnt have influence , but they were not Londoners - they came to what is now zone 3 from Farnham (Surrey) and East Grinstead (Kent) as well as Ireland and Suburban Essex. The Accent of Mitcham is different to Morden , which I found different to East Ham which changed when you got to Barking. The faster you speak though , and more to friends you revert to a London or local accent. I was born within the sound of bow bells (1850s) and I can do a good cockney accent ( not much rhyming though ). I worked for an Italian company that set up in Central London and they turned down a receptionist from Bow due to having a commoner accent of proper east end sparra
I think the use of the term RP should be still used. This is because I love accents and RP was (and still is to some extent) a socio-economic phenomenon to try and destroy the diversity of our language in the UK. It was a political tool. Like the Welsh Knot but more subtle.
All hail the TH-cam algorithm. This got suggested out of nowhere and was a fantastic insight into the accents of London.
Keep up the good work
My word, your channel is nothing short of brilliant. Pure, pure pleasure. Cheers.
You are brilliant. Many thanks
Can you tell me where in England "ground" becomes to my ear somewhere between "
"grind" and "groind"?
@@Suebee1988Never came across that anywhere in England, but I have heard it from people from Belfast. Probably also the surrounding area, although I wouldn't like to guess what radius. :)
@@flowsnake8732 It's something I've noticed in the speech of actor Tim Curry and Digging for Britain host Dr. Alice Roberts...if that's helpful at all. :D
@@Suebee1988 • I used to associate it most of all with the Royals, especially Prince (now King) Charles. It was very pronounced in his younger days. He also says "Pelliss" not Palace, and "hice" for house. Nowadays I associate it with Alice Roberts who I enjoy watching, but not listening to. I know that she was born and brought up in Bristol, and have read that her accent is "soft Bristol," but I only know one person from there, and he doesn't say "groind" when talking about the ground. 😁
Really enjoyable 30 minutes, thanks! I'm one of those people that can distinguish between different London accents and I would be able to do impressions for you but very hard to describe on paper (I guessed number 2 easily)
I grew up by Southend Airport; the Son of a Scottish Mother and Geordie Father. My Mum always retained her Aberdonian lilt but my Dad found that no one could understand a bleedin word he said at work in Basildon New Town in the late 60's. He was a keen amateur actor and great at accents so he just spoke old RP to get by. Somewhere along the line he stopped speaking Geordie altogether an always sounded like David Niven. My local Essex mates thought he was posh but he was born on the platform of Northumberland mining town railway station.
I'd say we had a lower middle class upbringing as both my parents worked in office jobs and they bought their semi-detached house. Interestingly my little Brother who made it to university and 100% middle class now thinks he's working class but speaks like an 80's actor (he's another am drammer) I on the other hand ended up in a working class occupation and talk like a typical Essex boy; I was heavily influenced by my peers and adopted the fashion, accent and attitude to go with it. I'd say most families in my small town had a real Essex accent and the few ex East Enders that moved there really stood out to me. Southend main town had a much higher percentage of Cockney migrants and it was no accident that West Ham supporters club was right outside Central Station.
When I moved to London in the early 90's I noticed a few times South Londoners particularly though I was Australian. My girlfriend at the time was from East Ham and thought I sounded like a nice North London boy. We used to go drinking a lot in pubs from Brick Lane to Bow and back then the real East End accent was there in all it's glory when you got chatting to the regulars. If I had to try and differentiate the sound I'd say their pronunciation was more deliberate and less mumblecore than my East Essex estuary English. The ladies would have a real twang but the gents had a more rounded, enunciated sound. Very different in old Elephant and Castle or Bermondsey pubs, they sounded a bit flatter if that makes any sense on it. My mates who came from out past Hammersmith way sounded different again, sort of like they were in an old Ealing Comedy.
You can still hear the old East End Cockney dialect every other Saturday at the "London Stadium" but you have to be on a train arriving from Essex to hear it. I think you'd be fascinated. I agree that London accent is now near impossible to pin down as no one sticks to their areas anymore. As for MLE; it will keep spreading the way Estuary did until it becomes uncool for a generation somewhere down the line.
I guess we all choose our accents according to how we identify ourselves.
As a Pole with quite a bit of linguistic interest, and living in England, I appreciate this video so much. Thank you and you have a new subscriber 😊
I grew up in Dagenham with parents from Lambeth and Bermondsey, so should have had a standard working class accent . However, I had a speech defect and had five years of state ‘RP’ speech therapy. This had two effects, the first was no one at school believed my Dad was a docker (some fights ensued) and the other was it was very easy to move into the middle classes and become a Chartered Architect.
A speech defect led you to becoming a Charted Architect. That's a fascinating story.
Not sure what is the moral of the story for me: more kids should have speech defects, dockers' kids should have certicates of their fathers' workplace to keep them out of fights, or I should be very polite with Chartered Architects.
I'm glad your story had a good ending nonetheless 👍
@@shryggur The moral is that you should be polite to everyone as you do not know their circumstances and that no one should be judged by their accent.
Did it make you a better fighter, though?! 😉
@@shryggur He is showing us what privilege actually is. All you need is an accent upgrade and you become Middle Class.
Very interesting Gideon, thanks. I’m a West Londoner in my 60s who moved to East Anglia ten years ago. In my village there’s someone of a similar age, who grew up a mile or two from me and has retained his accent whereas I’ve largely lost mine. It’s quite funny listening to him.
My family grew up in West London and my Gran never lost it, even though they moved out in the 60s.
My dad also still has a west london twang.
