I don't even look at the title anymore, if it's Simon Roper it must be watched

@spicychinchin6597

2 жыл бұрын

This is true

@cfrandre8319

2 жыл бұрын

Simon-who-must-be-obeyed!

My great grandmother was a genuine cockney born in the late 19th century; I never met her but my grandfather, who is a very good impressionist, often tells stories where he imitates her voice and what she used to sound like. When impersonating her he always trills his rs, with just one single short, tapped trill. It sounds something like "vely" instead of "very". I think trilling the rs was something very common in the cockney dialect and used in daily speech back then. Also my grandfather to this day says "orf" instead of "off", but he'd never say "clorf" instead of "cloth". Anyway thanks for another great video!!

@jamesrogers5277

2 жыл бұрын

Interesting re ‘very’... assuming we’re talking of the same pronunciation, I once saw it rendered as ‘veddy’ - which I find, curiously, just as convincing (the ‘d’ sound is quite soft - not over-pronounced). My Dad, as a joke, once suggested the spelling for ‘glue’ might be ‘dlue’... It shows how subtle, how hard to nail down, pronunciations can be!

@hi-ve1cw

2 жыл бұрын

@@jamesrogers5277 yes, veddy is also quite close to the pronounciation. It's sounds like a cross between an L and a D, which I suppose is what a tapped trill is

@darrenfrancis7146

2 жыл бұрын

George Cole does this in his portrayal of Arthur Daley the spiv.

@fionaterry-chandler8056

2 жыл бұрын

If you listen to Lord Peter Wimsey on BBC Sounds currently, the 1974 presenter is using RP/BBC English, while Dorothy L Sayers has Lord Peter using an aristocratic accent. This involves dropping the ‘r’ sound.

@jaojao1768

2 жыл бұрын

@@hi-ve1cw yes, that definitely sounds like a tap

As a true-born cockney myself, within the sound of Bow Bells, I have to mention that it is not Bow in east London which is referenced but St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. This is about place and history from a time when London is not what it is now or even in late Victorian times. I also have books (old) which refer to cockneys as 'Irish Cockneys' which, I believe, references the poverty of such immigrants as they congregated around the cheap housing in the east of a London in which Hackney was a distant village and once past Tottenham Court Road, you needed 'watchmen' with clubs to guard you on a walk up the hill to Islington because of the thieves and robbers in the lanes.

@forthrightgambitia1032

2 жыл бұрын

Interestingly the Irish are known to have their own forms of rhyming slang. I wonder if that had an influence on the cockney version.

@hi-ve1cw

2 жыл бұрын

@@forthrightgambitia1032 almost certainly! After the famine in ireland thousands of irish came to london and settled especially in working class areas of the east end

@Fiddling_while_Rome_burns

2 жыл бұрын

It's also worth mentioning in Medieval times Cockney didn't mean someone from London, it meant someone from a city, so people in other cities such as Lincoln and Bristol were called Cockneys too.

@RookhKshatriya

2 жыл бұрын

Cockneys use the Irish term 'Gobshite' far more than other English speakers, although their sense of it seems little different.

@Fiddling_while_Rome_burns

2 жыл бұрын

@@forthrightgambitia1032 London's a melting pot for over 1000 years you can find influences on the language not only from the rest of Britain but all over the world. What I find interesting is the North/South divide in language where the whole country is divided into two by certain terminology but London alone in the South uses the Northern English term. There are many examples of this.

As an Aussie who thinks our accent falls partway between Cockney and RP, I found this video fascinating. Thank you 🙂

@r.fairlie7186

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I agree. I’m from Sydney and lived in London some years ago and studied RP for the reason of personal voice clarity when speaking with foreigners. It was interesting to hear Simon actually explain about the voice clarity that comes with RP. I began watching Agatha Christie’s “Poirot” on TV and was amazed at Philip Jackson’s accent as Inspector Japp. It had an Australian familiarity. Then Hugh Fraser as Arthur Hastings spoke RP which was similar to numerous other Australians. One who’s on KZread is Prof. Alan Ebringer, originally from Adelaide. He’s an immunologist at Kings College, London and discovered a major link with a microorganism that causes Ankylosing Spondylitis. An interview with him on KZread shows the variation in English accents between him and his English interviewer. The video title is “The Truth About AS” but it’s better to use the complete two words tasks well as Ptof. Alan Ebringer. I haven’t watched this for a while now but I’ve just come from this video by Simon as well as the one by “RobWords” on our words that came from Old Norse. I can now hear some Scandinavian sounds when Ptof. Ebringer speaks.

@CaritasGothKaraoke

Жыл бұрын

I actually was going to suggest Simon look at Aussie accents, since the colonies were filled with transportees who would be mostly from London and mostly consisted lower class, because rich folks could pay the fines if they were even prosecuted at all. But this gets the point across better so I’ll just boost it.

@davidgraham952

Жыл бұрын

@@CaritasGothKaraoke You are of course aware of this history....www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/criminal-transportation/

@markavis7232

Жыл бұрын

I grew up on the Essex edge of London. People have sometimes asked me if I am from Australia; that's funny, as not so many people talk like me these days, but perhaps the Aussie accents are more familiar from TV.

@davidgraham952

Жыл бұрын

@@markavis7232 I always found it interesting that the Australian and New Zealand accents are so similar apart from a few vowels...

Hugely admire the intellectual honesty in all of these videos, keep it up mate

@garymitchell5899

2 жыл бұрын

Intellectual honesty? That doesn't make sense in this context. I think you mean something else.

@earlofainsdale

2 жыл бұрын

@@garymitchell5899 I might be misusing the phrase. I meant that he’s very objective in his analysis of phonology and when he does speculate he highlights it very clearly. Everything is very thoroughly cited and he gives links to sources which are quick and easy to follow and verify, and any biases he may have to one source or set of sources are always balanced with alternatives. What do you understand intellectual honesty to mean?

