H) audiofile: Track 41_Cockney.mp3

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 483.

John (Pip) Sheringham

G) audiofile: BBC Voices_Cockney slang.ram

Born:18 November 1940

Lives: Coulsdon, Surrey

Time lived in area: More than 10 years

Occupation: Market trader/salesman

Pip gives a few examples of Cockney slang.

Transcript

PIP: Mine's not a Cockney accent. I can do you some what da'you call it slang INTERVIEWER: Go on PIP: pigs ear - beer, apple fritter - bitter, raise a laugh - scarf, gregory peck - neck, conan doyle - boil, Hampstead Heath - teeth, daisy roots - boots, laugh... gilly pegs - legs, what was it daisy roots - suit, no not suit, daisy roots - boots, Westland flutes - suits. I can't think of any more at the minute.

Cockney (Greater London) © Track 41

Steve: there was one of our blokes - one of his family - like cousins or uncles - or you know - in that range - had had an accident - and been taken to hospital - so he spent - I think most of his weekend without any sleep at all - at this hospital like - until he knew - that the person was going to be OK - anyway - come Monday morning - he decides to go straight to work - and - he comes to work - and say he has had no sleep at all and he's got a job to do in this house to provide - an extension phone - you know - and usually - it's - you run the cable upstairs into a bedroom - it's the usual place to have the phone - and - the bed - was fitted into slots in the floor - so he couldn't sort of - move it over. I mean - he could only get

two legs out of the hole in the floor and he couldn't - he needed two people to actually lift it and move it - so he laid across the bed - to - finish the cabling - and screw the - terminal box on the wall - and - not having had any sleep - he just sort of drifted off - and the thing is - the gentleman who let him in - but said he was going to work - and his wife would be in shortly - and she's come in - and not knowing the telephone man was there - I mean - to see a van outside - but she didn't - you know - sort of put two and two together - she's come in - she's gone upstairs - into the bathroom - and she's - taken her clothes off like - you know - and gone into the bedroom to get her housecoat - she was going to have a bath - and there's a strange man laying on the bed - snoring his head off - needless to say - our bloke spent about six hours in the nick - trying to explain what had happened - yes - spent six hours in the police station

Notes

bloke (colloquial) = man

laying = lying. Many southern British varieties conflate the two verbs lie and lay. the nick (general slang) = police station, prison

Description

The traditional word for the broad accent of London is ‘Cockney'. The origins of the word, which go back at least 700 years, are uncertain; one attractive theory is that it may come from an old tale of the fool who believed in a ‘cocken ey', a cockerel's egg. A Cockney is allegedly someone born ‘within the sound of Bow Bells' - that's to say where you can hear the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church in the East End of London. That definition would cut the number of Cockneys down to a few thousand, but ‘Cockney' is generally used to refer to all London, and to the speech of the Greater London area, which has a population of nearly seven million. Outer London, where most people speak with accents similar to London, covers a huge area and takes in 12 million inhabitants. Our speaker, Steve, is a telephone engineer from Lewisham in south-east London.

Cockney is non-rhotic with variable h-dropping. Steve, for instance, pronounces /h/ in hospital on two occasions but drops /hi in hole. Syllable-final stop consonants are strongly globalised. In medial and final position, Steve often replaces medial It/ by glottal stop [?] (e.g. © without any, move it over). Post-vocalic /l/ is very dark, sound­ing rather like [u] (e.g. © usual, terminal, wall). Many speakers replace /0 <3/ by /f v/, e.g. three feathers = [Trəi 'fevəz] (not heard in this sample). /j/-dropping can be heard in © knew.

Londoners use virtually the same vowel system as NRP, but the realisations of the vowels are very different. The strut vowel is front and open [a] (e.g. © come Monday), fleece and goose are extended glides [əi əu] (e.g. © needed, move). The diphthongs face, price and goat (e.g. © straight, like and phone) sound like NRP diphthongs price, choice and mouth. The Cockney mouth vowel (e.g. © house) is fronted and often raised ([a:] or [eə]), sounding rather like NRP square. Front checked vowels dress and trap (e.g. © bed, van, family) tend to be closer. Like NRP, but unlike most other British accents, Cockney has the palm rather than the trap vowel in the bath words (e.g. © bathroom).