I've lived in West London myself for 25 years, and just have a bog standard estuary accent
My daughter was born in West London and has somehow developed an almost RP accent.
She is so well spoken, no idea where she gets it from
@@helenking8297 Her peer group? Most people speak like the other kids they grew up with.
18:00 is spot on, given the variety of people you meet as a Londoner, most people have multiple accents, as a child of immigrants the way you speak with your parents is usually more deliberate and towards a ssb accent, when your with your friends you speak MLE, however as you work and interact in more professional environments you modify your MLE to become more "recievable" to non MLE speakers. its not just the vernacular, which commonly changes across other places too, but the accents itself, which i think is fairly unique to London.
'Multiple accents' very true.
Well, there may be one or two commenters griping or trying to rattle your chain, but I love your videos. They're all made with such love for the English language in all its weird and wonderful varieties.
The only comments I remember are ones that touch my heart such as this one. Thanks
Another interesting phenomena is that it is very common in London for male siblings to adopt a working class accent while the sister adapts a more middle class accent.
Good girls like bad guys
YES!! THIS^^^^^
east end boys and west end girls 🎶
This is true in Boston MA USA too.
Both are self-defence
17:56 This point is absolutely crucial to understanding how Londoners speak - apart from the very, very working class or even underclass (horrible term I know) or the very upper upper middle class pretty much ALL Londoners code switch depending on context, mood, and social situation.
We need a video on code switching!
I agree on that point. Many linguistic chameleons in London.
In South London we have people that couldn't code switch if they tried😂 They also use words most people wouldn't understand (rhyming slang but new ones arrive all the time). Funny thing is these "under class" South Londoners are richer than the people like me who they would term posh with my (white)kids speaking the multi cultural London accent which many youngsters speak picking it up off their mates.(Example Aks for ask which began 60 years back in the Indian community & Carribbean kids picked it up from them)
Yep thank you that is so very true. I code switch in the same sentence to keep everyone on their toes.
@@annabizaro-doo-dah ‘Aks’ for ask is older than that. Aks was correct and common pre-Chaucer. It stems from Germanic/Saxon/(choose your invader). Originally it was ‘aksen’. People criticise the current use of ‘aks’ instead of ‘ask’. But the criticism is not valid
A form of MLE is even taking hold in the inner city of other English cities. I am from Manchester and noticed some teenagers speaking in that London MLE twang rather than Mancunian . Maybe it will have its own regional twists but it is definitely spreading. In the suburbs the Manc accent still survives and with people over, say, 30 everywhere. Provisos, like in this video: socio-economic reasons, level of multiculturalism in school, which fashion, subculture or music tribe you adhere to etc., will affect the child's degree of adopting a certain accent.
speaking MLE is the mark of an idiot
Absolutely, there are MLE speakers, or at least those heavily influenced by MLE, in both Coventry and Birmingham. You can often tell if someone is white, black or Asian too by their voice (that’s not to say that there aren’t many white people who sound ‘black’ or black people who sound ‘white’ but there are differences).
I don't like that accent at all. But you're right it is prevelant
I hate it. It's prevalent in Luton, and I've heard it in certain parts of Nottingham. Seems to be spoken by "wannabe" gangster youths.
@@darenn71 so sad 😂
Excellent fruity metaphor, Romanian people are a surprise in London for me, Portuguese people are from Portugal and Brazil? I'm practicing pronunciation on the ELSA app, I bit my tongue twice, the cool thing about the app is that we can use English from England and American, I really like it, your grandmother is quite angry, legitimate grandmother 😍 I'm curious about London's cultural mix, amazing video, the best you always produce. Gideon thanks a million!🤗
I just checked the stats. About 60,000 Brazilian residents in London. Probably a lot more if you include those studying and passing through. I hope the Elsa app is working for you. I added an extra bit of the video with a family story on the Patreon page. Many thanks as always.
@@LetThemTalkTVI didn't imagine this number of Brazilians😮 Running to Patreon now!
My Saaaf London archetype is Danny from "Withnail and I" and his Camberwell Carrot. I was in a band with a guy who, to my ear, sounded just like Danny and later learned that he grew up working class in Balham and then moved over to Streatham by way of Denmark Hill.
It's like Cockney with a mawf fuw a mahbuws
ever so brilliant. Thanks a lot for all these enlightening bits of information. I‘m German and have loved English since early childhood 💚
Fantastic! First vid of yours I've come across - top class sir, top class!
I'm a big language and accent fan, and have lived all my life in the South East (50+ years). I've heard directly the effects of the "Blitz migration" in Bucks, Berks, Surrey and Kent accents - thousands and thousands of Londoners were displaced and shipped out to the Home Counties and now each of those counties bears the imprint in their accent.
I remember reading a thing about where EastEnders actors were from, and after then could tell the Essex actors from the real Londoners. Essex is what I'd call Estuary, it's hard to describe but it's almost like an exaggerated, put-on Cockney accent. Real Londoners do pronounce their Hs, for instance - not as crisply as a posh person, but it's there, like your clip of Michael Caine.
I loved your description of the L disappearing into oo as well, the Lipoostree made me crack up! At the other end of the scale is the voice announcer on the Central Line who is so dainty when she pronounces Leyton 😆
New subscriber for sure.
Many thanks for your interesting comments. I'm glad you liked the video. Essex may well have a unique accent I'd just like to see it defined as they sound quite similar to other working class Londoners.