@FrozenMermaid666

Жыл бұрын

This isn’t InteI or honest, and the big terms admire and hugely and InteI and mate and honestly cannot be misused in comments etc, and must be edited out - big terms only reflect me THE only Queen / Miss / Duchess / Princess / Countess / Mrs / Empress / Lady / Star etc, and big / special / gemstone names like Crystal and Victoria / Vicky etc only reflect me, and all wom’n are the exact opposite of such terms / names, and technically one that has inteI would never promote impztrz and big term misuse in videos, as all big terms imply inherent superiority and importance and other unique / special qualities that hum’ns do not have, and, big terms like mr / lord / sir etc also only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, and also the other unsuitable terms / names that were misused by hum’ns and in video(s) etc!

@FrozenMermaid666

Жыл бұрын

But anyways, re accents and letters in pronunciation, maybe for some it is just a choice, because they think it sounds cooler or because it is easier for them to say it that way or because they don’t like certain sounds etc - like, for me it is a choice, so I never pronounce the TH sounds the way most do, because I refuse to put my tongue between my teeth because it makes the speakers look _ or funny esp if someone is staring at their face, so I usually pronounce it close to a D or close to a T, kinda like in Dutch - the Dutch got those sounds right (dat vs that / dan vs than / then) to be honest, so I prefer the Dutch version for such words that contain TH in English!

A lot of Kenneth Williams' affected comedy voices hark back to the late 1800s, what would have been his grandparents generation. Very interesting to listen to! I

@gerardmaroney3918

2 жыл бұрын

I was also going to mention Kenneth Williams, but mainly in regard to some of his skits and interviews where he flows from a 'Cockney' to a roughly RP 'posh' man. The actor Michael Sheen, in the Williams biopic, Fantabulosa, covers this to some degree, but for the real deal, find old pieces of Kenneth doing it. 😉

@fontforward

2 жыл бұрын

i thought the voice from the recording could have been kenneth williams!

@user-td4do3op2d

2 жыл бұрын

Could you provide a link to an example of this?

@lucie4185

2 жыл бұрын

Kenneth Williams was a great actor, I would reccomend listening to his old radio show performances for examples on how he would move his pronunciation between characters instantaneously.

@fontforward

2 жыл бұрын

actually, at about 4:50 in this video kzread.info/dash/bejne/l6SotJqac9Ledto.html kenneth starts singing the very cockney song from gus elen which simon analyzes edit: i have edited this comment/reply so many times, youtube is confusing me but i hope this works

I've never studied language so what the hell do I know, and like most (I assume) who come here am strangely fascinated by it, but I feel that each one of Simon's ideas and explorations are worthy of some sort of doctorate. This is certainly one of them

@Vitorruy1

2 жыл бұрын

Hearung this man talk about language is like meditation to me

Fabulous video. One point, Re: ‘Native cockney dialect learned from their parents’. My experience is that, as a native cockney, my siblings and I picked up our dialect from our peers rather than from our parents, who were Irish. We don’t have Irish accents. But we are cockneys, with a cockney vocabulary that our parents never used. Similarly with my cockney friends whose parents came to London from all around the world. I believe children don’t actually pick up their accents from their parents.

@DaGizza

2 жыл бұрын

It may depend on the culture and era. Universal education and schooling is quite a new thing when you look over world history. 300 years ago, children would've spent most time with their parents (especially mother), extended family (grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins) and probably other children in the village, as it still is these days in the rural and/or tribal areas of third world countries. With the advent of schools for everyone, it's much easier for children to pick up slang and dialects from their peers.

@yasashii89

Жыл бұрын

I picked up my accent from my parents.

@jmckenzie962

7 ай бұрын

I've always considered it indisputable that children don't pick up their parents' accents. Both of my maternal grandparents are Scottish and migrated to New Zealand in the early 60s, but all of their kids have kiwi accents. In NZ, if you grow up here you get the kiwi accent regardless of of what accent your parents have. But this is starting to change in the age where kids are increasingly being raised with near-unlimited internet access. My youngest brother is 11 years old and he has a lot of American-isms in the way he speaks - I used to get genuinely angry at him for this because I saw it as reflection of internet-induced brain rot. But I've heard other people his age speak in similar ways and I've come to tolerate it, especially since I started becoming interested in linguistics. I've come to realize that my beloved kiwi accent probably isn't being replaced outright with the globohomo KZreadr voice, but rather the American influences are morphing it into a new accent entirely.

There are some wonderful videos from the 60/ 70's of interviews with very old Victorians, both working and more privileged people. They are wonderful.

This video is excellent thank you. My grandfather, himself a speaker of RP, was the doctor on St Helena in perhaps the late 40s or early 50s for a while. He spoke of something regarding W/V - he said that St Helena was at that time populated by the ancestors of sailors, many of them cockneys who'd arrived in the C19th. He had been astounded one evening at the pub when a farmer left the pub saying that he needed to feed his pigs a barra' of wine - it confused him that they would be serving barrels of wine to pigs, whereas it was in truth a wheelbarrow of vine. My grandfather had thought that the W/V switch had been an influence of east end Jewish immigrant accents on this C19th cockney remainder.

@simonroper9218

2 жыл бұрын

This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing - it's great to have a snippet of personal experience about this :)

@billswifejo

2 жыл бұрын

I think you mean 'descendents' rather than 'ancestors'.

@harl4227

Жыл бұрын

@@simonroper9218 who’s the old man in the video

Your analysis is fascinating. Being Australian we quite clearly hear the difference between our accent and the subtlety different London Cockney which flattens the 'a' where we lean on it and drag it out. Be interesting to get your take on which represents the older form of C ockney and which has diverged more from the late 18th century, early nineteenth London version. I suspect the Australian has had a more international admixture, but both share a great deal of Yiddish slang from the London criminal gangs.

As a Londoner, I spent half the time saying all the words out loud to find out how I say them lol. I'm guilty of pronouncing the 'th' letters as 'f' (funda and lightning) and the 'er' at the end of words as 'a' eg. muvva, farva, sista, bruvva 😁. Great video and very interesting.

@youejtube7692

2 жыл бұрын

But innit funda an' lightnin'? :)

@chexitout

2 жыл бұрын

@@youejtube7692 😁 it is indeed!

@WTF3585

2 жыл бұрын

not too late to fix that ! lol

@chexitout

2 жыл бұрын

@@WTF3585 What, the comment or my accent? 😆😛

@WTF3585

2 жыл бұрын

@@chexitout the accent, I was just poking fun, I'm not from Blighty myself as you can tell from my name 😉

Listen to Michael Horden's role as badger in the 1983 Wind in the Willows for another example of an upper-class RP accent that omits the G sound from the end of "ing" words. I always wondered why he did this.

@qwertyTRiG

2 жыл бұрын

Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayer's novels is another written example.

@herrbonk3635

2 жыл бұрын

As a Swede, I didn't even know there was a g-sound in the spelling "-ing". Perhaps because we won't get any g-sounds from that spelling in our native language, or because we were taught RP at school? EDIT: But after seing the video again, I realise I misinterpreted your 'G' (as we call that sound an ng-sound in our language).

@qwertyTRiG

2 жыл бұрын

@@herrbonk3635 There isn't really. It's not /ng/; it's /ŋ/.

@herrbonk3635

2 жыл бұрын

@@qwertyTRiG Yes, exactly. But I was also fooled by the fact that some brits (according to my swedish ears) actually add a hard g at the end in those positions, i.e. after the /ŋ/ (or what we call an ng-sound, distinct from n+g said separately).

@qwertyTRiG

2 жыл бұрын

@@herrbonk3635 I was in a discussion on this recently with someone else, who pointed out that some speakers seem to say /ŋk/.

EXCELLENT presentation, Young Sir Simon ! I think about such matters all the time, so to find you have addressed them in one of your fine presentations is icing on my cake. Thank you, thank you. Greetings from the Queen's Colonies here in America. Long Live RP.

Hi Simon. I want to respond to your statement that the dialects of SE England don't show any influences from outside of Britain. In general, I think that's right, but there may be an exception. That is the loss of rhoticity. A similar phenomenon (loss of postvocalic rhoticity) has affected many of the languages ringing the North Sea (English, some varieties of Dutch, most varieties of German and Danish). Non-rhoticity is also a feature of the regional dialects of eastern New England (Rhode Island, eastern and central Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine). This region was settled in the 17th century mainly by colonists from East Anglia, the East Midlands, and Lincolnshire. Meanwhile, loss of rhoticity in middle-class London followed (though how closely I'm not sure) the ascendancy of Puritans from East Anglia and the East Midlands. This could have started as a middle-class phenomenon during and after the English Civil War, when this accent could have become fashionable among younger members of the London middle class. For members of the working class, it could have had attraction as a prestige pronunciation. Or nonrhoticity could already have been present in the working class. (See below.) The prevalence of this accent in London, and intermarriage between the aristocracy and wealthier members of the middle class (who would have attended public schools together) could have made a version of nonrhotic speech fashionable in the upper classes with the growth of London and its merchant elite in the 18th century. But as to how it all started, I strongly suspect the influence of the Hanseatic League and North Sea trade in the 15th-16th centuries. The Low German of the Hanseatic traders profoundly influenced Danish and the other mainland North Germanic languages. There are a lot of loanwords from this source in English, too. Surely, lots of sailors from North Sea ports (including London) would have picked up some North German and even sailed on Hanseatic ships. This is completely speculative, but I think it's suggestive that nonrhoticity seems to have radiated west from the North Sea coast of England.

While you were breaking down the 1800s Cockney vowel phonology, I couldn't help but notice that it seems to share a lot of features with General Australian (likely owing largely to the forced migration of convicts during the 19th century). Since there are so few speakers of the Cultivated accent in Oz, you might say Australia is what a country that's adopted Cockney as the "received standard" looks like :)

@yochaigal

2 жыл бұрын

Where would Ocker fall into this, then? Very interesting.

@FionaEm

2 жыл бұрын

I'm Australian and I disagree. I think our accent falls partway between Cockney and RP. Our vowels aren't as exaggerated as they are in the Cockney dialect, and we don't drop our t's in the middle of words like better, letter etc.

@donkeysaurusrex7881

2 жыл бұрын

Never been to Australia, but I had read more or less this though the author noted there were sort of three levels to the Australian accent. It also had the weird feature that women tended to shoot for the most upper class level of the accent most of the time which meant they eschewed a lot of slang and Australianisms in favor of something they perceived to be the way things were said in the UK while men generally shot for the lowest level characterized by the thickest accent and heavy usage of local words with both sexes perceiving that to be the proper way for a masculine Australian to talk while foreign English speakers from the UK or States were not viewed as less manly despite speaking an even more “extreme” form of the way perceived to proper womanly speech.

@randolph795

2 жыл бұрын

@@FionaEm I am from near to London and remember visiting Chicago with my twin brother in 2000. On more than one occasion the locals thought we were Australian. Probably because we didn’t talk posh like English actors they would have been familiar with.

@alittlepeaceandkarma

2 жыл бұрын

A lot of people say the Aussie accent is cockney with the mouth closed.

Gus Elen reminded me very much of my Great Grandmother who was born in 1879. West London so not a "proper" cockney, but working class to her bones. Had 14 kids and lived in poverty, but survived til 1984, when I was 11. This really brought back memories of how the elders of my family used to sound.

I teach this stuff to my advanced learners of English class. The stuff about sociolects is fascinating to foreign learners...and I often base my lessons around Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and My Fair Lady).