@@LetThemTalkTVmy sister’s ex is from Essex and he said that while people in both London and Essex say ‘mental’ as ‘men’oh’ the stress is on the second syllable of the word in Essex and the first one in London. There’s a vast difference in syllable length between hoe he said it normally and the impression he gave of a Londoner (I don’t know how accurate his theory is though, personally)
Had no idea about the RP connotation vs SSBE. Thank you from Florida
Thanks for your comment. I'm not saying what others should say but personally I don't like "RP".
Thinking of MLE.
I wonder how the huge influx of French Huguenots back in the day affected the London accent back then. It's fascinating to think that of course (pre recorded voices) we have no oral records - just written clues of how we might have sounded
Grew up on the border of Hackney / Leyton and i had no idea that the sound of the bow bells could be heard that far away. Amazing
Back when Samuel pepyes was roaming around you could hear the boss bells at Highgate
The science on this is very dodgy. There were once 23 churches in the city of London from the Strand to Poplar. They'd all have chimed at the same time.
@@stevehaddon151Boss?😂
Brilliant content! I always feel good when watching your videos Gideon! Thank you so much !
That's very kind of you thanks
A fantastic video! I truly enjoy these types of topics. I'm American and I the accents in London, and the UK in general, are completely alien to me. I only know what I've been exposed to in classic black-n-white films or BBC comedy (or the classic Dr Who series.) Excellent video!
Thanks glad you liked the video. I hope the London accent are a little clearer now.
The census at 21:05 is super interesting. I speak English, Spanish and Portuguese and what is great about some pockets of London is that I can legitimately spend 24 hours here, shop, eat and party without having to speak a word of English! Also great breakdown overall!
23:25 again, bare in mind, John Boyega is a British-Born person from South London with Nigerian parents, and the most MLE is heavily influenced by the Jamaican accent and Patois, along with various Pidgin and Creole languages, as well as Asian, mainly Indian, accents.
Linguistics is so fascinating and nuanced. I love it.
I understand your objection to RP, my problem with SSBE is it assumes the talker comes from the South of England - in reality this accent increasingly spills into the North, Scotland even Ireland and beyond.
Before the 1950s many 'Cockneys' I knew were born at home. So the presence of maternity hospitals is probably somewhat irrelevant to chances of being born within the sound of Bow Bells. There was a Cockney 'language' and culture in addition to an accent. I guess that's all either been appropriated or vanished along with longstanding families in the area, and as the sound of Bow bells got drowned out.
Thanks for your comment. Yes, that's really my point. You may have got a lot of babies being born within the sound of Bow Bells in the past but it's not really relevant in the 21st century. Sure the East End was a whole culture but there is far more mobility these days.
It is quite good to pay attention in each word you say. Thank you so much. ❤
Brilliant video...chimes with 45 years of collecting accents. A couple of things: I think it's an over simplification to say Cockneys moved out of the East End and immigrants moved in. In fact migrants settled, and still settle, all over London, the South East, the UK. Secondly, MLE as spoken in the clip, retains some cockney features, but surely is most notably influenced by Caribbean dialect. The vowels you mentioned are very Jamaican. I'm 60, speak a variant of SSBE, and can "access" cockney as a credible second dialect. Now, I hardly hear cockney and everyone I know under 40 is moving towards MLE. Although John B is a Londoner (Peckham, I believe) variants of MLE are common around the UK and I wonder whether, like "posh", it is not necessarily a regional dialect, but one associated with youth, music cultures and diversity. My white kids are bi- or tri-dialectal: SSBE, Cockney, MLE. My black son, a few years younger, is MLE through and through, with access to SSBE for formal situations...
Very interesting insight. Thanks
He's wrong. What he describes as a London accent is what we South Londoners (Croydon) would call a Cockney accent. Very different vowel sounds from us.
Great breakdown. MLE deffo originated from the multicultural (predominantly Black) working class council estates in south London and was heavily influenced by Jamaican patois. I was born in the early 80s and privileged to have seen this go from a form of English that was once looked down upon and stereotyped to now being 'cool' and acceptable especially in sports and entertainment. I believe the rise in internet access in the 90s and Social Media in 00s has a big part to play in the spread of MLE.
Thank you for your insight.
MLE is definitely influenced by Jamaican patois where some Asian groups have adopted in East London etc
Thank you for this exposé 😊, the first time I’d met the idea of different U.K. English accents, was perhaps in 1342, when I was 11 or so 😂 and I’d watched a live representation of Cats and noticed each character had a different accent as well as personality, and somehow didn’t think it was a character trait but this specific artist’s accent, it just clicked for me right there and then 😊.
Today it’s quite interesting to see how accents we know evolve as well …
Interesting, thanks
If you were around in 1342, even Shakespeare would not understand you 😅
MLE is much more widespead now in all of London and beyond, than East London. It also has a bit of a posh twang a lot of the time.
You might like to do a survey on the increasing use of the random interjection 'like' and to a lesser extent 'wo-lah'.
MLE probably started in South London due to the large Jamaican community there and it spread out to the rest of London.
It did
Correct
@@nats2976 let me expand on that.bThere were kids who were white speaking patois in the 70's
Started everywhere in London. Harlesden Tottenham Hackney etc has more influences than 99% of south London. Be specific you mean Brixton. As Croydon Greenwich twickenham etc had no influence comparable to these communities outside of south London.
@@studentoflife3501 Brixton and Stockwell to be specific
Both had older Carribbean communities than both Hackney and Tottenham
Many years ago I started a new job in central London. I noticed the guy on the desk opposite me sounded just like my cousin. I later learned that he came from Rickmansworth and my cousin was just 4 miles away in Northwood, North West London.