@FrozenMermaid666

Жыл бұрын

I am the only Lady / Fair Lady / fair being and the only Shaw, and words like ber and ponds also only reflect me, and such terms / names cannot be misused by hum’ns in names / yt names and in comments, and must be edited out and changed - big terms only reflect me THE only Queen / Miss / Duchess / Princess / Countess / Mrs / Empress / Lady / Star etc, and big / special / gemstone names like Crystal and Victoria / Vicky etc only reflect me, and all wom’n are the exact opposite of such terms / names, and there should be no big term misuse in videos or in comments, as all big terms imply inherent superiority and importance and other unique / special qualities that hum’ns do not have, and, big terms like mr / lord / sir etc also only reflect my pure protectors aka the alphas, and also the other unsuitable terms / names that were misused by hum’ns and in video(s) etc, but are too many to list them all, so I only list(ed) / pointed out the most important!

@FrozenMermaid666

Жыл бұрын

But anyways, re accents and letters in pronunciation, maybe for some it is just a choice, because they think it sounds cooler or because it is easier for them to say it that way or because they don’t like certain sounds etc - like, for me it is a choice, so I never pronounce the TH sounds the way most do, because I refuse to put my tongue between my teeth because it makes the speakers look _ or funny esp if someone is staring at their face, so I usually pronounce it close to a D or close to a T, kinda like in Dutch - the Dutch got those sounds right (dat vs that / dan vs than / then) to be honest, so I prefer the Dutch version for such words that contain TH in English!

That trilled R sound became diluted somewhat and was still very evident in R.P. and Cockney speech throughout the twentieth century - in fact John Cleese uses it in that parrot sketch clip when he says ‘Parrot’. BBC news readers used this subtle, almost single trill much of the time. Catherine Tate always uses it in her cockney Nan character. If you listen to her as Nan she copies how cockneys used to sound like, with the older vowel sounds and that single trilled R is there if you listen for it.

@hi-ve1cw

2 жыл бұрын

I've also noticed that a lot of shakespearean actors trill their rs when performing, even young actors still do this. I'm not sure if this is some kind of tradition or something trained into them at RADA, but it's interesting to hear

@jus_sanguinis

2 жыл бұрын

Its weird to hear such vibrating "r" sound in 20 century Southern England. Btw as I know, French people untill 19 or 20 century also pronounced "r" in normal way like most of the languages in the world.

@farmbrough

2 жыл бұрын

The Parrot Sketch man is supposed to be a cockney who has 'corrected' his speech, isn't he?

@CharlieFarrow

2 жыл бұрын

John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) trills his r's all the time in song and speech. "I am an antiChrrrrist"

@vickywitton1008

2 жыл бұрын

She sounds like a music hall singer, I love her character!

fascinating content Simon, one of the few KZread presenters worth watching. thanks for sharing all your hard work.

I havent visited East Lancashire for many years but always loved to listen to the richness of the rolling rrs heard from Chorley onward. My (Cockney) mum tried to imitate the accent, that she revelked in, with absolutely no success. I now live in Spain where rs are rolled and a (Glasgow) Scottish friend is praised for his Spanish pronunciation as he naturally pronounces his ts and ds clearly and rolls his rrs.

@leod-sigefast

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I lived in Spain 6 years and really had to work hard on the accent to get understood. Thankfully I can roll my R's no problem! Just luck I think because my mum can't roll Rs for love nor money. Coming out as 'dh, dh', dh' ...hahah! Yes, that muted 'd' and 't' sound is veeerry important in Spanish pronunciation and something I noticed straight away, when trying to imitate Spanish. The strong plosive English 'd' and 't' can really mark you out as an English speaker...something I tried to get away from while in Spain. Anyway, nice story about the east Lancs. accent, I am from Greater Manchester and have a kind of standard mild 'manc-y' accent but if you head a bit north of Manchester City, up towards Bolton, Oldham, Blackburn, Darwen, Chorley, etc. you get some really weird and wonderful old Lancashire accents. I remember a lecturer at Uni (quite a young guy) who had the strongest Lancashire accent that it would confuse a lot of the southern students. You know, the one that pronounces 'where' and 'square' like: 'wurr' and 'squur' or 'woor'/'squoor'. Long may they last, I say!

I first found your channel in early lockdown (March 2020) and I’m so delighted to see how much it’s grown. For some reason knowing so many people around the world are also interested in this stuff gives me such a warm and fuzzy feeling! 😊

The lot-cloth split is still in place in American accents that don't have the cot-caught merger.

@hbowman108

2 жыл бұрын

Lot shifted in the Great Lakes and some western areas to something like RP bath, this resisting the cot-caught merger. While in NY City, cloth resisted merging by diphthongization.

@ReidMerrill

2 жыл бұрын

@@hbowman108 Where I am, in Southern Michigan, the caught vowel is often somewhat rounded. It sounds like it is in-between the RP Bath and Lot Vowels.

Gus Elen, who I'd never heard before, sounds uncannily like Wilfrid Brambell's Albert Steptoe in 60s/70s UK sitcom Steptoe and Son. Or perhaps that should be the other way around. Brambell is unlikely to have had 1900s Cockney as a natural accent, being born in Dublin, and generally affecting something resembling RP when interviewed, if that wasn't his natural accent.

@johnr3552

2 жыл бұрын

Speaking of Steptoe & Son, Harold Steptoe's speech exhibits the labiodental approximant that Simon mentions. Not sure if this is a feature of Harry H Corbett's normal speech or part of the accent he puts on. It seems he didn't grow up anywhere near London so the accent was put on to some extent.

@harryeast95

2 жыл бұрын

I'm hardly familiar with Steptoe and Son myself but I immediately thought of it too.

@vickywitton1008

2 жыл бұрын

I thought that, it's the whiny tone that Albert uses!

Thank you, as always, for a fascinating video. I may have missed your point, but many of my older upper-class (if I can use that term) friends and acquaintances born in the first twenty years of the 20th century would drop the 'g' in such words as 'skating' and'furnishing', and someone who said 'awf' for 'off' marked themselves, to me at any rate, as having been, or pretended to have been, at Oxford. In former times I would have called the whole, to me, who speaks RP, an 'upper-class drawl' i.e. somewhat of an affectation, since certainly not all such speakers did so. Certainly, one of my friends, who was a London RP speaker, having been at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, born in 1906, would almost spit blood if anyone spoke like that!

Another excellent video. Thank you for all you do, Simon!

The fact that RP and cockney ended up forming a sort of dialect continuum in recent years (in terms of 'levels' of the so-called Estuary English) is suggestive in itself. Also, I remember as a child ambiently overhearing episodes of East Enders. The older cockney characters in that definitely used the 'orf' pronunciation that I thought was an eccentricity of the characters but may have been a genuine cockney feature.

@fuckdefed

2 жыл бұрын

IIRC Dot Cotton said it

@MikJFr

2 жыл бұрын

I suspect (uncorroborated) that I myself use a subset of this dialect continuum, having been born in a mid- to downscale environment but having later gone to a 'public school'. (I had no parental guidance, my parents weren't native English speakers at all.)

@compulsiverambler1352

2 жыл бұрын

It sounds like there was always a continuum, just as there was always a class continuum. Someone has left a comment that the John Cleese parrot sketch accent was their father's accent, who was lower-middle class. The same happens between RP and other regional accents, now that RP isn't limited by geography. 'Soft' regional accent varieties really just refer to points along a continuum from the regional accent at that time to whichever version of RP is influencing speech at that time.

@forthrightgambitia1032

2 жыл бұрын

@@compulsiverambler1352 True, and in every across the UK. For example in the recordings of J.B. Priestley you hear someone who was taught RP but has hints of his original Yorkshire accent that come through.

@garymitchell5899

2 жыл бұрын

Erm EastEnders is a drama and not all of the actors had cockney accents in real life, so I'm not sure using it as a source is wise.

Lord Russell's pronuncation of the 'long i' diphthong is, a least to my ear, the same one as Edward VIII used in his abdication speech; listen there particularly to the famous passage where he says 'or discharge my duties as king as *i* should wish to do'. Edward was often accused of affecting Cockney traits, but that seems rather to be an example of an old-fashioned RP usage that had survived better in Cockney. As a Canadian I still use that pronunciation for the diphthong, but only before voiceless consonants: e.g,. in 'ice' but not in 'eyes' or the suffix '-ize'.

Listening to the music hall artiste's performance, I am reminded of Wilfred Bramble playing Albert Steptoe on TV in the 1960s and '70s.

I have for years being saying that RP (the type of English I speak) is an artificial affectation. I myself learned it at school, and by imitating readers and narrators I loved, such as Richard Burton, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Derek Jacobi. However, I stand corrected, thanks to the information in this highly informative and very enjoyable video. I am exceedingly grateful for your excellent work. I am a very amateur 'dialect-phile' and I enjoy imitating (badly) in the reading of stories and creation of characters. Therefore, your output is a goldmine for me. I wish I had the means to show my gratitude. Thank you.

Fabulous channel. I find these vids really interesting, especially moving from the north-east to the south central area and having a partner whose gran is 87 and from a working-class cockney background. Edit. I also wanted to mention Alastair Sim, the Actor, whose accents in certain performances were always slightly unexpected in their pronunciation maybe harking back to an earlier period.

Fantastic as always, Simon!

Phenomenal video. I'm so glad you mentioned the "price" vowel differences at 21:44, because it's something I've noticed for long when listening to British actors who speak in RP. For instance, you can hear it in Anton Ego's "I don't like food, I love it" speech in Ratatouille. That small detail, along with his trill, stuck out to me multiple times, and I could never find any answer on why certain RP accents seem to have these unique sounds. Fascinating video.

Absolutely fascinating, Simon! What an incredibly interesting video. I’m from Northern Ireland where many accents exist.

Just found this fascinating site and am intrigued by my own linguistic patterns. I was born in 1950s London to Irish immigrant parents who spoke Irish - and, as far as I was aware, my five siblings and I endeavoured to speak 'correctly' as taught by RP teachers. I was aware of different pronunciations from a very young age since my mother would send me off to the shops for something giving me her pronunciation, only to find that the shop keeper didn't know what I meant; southern vowels were always stressed, and sometimes exaggerated and we always had 'trouble' with the TH sound, sounding, for example, the Thames as Tames - not sure why. Finding myself the butt of Aussie jokes when I travelled to Australia, I discovered that, to their ears, I couldn't say the R sound. I generally found, that others were fascinated by the way I spoke and I would be asked to repeat certain words ... all good humouredly and very close to Michael Palin's Life of Brian film. I still have a problem with the R sound and haven't been able to correct it. One other thing - I also drop the G with the participle. And with all that - I'm told I have a very 'posh' accent!

Simon. Many thanks for such interesting programmes. !!! Warren

Can't believe you addressed my long-standing question about Dickens. Thank you!

The phrase "huntin', shootin', fishin'" was a widespread description of the pastimes of the English upper classes, and the dropped 'g's were an essential part of the parody. I wonder if they connoted a 'relaxed' version of what came to be RP- the posh at play.

@EnigmaticLucas

2 жыл бұрын

From what I've read, the standard pronunciation of the present participle ending was originally /ɪn/ despite being spelled "-ing" and the modern standard pronunciation of it (/ɪŋ/) was originally a spelling pronunciation

@davidallen299

2 жыл бұрын

I just wrote something similar aboive. Yes, I think the striving grammar school boys of the mid-/late-20th century rather looked down on the lazy/ leisured upper-classes and their bad English too.

Thank you for creating fantastic free content

Love your programs. Can you say or investigate the following? The so-called Boston accent is actually a coastal accent from Maine to Connecticut and at one time went 100 miles west. It's dying. It's origin is in East Anglia and was brought by the 20000 settlers who came over in the 1630s/ it was the Norfolk Whine become the Yankee Twang. They dropped their 'r' and adopte a broad a. Upper class New Englanders did nothave the twang vut spoke in a very measured way that sounded mid-Atlantic, but was native to NE. It was the posh version of the Twang.