I think there could me many more regional nuances to the London accent.
There are. This guy is reductive.
Great vid. Finally someone confirms what I've told students for ages about Cockney- it is indeed just the working class accent of the whole of London, never bought the Bow Bells nonsense. I'm from south west London and in the 70s you heard hard-core Cockney everywhere but at school we were told to speak properly, though not everyone was able to as the Cockney was so strong. I still wince when I have to say butter etc properly for students.
Thanks for you comment. very interesting to read your thoughts. Same for me at school they tried to teach me "proper" English - with varying success.
While the accents are similar, or maybe even practically identical, to be 'a Cockney' was still a reference to being from the East End. Unless you were regularly using 'Cockney rhyming slang', then what you would have been speaking in at School in SW London would have just been working class London English spoken by SW Londoners (as opposed to, say, working class English spoken by Cockneys, or Cockney rhyming slang spoken by Cockneys).
Agree, being a real from Cockney from the East End is one thing. I just meant that I don't see much difference from the working class London accent ( with the odd bit of rhyming slang) you hear or used to hear from all parts of London
11:32 quick distinction here for you to maybe research. Even amongst MLE speakers, the MLE speakers from East London have always been distinct to those from South or North London. For example comparing the rappers Wiley(East) & Dizzee Rascal(East) compared to Stormzy(South) & Giggs (South). There is a clear vocal difference, even proving there is in fact an East London cockney accent, one that even bleeds into MLE speaking East London natives.
Great content, many thanks!
Cheers gaffer !
Ave a good and proper weekend.
Stay mellow .
Brighton is a funny one. Very much like London, but subtly different. In between the two cities of London and Brighton, Surrey and Sussex accents are quite different... but are only just clinging on.
Yep and Kent.
I was born in Sutton, then in Surrey, but by the time I was a teenager, it became a London Borough. My accent is probably a local one to that area, as there were few people from other parts of the country living there. My sister was sent for elocution lessons and has a "posher" accent than I do, but not really SSBE.
I ended up working with Americans, Aussies and Kiwis for a number of years and when I returned to visit the UK, my cousin told me I sounded like an Aussie! I found that people in Bedford sounded more Londoner than I did and when I moved to the Brighton area, again the accent was strange to me and sounded different to that I grew up with. I am sure there are subtle variations between major towns across quite a small area.
Fascinating insight. My own view is that there needs to be more research on variations between small towns. There may well be differences but it's difficult to put your finger on it.
@@LetThemTalkTV I agree that these days, it would be far more difficult. I always think it is fascinating when you hear your own voice recorded. Our ancestors would never have heard their own voices.
An ex of mine was from Watford but her nan was from the East End. She had a proper gor blimey accent that she still had (this was late 90s) and she was rehoused there when bombed out in WW2. A lot of those places round there were highly populated with displaced East Enders during/after the war and a lot of these older villages/towns were massively enlarged as part of the post WW2 "new towns" planning. I used to live in Hemel (apsley), which was a weird mix of really old, old and new (ish). I can't speak for the other new towns in Hertfordshire and Essex but I assume the same thing happened. My ex's grandad was a local of Watford and had a completely different accent, she used to refer to it as "farmer" so I assume it was far more rural and had some "ooh aar" to it.
MLE developed in South London (home of the largest Afro-Caribbean & African communities) as much or moreso than in East London
Thanks for your comment.
I find it interesting listening to a lot of the old DJs from the rave/DnB scene, particularly old interviews. Goldie famously is not from London but his accent has changed a little over the years but he still has that brum twang mixed with MLE. I had family that were from Surrey (inside the M25) that sounded London to me but they ended up speaking differently to each other. The MCs in the scene mostly came from Dancehall so there was a lot of Patois mixed in but if you listen to them speaking now I wouldn't call it MLE but it has what I would class the genesis of it in there.
The older 2nd or 3rd gen black guys in London mostly just speak with the standard local accent they grew up in.
Then at some point say under 40s or under 45s you get everyone (not really related to any particular community) speaking with this new accent or dialect even.
West Indians had been here for decades by then so I don't know where it came from, possibly from the US and how some people started talking there as much as anything around here
@@InstrumentalsBeats 100% that was my first thought, it comes from Jamaican (with a bit of Indian ie Aks for Ask is originally Indian picked up by Carribbean kids) I don't know where he got east London from. In fact in the last 30 years it's been the preserve of the wealthy.
@@THuk44444 It's a mixture of Carribbean and Indian, with the Australian question mark thingy at the end of sentences. I very much grew up around it's genesis.
Very informative video. Thank you.
Brilliant. I grew up in a lower middle class North West London and it sounds similar to your accent. Are you from NW London too? Good advice on the use of terms RP and Estuary.Far more complex than one thinks. Well done
I grew up in a Hertfordshire new town in the ‘60s and ‘70s, long before MLE existed, but the working class accent was a lot like North London, as many moved there after the slum clearances. My brother lives in Wallington, on the London/Surrey border, and the accent down there is nothing like the same. “Ge’ ahht ov mahh pahhb”.
ie. much longer and extended vowel sounds.
Am a northerner, really enjoyed this
Re: North South East West London accents being different: It is definitely is a real thing. I hope someone does a youtube deep dive on the one but just as an instance think about how a South Londoner says the word South: 'Saaarf' - an extended 'a' sound and more of a pronounced 'r' sound than any other Londoner would use - so basically it has a hint of West country to it. Another example would be how the singer Jason Kay /Jamiroquai speaks - that is DEFINITY a West London accent and no one raised in any other part of London would speak like that.