This was so interesting, and I loved every second of it!

I am a genuine cockney, born in Whitechapel. I have lived in Thailand for more than 30 years and both my British/Thai kids speak loads of cockney slang! Got to keep the old lingo alive.

Do you realize that your channel has nearly 11million views. Thank you for being so easy to watch-and-learn from.

Excellent video by Simon again.

Incredible and interesting video! I enjoyed every second!

Fascinating the comparison to John Cleese in "The Parrot Sketch" because after hearing the Bertrand Russell clip I immediately thought the "Mr Cholmondley-Warner" and "Greyson" characters from the series of 1930/40s-public-information-film-style sketches in "Harry Enfield's Television Programme". Enfield's "Grayson" character in particular sounds just like the Russel clip.

On 'short' o versus 'aw' in such words as 'coffee', 'toss' and 'cloth': 1. The 'aw' pronuciation is alive and well in the U.S. on the east coast, in the cities of "Noo Yawk' and 'Bawston' and all points between. There, however, it also appears in 'gone' and 'dog' and similar words (eg. long). This suggests that, towards the end oft 18th century, the 'aw' pronunciation enjoyed considerable prestige in London, which led the colonial elite to adopt it. 2. A whole long comic rotutine in 'The Pirates of Penzance' by Gilbert and Sullivan depends on pronouncing 'often' and 'orphan' alike as 'awf'n'. 3. I've read an anecdote about John Buchan, 1st Lord tweedsmuir, supposedly visiting an uncle in England who at breakfast asked him 'Who says cawffee?" and responding '(as a patriotic Scot) 'I say coffee myself, but i won't have any'. But that retort may be misattrbuted, since it was Buchan's son, the 2nd Lord Tweedsmuir, who had an Engish uncle. 4. The modern disappearance of aw from this group of words in RP has affected words that originally had aw in everyone's speech, such as 'Austria' and 'Austraiia'. That suggests that it was not simply a matter of one group of speakers adoping a pronunciation that another group was already using: either we have to do with a new phonetic change that shortened the 'aw' sound in all words in cerain contexts, or else the speakers who gave up aw for 'short' o went too far and applied the change to words that had not histiorically had 'short' o at all.

@KnuckleHunkybuck

2 жыл бұрын

Don't Bostonians pronounce the "Bos" in "Boston" more like something between "bastion" and "boss"? I know they do pronounce some words like "cawfee", but I'm not sure "Boston" is one of them.

@williamcooke5627

2 жыл бұрын

@@KnuckleHunkybuck As I rcall, one hears both 'Bawston' and 'Bahston'.

@KnuckleHunkybuck

2 жыл бұрын

@@williamcooke5627 I've never been there myself, so I'm just going by the little exposure I have had to actual Bostonians. I've heard there are differences between a Boston accent and a Worcester accent, and there will be all kinds of slight variation among individuals, so I have no doubt that you are correct.

@patriciacarter9293

2 жыл бұрын

Interesting. My Grandmother, a working-class cockney born in the 1880's and brought up in Clerkenwell, always pronounced 'coffee' as 'cawfee'

@theanderblast

2 жыл бұрын

Was going to comment on the G&S Pirates joke about orphan and often, you beat me to it!

Love your information. Dialects have always fascinated me and how the variations came to be. I was born in Jersey City NJ and grew up in NYC, (Been told I have a strong accent) lived all over the country and heard so many different variations in dialect. But there were a few places in the rural Carolinas where I have had to ask the person I was talking with to repeat when they were saying because I could not understand what was being said.

I spent the first 6 years of my life (1981-1987) in South East London & had a good old cockney accent (evidenced in the family video footage of my 5th birthday party in which I sound like a female Artful Dodger!). We then moved to Dorset, where I’ve lived ever since. I can vividly remember being told I was reading the word “tail” wrong & my teacher getting frustrated with me because I was getting it wrong every time. The 7 year old me couldn’t work out why I was getting it right at home but not at school. Turned out the teacher thought I was saying “towel” instead of “tail”. This little cockney sparrow was pronouncing it “taaw” as in the first part of “ouch”. I don’t think it took long for my accent to disappear!

One of my Maternal Great Great Grandfather's came from Poplar in the East End of London .He emigrated to New Zealand about 1861.I would have loved to have heard his Cockney way of english back then.

Absolutely fascinating, as always, thank you

As a Northerner, I can confirm you are correct about the different vowel pronunciation from the South eg. bath, cast, tap, fast. :) really enjoyed the video. Please do more North/Midlands based videos!

You are very well spoken Simon.

Nice. This really throws my Gran's posh voice when answering the phone into sharp relief.

I really appreciate your content. Thank you.

Great video! Well done. Regarding the dropped g, the *"huntin', shootin', fishin'"* set, so associated with the stereotypical retired colonel, comes to mind. I had always imagined this to be an army affectation or quirk of pronunciation but of course army officers were very often recruited from the ranks of the upper class.

Very interesting; In some ways this let's me relate back to the way that my grandparents spoke, both of whom were born in the 1880's. Being Canadian, it's interesting to note that it wasn't until my early teens, when a friend pointed it out, that I realised that they had accents (Brighton and Glasgow) and I started hearing it...

Always enjoy your videos, thanks. Thinking about the reference to Cleese, I recall an interview in which he related as a child, listening to the Goon show on his transistor radio. Which makes me think of Sellers, a master of accents, and his rerecording of Harry Champion's 'any old iron', a cockney musical hall song by Champion, first recorded n 1911.FWIW

One pair of words that can be easily confused with a fronted th is death and deaf. As witnessed by the BBC announcer introducing "Deaf in Paradise".

Have you seen either the Fast Show “We’re cockneys!” sketch, or Eddie Izzard’s stand-up routine on this subject? They both comment on the phenomenon of cockneys being presented in film and TV as sounding remarkably posh. I wonder if this actually reflects what you’re saying here - that late 19th/early 20th C cockney shared some features with RP, and sound particularly similar to the modern ear.

The flattening of /au/ to /a:/ is also a feature of the dialect of Pittsburgh, aka the Galápagos Islands of American English - so they’ll say “downtown” like “dahntahn.” Also mixing up v and w occurs in Bermudian English.

23:06 the "often-orphan merger" appears as part of a joke in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance", from 1879: General: Tell me, have you ever known what it is to be an orphan? Pirates: (disgusted) Oh, dash it all! King: Here we are again! General: I ask you, have you ever known what it is to be an orphan? King: Often! General: Yes, orphan. Have you ever known what it is to be one? King: I say, often. Pirates: (disgusted) Often, often, often. (Turning away) General: I don’t think we quite understand one another. When you said “orphan”, did you mean “orphan” - a person who has lost his parents, or “often”, frequently? King: Ah! I beg pardon - I see what you mean - frequently. General: Ah! you said "often", frequently. King: No, only once. General: (irritated) Exactly - you said “often”, frequently, only once.

@SirChris314

2 жыл бұрын

yeah but who's on first?

@sarahpassell226

2 жыл бұрын

@@SirChris314 Will Simon get this joke? (Abbott & Costello routine)

@robinpayne125

2 жыл бұрын

Looking elsewhere in G&S, I spotted a case in which "thaws" is rhymed with "because", which would not work with modern pronunciation patterns.

@johnedwards3760

2 жыл бұрын

@@robinpayne125 Several people I have met from Warwickshire, including a student contemporary of mine born early 1950s, pronounced "because" that way.

@helenpotts2360

2 жыл бұрын

@@johnedwards3760 as someone who grew up in North and mid Warwickshire for the first 10 years of my life in the seventies I do this too. I also roll my “r’s” especially when annoyed/stressed which drives my kids (early teens and younger) bonkers. Where I lived seemed to be on the boundary for long and short vowels too, most people were consistent in one or the other for the words where they feature but a real mix amongst speakers of the same age. RP was the natural local accent and posh people had quite a different accent more akin to the Queen’s early Christmas messages. Imagine my surprise when I moved to Merseyside in the early 80’s and was told I “talked posh”. My kids seem unable to pronounce the th sound and for them and their contemporaries f seems to be the order of the day. Reminds me of soft mutations in Welsh. The lovely Worcestershire accent I used to hear in older residents when I moved to my current town has been entirely replaced by a West Midlands influenced RP for my generation which has mutated into West Midlands/Estuary/roadman mashup for my kids that has me boggling at how quickly linguistic changes can occur.

I’m fascinated by the Ruh changes. Being American, I use that sound in words that my British friends do not. I read somewhere awhile back that our founding fathers sounded more like modern American speakers and I could never understand how that could be. But based on some things you mention, it seems that the Ruh sound was still included in words more commonly around that time.

@youbamax

Жыл бұрын

Stop coping

Fantastic. Thank you Simon.

Fascinating Simon!

Thanks Simon for another great video. I’ve lived in Stepney in East London my whole life. I’ve been learning Spanish for a few years now and long ago gave up trying to roll my rs in words like perro. It’s just never going to happen. I’ve also avoided say “rank” as well; especially when I’m putting men in preference order for obvious reasons.

@58andyr

2 жыл бұрын

I have the same issue with the Spanish hard double r sound. 10 years in Spain and it hasn't improved! The strange thing is I use the phonetic alphabet when listening to many of Simon's great videos but never when attempting to understand Spanish vids!

Learnt alot about my accent, another fascinating video

you should probably add the patreon link to your descriptions because it's pretty hard to find lol

enjoyed this one very much

Love your videos!

Another extremely interesting video. I was interested in the bit about dropping the 'g' on 'ing' words. Wasn't there a controversy recently about a BBC Olympics presenter getting told off for dropping her g's by someone who considered himself posh? He said something like he expected better of a BBC presenter.

@EnigmaticLucas

2 жыл бұрын

I remember reading somewhere that /ɪn/ used to be the standard pronunciation and /ɪŋ/ (the modern standard pronunciation) used to be a spelling pronunciation

I am in my fifties now. My Great Grandad died in the early 80s, and he was in his eighties when he died. I can tell you for sure, Simon, that neither he nor my Great Nan, who were both from the east end of London, ever rolled their 'r's' in their everyday speech.

Extremely helpful - thank you!

Love hearing Bertrand Russell speak.

Gus Elen’s ‘If it wasn’t for the ‘ouses in between’ has any number of trilled ‘r’s and begins with, ‘Oh it is a wery lovely gardin…’. I was born in St Thomas’s Hospital which is, if the wind is in the east, within the sound of St Mary-le-Bow’s bells.

Bloody marvellous! 👏👏👏

As an American I find this discussion fascinating. It's rather fascinating to hear the comparisons of north english and south english and how we kind of sound like a mix of all of them.. for example we definitely have the foot-strut split which would be southern but we also have the northern sounds for the bath/plaster/cast. Oh and your Car/nurse/ford with rhoticity makes you sound distinctly north american.

This video reminds me of “Pygmalion”, 1938 film based on the play of the same title by G.B. Shaw. I saw it on KZread: that’s some authentic early 20th century speech.

Based on how my cockney grandparents and mother speak I can confirm much of this. Interesting analysis, thanks.

Another gem! My grandad, an east ender born in 1889, had [ɔo] for /ɒ/ in the contexts you mention. Off, Australia etc. He used to say “It’s not the corf that carries you orf, it’s the corffin they carries you orf.” I’m also interested in how you would describe your own speech. You talk about RP being posh and upper class, but I’d say that was conservative RP. Your accent strikes me as pretty typical modern RP with the occasional estuarine feature, such as l-vocalisation.

How do you keep saying that you are not a linguist? The amount of research that goes into your work is amazing.. You are by far an accomplished linguist!

I'm sure W for V cockney was fading out by the 1870s, judging from literature at the time. Mayhew's Lives of the London Poor transcribes an extraordinary number of illuminating working class interviews from the 1850s, as well.