I'm from Feltham. I haven't lived in the UK for years. I went back to Feltham 2 years ago and got talking to a guy outside Tesco and my teenage accent returned, which is completely different from 'fancy' west London or places like Kingston. I can't even fake that accent anymore. My point is yes there's absolutely differences between different regions of London
That still depends where in South London - most people from Wimbledon or Dulwich would not pronounce 'South' like that.
@@PhatInAHat Well yeah, I think the middle class southern accent remains pretty much the same - it's in more working class accents that have the different flavours.
I left London 20 years ago and could also detect some accent and slang differences between the London areas, lost it after a few years away from it. The London accent has probably become more homgenous now anyway.
Agree! They are (or were) different. I would love someone to investigate this and find and compare south/north/west/east London speakers to assess the differences. That would be so fascinating. And not just the most pronounced working class accents either.
So interesting.. And what a lovely voice your accent coach has
I'd love someone to do an explainer on the difference between the "posh" accent described here and what I'd call the "new" posh accent spoken by posh people in their Mid-30s and younger. For example Josh Berry (instagram comedian) and anyone on Made in Chelsea speak differently to Boris Johnson and Judy Dench. The first two would pronounce "sick" in a way that is somewhere between "seh-k" and "suh-k", where as Boris and Judy would pronounce the "i" and "u" as most other southerners would ("sih-k" and "suh-k"). Anyone agree?
For decades I've been working hard to become better with my RP. Now I hear that all the hardships I went through were in vain, it was SSBE all along. And nobody bothered to tell me before...
One acronym away from mastery.
Failed the 'clips' test.
You are right. Dame Judy Dench is from Yawk.
You referred to the incomplete glottal stop as in Bu'/Bu.
MLE however tends to sound more like the "incorrect" glottal stop. In fact it is pronounced more like bo (as in top) than bu
I'm an east Londoner and I always recognise it by the speed. It's faster than South or West and just a bit lower in pitch than North London
I can't claim to be a Londoner, though I have lived here over fifty years, having arrived with my family when I was nine in 1972. So, some reflections ...
** 'Estuary' I actually consider as a good catch all term. It doesn't have to be as specific as people living on the river, because it suggests an accurate picture of the post-war spread of the city's population as the original Old Kent Road mob headed out to Gillingham and Rochester, while the Mile End/Commercial lot migrated to Romford and the new towns. I sometimes joke that the vowel sounds have become ever more elongated, the further out families have moved.
Spare a thought, by the way, for the sad erosion of the original rural Essex and Kent accents, trampled underfoot by the fleeing Londoners, or should that be, in Kevin Livingstone parlance ... 'Lunnenners'.
** Now, this video has been fascinating because it has given me an insight into what I regard as a very changed London accent. In some quarters, I'd almost call it a parody of its former self, the obvious example being the 'Eastenders' patois. When I hear Danny Dyer, for example, I'm hearing trace notes of Dick Van Dyke. I'm not for a moment suggesting he's remotely inauthentic, but its an indication perhaps of later generations clinging to the lost sounds of their grandparents. Bob Hoskins was an early example of this phenomenon because he grew up in and about Islington, yet when my father once shared a dressing room with him, before his great fame, he claimed to be a son of Bermondsey. Well, you can't be both and I think his somewhat exaggerated 'sarf lunnen' persona was an act of rebellion from a strict lower middle class father who wanted to follow him into accountancy.
** So, if I say the London accent has changed, how was it different from when I arrived. One of the first things to say is that Londoners were far more reserved as a population than they have become. Way ahead of the mobile era, there were no loud conversations conducted on street corners, rows were confined to indoors, and commuters boarded buses and trains in the stoniest of silences. In shops, indeed, a 'thank you' at the till could be gotten down to a single syllable, 'q'.
I should say this was growing up in the North London suburb of Finchley which was a very genteel kind of a place, though not especially posh, or smart. Then, as far as I'm concerned, there was a a North London accent. I know this because of listening to my older brother. You see, coming from Ireland, our accents made us stand out terribly, and he hated that. He wanted to blend in and speak the same as his new mates when he'd be on the terraces at White Hart Lane. Hearing on the phone, we thought it was hilarious, though understandable; but yes, the North London access was softer and more restrained, compared to across the river or the East End. It was also informed by the different ethic groups of the times which were Italians, Greeks, Cypriots and Jews.
** A final observation. One of the big changes to the London accent has to be the sheer volubility of Londoners these days. Accents, it seems to me, are almost projected as a form of identity tag. Like a badge, or in some cases where it is like an alternative identifier. The phenomenon of what has been called 'jafakin' is an example, though I think that's on the wain now.
As for where the accent goes from here, I'd actually propose a return to elocution classes ... [INTERNET STANDS BACK AND SCREAMS IN HORROR] ... I say this because I think it is important for young Londoners who are heading into the work place to have the versatility of a more standardised and neutral accent. Equally, that they should be able to project with clear and articulate diction. It's nothing, by the way, to do with class. It's all about effective communication and connecting with as many groups as possible.
** PS. The Bow Bells business. Just about everyone needs to take a rain check on this one, because in the old city of London, there were some some 23 different churches. Usually with their own peel, but with all of them going at once (allowing for difference of clocks), could someone five miles away really have picked out Bow?
Born and raised inside the M25, still can't place your accent when you say "accent" 😂. Great video btw 🙏
It's all Mockney now thanks to film directors , writers and musicians since the mid twentieth century!
I think the London Underground station announcements are one of the last remnants of old RP. I swear she pronounces Warren Street as if it was Wharren Street (and of course pronounces the 'h' in the 'wh'). Must have been recorded a few years ago.
Agreed
When helping my SO to improve her English, and being towards the fringes of 'London accent', I was conscious of not dropping my 'H' and 'T', and distinguishing 'th' from 'f'.
I'm originally from NW London (Essex for years now) and no good at spotting where other London accents come from but I can spot a NW London accent straight off the bat. Don't know why but it's music to my ears, though I'm guessing I'm talking about an accent from 1950s to 2000s. Accents are now all over the place.
I’m exactly the same. I can’t explain why it’s so distinctive but as soon as I hear it, it’s so comforting to hear!
Having grown up in Devon and now living in Australia, I am fascinated by accents,. I remember someone telling me that Australians often using tripthongs instead of dipthongs in such words as sport which becomes spor-or-t.😀
Sadiq Khan's accent (which doesn't sound working class to me) sounded most like my Nan's accent - Nan was born in Warren Street, St Pancras, and grew up just around the corner in Whitfield Street. My grandfather, however, had a much "posher" accent and a very erudite vocabulary, despite being born to a working class family.
Really good video, I grew up in London in the late 70's/80's. The section on the London accent very closely describes the older people I knew growing up, however I would say I have lots of elements of MLE in my speach.
English is a very diverse language and accents are still very common. I love English for that.
Sadly in my native language (German), mostly old people still speak with an accent or dialect. It's dying out, especially in the cities.
Only in some rural areas of eastern Germany or Bavaria young people grow up with their local accent but that will probably be gone in one or two more generations.
I think that there is a definite south London accent that has a particular strained, nasal quality to it (e.g. Jools Holland, Ken Livingstone). Michael Caine is an interesting one because even though he is from Elephant and Castle his accent seemed to be very Cockney especially in the 60s, which may of course have been deliberate.
One of the best things about being a Londoner is that you are surrounded by millions of unique stories that go to make up this incredible mix. It can be exhausting but it’s never dull.
Yeah he's wrong. He's not distinguishing between the subtle differences in the vowel sounds. South Londoners do not pronounce house aas.
Btw in Ian Nairn's 1966 classic Nairn's London he talks about having a drink with real Cockneys in Fulham. Disregarding what Fulham represents today it seems that Cockney then just meant a working class Londoner - so looks like the idea of Cockneys being East Londoners might be quite recent if so it would be really interesting to find out where this idea came from. I have a feeling it my have emerged from the blitz and though obviusly 1966 is a long time after the Blitz Nairn's understanding if the term of the term would have predicted it.
I think it was a class perspective. Cockney meant sounding working class to other classes. But I was definitely brought up believing that it meant born within the sound of Bow Bells and still get slightly irritated when Michael Caine is described as a Cockney. To me he has a distinctive drawn out South London accent.
I'm 35 seconds in and I'm so looking forward to watching this!
I was but he got too much wrong.
I was born within the sound of bow bells. And Alan Sugar was clearly the answer. I speak standard southern with regional variations
Maybe there should be a collection of how railways announcers pronounce their station before being homogenized. My home town is Southampton and I’m long gone. But when I lived there the announcer said
Thi i sow am un shtashun
So interesting! Fascinating! I don´t know if you´ve already done one on the Mancunian accent. The other day I was listening to former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher and his accent is just wow. I couldn´t understand a single word of what he was saying lol
Cheers Gideon!
Glad you liked the video. Liam Gallagher simply doesn't make any sense. It doesn't matter what accent he speaks.
@@LetThemTalkTV lol🤣
Moved from Manchester to Croydon “ Do you want a game of Paul, Paul” ? What ! You mean Pool
Pretty interesting! This video has reminded me that this summer, at a swimming pool next to my parents' home in the south-east shore of Spain, a clearly brittish woman was playing with her kids (lots of Brits summer in that zone). During the game she was just counting something "one, two, three" and so on, and when she reached nine, she said something like "noin" instead. I was kind of shocked, it was completely unexpected. I had never heard that pronunciation. Now I've learnt that that may have been just Estuary accent...
I live right on the estuary, Southend-on-Sea. I can confirm we do say Nine like noin. It's subtle, but it's definitely more like noin than nine.
@@janegill8990 Thank you!
However, it's not clear, because from other youtube videos, I've realized that there are other accents that have this feature. Brummie and West country may be examples. West country I doubt in this case, because it was clearly a non-rotic accent, but Brummie could perfectly be... This "noin" was very clear, not subtle at all...
@angeljimenez3362 it may be because it's my accent that I think it's subtle 😂 I don't have a 'thick' Essex accent. It's not RP by any stretch of the imagination, although other people say I speak' posh'. To RP speakers I'm definitely very Essex. So, Maybe I'm just not hearing it as obvious as those who don't speak it?
I’m from the east end and was spot on with knowing number 2 was the east Londoner
I’d be hard pressed to define how I knew, but I think the east London accent is a little more raw/rougher around the edges than the other ones… really hard to explain but, I just knew…
Fascinating stuff. I am an accent nut and have always been interested in various accents including my own which is Cockney, although over the years it has been tempered by 'proper' english. I recall that my Grandfather who originated from Camberwell South London or Surrey (as it was back in the day) sounded like Uncle Albert from the Fools and Horses sitcom and he pronounced 'yes' as 'yus' His wife my Grandmother who was from Limehouse pronounced 'yes' as 'yurse.'