I had a book of Cockney songs with sheet music, some of which I'd already heard in a youth theatre production. It's A Great Big Shame was one of them, and "vex" was spelt "wex" in the words under the sheet music.

W.H. Gilbert in his 1879 book to the operetta THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, does quite a lengthy joke run on the fact that "often" and "orphan" sound identical. The "Who's On First" routine of Victorian England! (I enjoyed your video. Cheers!)

Great video. What you're saying around 23:00 reminds me of a passage -- I wish I could recall from whom -- in which the accents of old well-bred gents is described precisely as "Cockney." I will try to find it but I'm not optimistic.

so interesting omg, that 'red' part was crazy

Fantastic video!

First off, as a language/linguistics nerd I really like these videos, so keep up the good work!👍🏻 One minor thing though, intended in a constructive spirit - I keep having to pause and/or rewind when there's a lot of text, which then messes with the flow. I'm a voracious reader and have zero issues following speech either, but giving both the attention they deserve at the same time is hard work when the written and spoken words are saying different things (maybe because both tasks use similar bits of the brain or something?? I dunno).

@tracik1277

2 жыл бұрын

Oh thanks for that comment, I second that (with respect) and totally agree with wishing to give each part the attention it deserves.

I think there is a little error at 12:18 when you probably intended the text to say "vewy" and not "wery".

@95PW

2 жыл бұрын

Good catch, although coincidentally enough in George Orwell's 'Down and Out' he mentions an extinct London accent ("described by Dickens and Surtees") that swapped v's for w's and vice versa!

@95PW

2 жыл бұрын

Oops.. hadn't watched the whole video before I made that comment ha

That lovely man Roy Hudd once sang me an old cockney comic song called “The werry agriwaitin’ vife” . The song gives the listener an idea of the linguistic impact of German and eastern European Jewish immigration in the east end of London in the mid to late 19th century.

Hi Simon, could you explore the NZ dialect please. Love your channel. And the difference between Aussie and NZ.

The w for r is still alive and well in the London area. Mates of mine will say pwopar for proper. That’s pwopar.

Another great video

Please do more on Birmingham/midlands accents. They're always missed in these videos.

It was interesting that you covered the music hall artist as my son has recently become interested in gramophone records of the early 20th century. We have noticed a lot of r trills in both music hall and more formal recordings. The trilled r is very notable in the recordings of Peter Dawson. We wondered whether people spoke like this or if it was a theatrical affectation.

@cfrandre8319

2 жыл бұрын

Before electrical amplification, performers and speakers had to develop voices and speech patterns that carried to the far ends of the halls. That training and vocal manipulation had to have had an effect on the speech patterns and sounds produced since some finer elisions and vocatives must have been lost in the process...

@bethrodgers

2 жыл бұрын

@@cfrandre8319 I hadn’t thought of the amplification but it’s obvious. Some of the performers also add syllables and all sorts of vocal gymnastics. The old records are very interesting and very easy to find.

I've always thought Bertrand Russell sounded (and looked) like a Paul Whitehouse character.

@robinpayne125

2 жыл бұрын

I doubt he was very very drunk

@duncanwalduck7715

2 жыл бұрын

Haha, when we have mention of the 'lazy R' sound - 'labiodental approximant', apparently - particularly in the context of someone sounding posh (say, time 18:48), I can't help but think of Charles and Sherridan: "The Surgeons", a recurring sketch from the Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse collaboration. They both rank very highly in their field, as it were.

@philroberts7238

2 жыл бұрын

Everyone can sound like a Paul Whitehouse character! He has a remarkably efficient accent detector and a precise antenna for social nuance.

@Simon Roper I don't know if this is useful or not, but I lived in Bermuda for several years in the early 1990s. While I don't know now, at that time there was still a lot of peculiarities of grammar and pronunciation (which I was informed was a hangover from shakespearean English. This included the inclusion of the preposition 'to' at the end of the question, "Where is is that?" when asking a geographic location (so "Where's that to?") and certainly in my landlord and landlady they would talk quite naturally alternating W and V. This was particularly noticeable to me when they said, "The vetter is wewy, wewy, vet," (The weather is very, very wet) - it rains a lot there!

@scollyer.tuition

2 жыл бұрын

"Where's that to" can still be heard in the West Country dialects in the UK, at least among the older folk.

Fascinating as always. . The idea that 'posh' and 'common' accents are modern perceptions is completely new to me. Incidentally, I have been learning french for too long, and the concept of a very burred 'r' (not trilled) in french eg 'Pa-rrrr-ee' (Paris) is a trait in spoken french today: native english speakers might pronounce it 'Pah-ree'. Perhaps that explains why the 1890's lady in your clip burred her r's so well in english; because she said she lived in Paris (Pa-rrrr-ee) at one time.

@KusacUK

2 жыл бұрын

You’ve reminded me of when I went on a caravaning holiday in France with my parents 30-odd years ago. We stopped at one campsite, and during signing in the lady asked us what car we had. My Dad said “Renault” and she looked mystified. It took a while until finally she said, “ah, Rrrrrrrrenault!”

This is great, cheers

I have a quite strong rhotic r and get the mickey taken out of me at times by friends from the south and east. They tease me when I say car park, they say it sounds like carr pork lol. Cheers for the very interesting videos. Have often wondered how Australia got it's different regional accents. Take it easy.

@mixolydian2010

2 жыл бұрын

@@EresirThe1st HI its a difficult thing to describe for me and i should have been more specific. Firstly what English accents went to Australia and then became morphed down there. The other is what i hear and maybe you don't hear because you live there. At the moment i cant put my hand on the ones i hear to back up my point. I remember thinking that i heard different cities with different accents some more upbeat some more dour. But i guess that's maybe personal touches and broad, general and cultivated..ha ha what do i know i dont live there lol! I thought what i was hearing was say the differences between northwest northeast, midlands and south of england over here? Take it easy.