Re Cockney. My mum from Stepney, near Middlesex Street said they were 'bloody' cockneys. Closer to the docks, so poorer and rougher, they were 'bleedin' cockneys.
She was critiquing Shaw's Pygmalian's Eliza Doolittle's English. She held that she would have said 'bleedin' not 'bloody'.
I picked no. 3. No 2 (Lord Sugar)was an ironed-over East London accent.
I think it’s much harder to tell people apart these days. 30 years ago, when I first moved to London there was a very clear distinction between East-end and South London. Ray Winstone v Michael Caine, basically.
We still have milkmen here in Staffordshire.
I enjoy your video every time. Fantastic work! I respect & admire how much work and effort you put in making your videos. By the way, I am guessing that “innit “ will be used worldwide very soon because you don’t have to think about subject, its number, time, or positive/negative etc, which would be perfect for young people ! lol . Japanese language has “deshou(writing)” or “janai(verbal)” for the expression and you add them at the end of a sentence regardless of subject/time/number just like “innit”. 30 years ago I learned the expression and the grammar in English class. I hated that I had to use the brain even to the end. I still hate it! I cannot remember what I was going to do a minute ago. I cannot remember what things are called and call everything “that one”. Speaking a sentence and remembering all those variants feel like too much work for me.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked the video. Personally, I use "innit" to mean "isn't it" that's fine but when it's used to mean "aren't you", "can't he" etc that's beyond the pale.
The accents are similar but the words people use are different depending on where in London one is based.
I grew up easily recognising which borough where people were from a lot of the time.
Hi Gideon. From your voice I'm pretty confident that you spent a few years of your childhood in Camden, as I did 😉
Yes, you're absolutely right. Well done! From your writing style I'm confident you also spent a few years in Leeds. Am I right?
@@LetThemTalkTV I did indeed! Brilliant deduction.
I'm from inner South London and the number of different accents I hear are amazing. If I go down to the bottom of my street I'm surrounded by MLE and cockney, if I go up my street, just ten minutes from the bottom, it's all RP and posh accents. Maybe that's why my own accent is so weird...
I'm a high-ranking cadet in the Sea Cadets, therefore when I'm speaking to officers I sound INCREDIBLY posh and middle-class without actively trying. But when I'm on the phone to my friends or in a corner shop I'm bog-standard working class (my friends all say I sound posh but I think that's psychological, because I'm from the 'city paved with gold' and all that, and they're largely not. They probably think everyone lives in like Piccadilly lol!). And when I'm pissed off my cockney roots come majestically to the surface!
Fascinating video, thanks! :)
PS My dad's grandmother was apparently very aspirational-middle-class, and he says that she pronounced Highgate (near where she lived) like the Tube announcer, more like Higg't than Highgate.
@@polpotman No, I am a high-ranking cadet
(Or should that be no, I am an 'igh-rankin' c'det! Lolll)
:)
@@The_white_adonis London
I'm from the same area (birn and bred). My accents all over the place!
2:24 I didn't realize people said "oop" instead of "up" as far south as Oxfordshire.
yep thats the Oxfordshire farmer accent
Interestingly, Queen Victoria notes Lord Melboutne retained older pronunciations such as "gould" for "gold." This would be ca. 1840.
My cousin Charlotte who's always claimed to be a Cockney, was born in Queen Charlotte's hospital in (I think) 1956. Perhaps it was quieter in those days so that you could hear the Bow Bells from there. Of course not everyone is born in a hospital, as I wasn't.
You're right. My point is that this "born within the sounds of Bow Bells" thing no longer applies in the 21st century (or indeed any time after the 1960s).
Interestingly, there’s an unrelated phenomenon of people from Manchester, Nottinghamshire and parts of London alike pronouncing the ‘ou’ phoneme as ‘aah’.
Grew up in the East Midlands and didn’t make the connection until recently.
To say that we Londoners couldn’t recognise different London accents is unfair. I grew up in Streatham, south London . In our teens , in the60s, ‘going up West’ of a weekend we could sort of tell north London, eastenders, and south London accents apart.
If a linguist were to have asked us (unlikely) what were the differences , we would have had no idea how to respond.
IT WAS INTUITION! - Maybe north London had a more nasel Mediterranean and Jewish twang, East? Old school Dickensian cockney, Sawf London? A higher pitched whine. Ha! Trubba not.
I totally agree. I'm also a born and bred South Londoner and spent my formative years growing up in Battersea. I can hear different London accents, but couldn't describe how they differ! One thing I will say though is that as soon as you tell someone you're from South London, their first response is often to say, "Oh, SAAAF London". But I think the way we pronounce south is more like "saayuf", not "saaf".
Yea this is my experience too for the 90s and early naughties.
New Yorkers have similar accents between five boroughs and even within some boroughs and Noo Joisey.
The immigrants that brought them come from the same places as Londoners.
@@dannystaples2832 I can still tell a real sarf London accent (not MLE which we also have
@@andybaker2456 Now THATS a real south London accent...Saayuf. Exactly! Also, what about all the nutso rhyming slang no one can keep up with?!!
Thankfully I was brought up in Rural Surrey, not far from London. I learned to speak proper English. Very good when I worked abroad. Outside the UK foreigners learn "Oxford English" which is nothing near cockney London English
As an aside the bells from bow church were stored in Lincoln cathedral during WWII So many cockneys could not have been born within sound of the bells.
There was a time when the moment someone spoke you could hear what part of town come from, almost to the street.
Hey Gideon,
I don't suppose you could make us a lesson about * The historical present, also known as the dramatic or narrative present * could you by any chance as long it's no trouble of course .
I'll promise ya, I 'll be your friend till I kick the bucket.
Greetings from Casablanca 😉
I describe the last accent as people living I. Croydon who think they were born n the Caribbean. The young man on the Curry’s advert drives me mad.
I come from Lincolnshire and began teaching 40 years ago in Eastern Essex, I had a problem when trying to understand the children saying ball, wall etc. They fell about laughing at my "grass" and "class"
thank you! very interesting!
Pretty nice video, though I dont fully agree about the Cockney thing. Nowadays, as you say, the Cockney accent has somewhat transformed into the ‘Essex Accent’ which is distinctly different to any of the ones you presented in this video. You can hear different variants of it in people like Tommy Skinner (from The Apprentice fame) and the tiktoker ‘Beavo’
RP is a valid description of an accent without being a commentary about class.
Most people in Worcestershire can speak RP when needed.
When they don't have a country twang. Lol. I lived in Worcester for 12 years. Great place.
I do like your channel! However, with this one it would have been nice to get more and longer examples of cockney, MLE etc, rather than just middle class speakers talking about those accents. Keep up the good works 😊
- 'lower' middle class, please! There are 7 clips in the video. I have to be careful about longer clips as they could be subject to a copyright claim. You walk a fine line when using media in TH-cam videos. Thanks for you comment.
@@LetThemTalkTV I’d say you’re upper lower middle class (laugh emoji) !
I grew up surrounded by the Thames Estuary. On Canvey Island, where alongside the Cockney diaspora, there is now a community of Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews, who moved there from Stamford Hill in North London.
the more i hear this conversation the more i think about more things to say about it
100% agree that there is a generic inner london accent that only differs from each other is with age and dialect depending on industry and local communities sayings etc
dialect
not accents themselves
i’m from camden town but i couldn’t tell where another working class inner londoner comes from
apart from characteristic of an area , example
“i often can tell someone from south east london because of the speed …my experience
they speak faster “
to me ,east end stops at bow flyover but the accent doesn’t stop after mile end where the east end turns into East london
i ignore the famous map of the range
i cant see how for me , mile end is more working class inner london then camden town in accents
as the latter is nearly two miles closer to bow bells then mile end
like the yiddish influence of east end ,north londoners tend to speak the same accent but use more irish expressions
or finsbury park might have more greek turkish gestures
wether that’s to do with industry and community i don’t know
like wise east end …when i was growing up , they tended to use more jewish/ yiddish expressions
regardless of the background
which later grew to include all of london
i think home counties dialect is different but obviously related because they have normally parents or grandparents that came from london but it’s just not the same as inner london
i can tell someone from say “ beyond the north and south circular rd as they speak with a country twang
if they were born there
but can’t tell if someone’s from either shepard’s bush or wanstead if they have working class inner london accent
only by unique area characteristics as i said
same accent but different dialects
the influence of the accent will grow the more people move out but i feel the london accent will go altogether once my generation passed on as im in my 60s and am still living in somers town
the only people talk like me are the older generation
Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for your insight.
I think it's worth noting that even MLE is different depending on the region of london you're from - I guessed John Boyega was from south, which is roughly where I grew up, and it turns out he's from camberwell, but this is different from the MLE heard in East or even West london (probably because of local immigrant communities) - his MLE is different from the MLE I've heard from my south asian cousins in dagenham
"There are no maternity hospitals within earshot of Bow Bells and there hasn't been one since the 1950s" - What's your source on that assertion? Royal London Hospital on Whitechapel Road has a maternity ward and is only 1.5 miles away. The map you showed displays only the sound with the wind from the south west. A wind from directly west could stretch it to there, as even on that view it is only just out of range.
Plus the map is as of 2012 - quite a lot of the development of skyscrapers further east in the City like The Gherkin started in the 2000s, so it seems eminently believable that at least until the 90s the Royal London still fit the definition.
Ok thanks, that's a good point. Though even if you include it it's still a long way from the original 1617 quote about the sound of Bow Bells which would have carried 5 miles at that time.
There was the Maternity Hospital in Commercial Road
RP has morphed. If you listen to the late Queens early speeches you'll really hear it. That fellow Altricham said she sounded like a priggish school girl. Herr later speeches, say xman speeches becomes super mid class as the years wore on. I think it wd make an excellent dissertation to study the change.
Born and bred in London bording school at 10. Had to lose my London accent to fit in. Moved to Devon at 38. Leared a new accent. Now in Somerset, maybe I need to learn the Bristol L?
Bristol was originally called Bristow. But because of the L thing, it became Bristol.
what would London sound like 200 years ago ? To my family say far less african heritage of course, likewise indian subcontinent didnt have influence , but they were not Londoners - they came to what is now zone 3 from Farnham (Surrey) and East Grinstead (Kent) as well as Ireland and Suburban Essex. The Accent of Mitcham is different to Morden , which I found different to East Ham which changed when you got to Barking. The faster you speak though , and more to friends you revert to a London or local accent. I was born within the sound of bow bells (1850s) and I can do a good cockney accent ( not much rhyming though ). I worked for an Italian company that set up in Central London and they turned down a receptionist from Bow due to having a commoner accent of proper east end sparra
Portsmouth is the one that gets me. Sounds like London but not quite.
Urban farmer accent.
I think the use of the term RP should be still used. This is because I love accents and RP was (and still is to some extent) a socio-economic phenomenon to try and destroy the diversity of our language in the UK. It was a political tool. Like the Welsh Knot but more subtle.
Very interesting!