Learn about the COCKNEY ENGLISH accent & dialect

Whether you watch British TV or are travelling throughout England, you have likely heard the Cockney accent, which is one of the many English dialects found throughout the country. This accent may be difficult to understand at first. To help you, I’ve prepared a lesson on the main features of the London-based Cockney accent as well as some of its non-standard grammatical aspects. We will look at pronunciation features along with vocabulary and slang found particularly in Cockney English. I’ll also tell you a little bit about the history and social context of Cockney English. After watching the video, you will have the tools you need to better recognize and understand this dialect. You can test your knowledge with the quiz: Next, watch this video about the RP accent (also known as BBC English): TRANSCRIPT Hello. I’m Gill at engVid, and today’s lesson is about an accent-and it’s an accent that we hear a lot in the U.K., especially in the south of the country-and it’s called the Cockney accent. And it’s centered around the London area, London and the southeast, so it spreads quite a long way out from London as well. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of these actors: “Michael Caine, Barbara Windsor - they are actors whose natural accent is the Cockney accent, because they both grew up in the London area, so they grew up speaking the Cockney accent. So, the Cockney accent is like a regional accent, really, it just happens to be the regional accent for the capital city of England. So, that’s just like any other regional accent; you could have a Yorkshire accent, a Liverpool accent, a Birmingham accent, London has its own regional accent as well. So, rather than RP, Received Pronunciation, which is the accent that English teachers usually teach people who are learning English, if they’re teaching them British English, that is. Of course, American teachers will teach in an American accent, etc.; Australian teachers will teach in an Australian accent; but if I’m teaching English, because I’m in the U.K., I would teach the RP, Received Pronunciation accent. But the Cockney accent, it’s very useful to know about because if you happen to be in London, or you may be watching a film or a television program where people are speaking with this accent, and you may at first have difficulty understanding what the person is saying. I had a student a while ago who was from Italy, and he had started working in a company, and he told me: “I can’t understand my boss very well when he speaks to me. I can’t... I have to keep asking him to repeat, and it’s getting embarrassing.“ So I sort of guessed his boss might have a Cockney accent, and said: -“Well, does he do this? Does he do that?“ -“Oh yeah, that’s what he sounds like.“ So, I said: “Okay, he’s probably speaking with a Cockney accent“, so there are lots and lots of people in the London area who speak with this accent. Traditionally, it’s been associated with a kind of working-class accent, but nowadays it’s much more complicated than that; there are people working in very professional jobs who also have Cockney accents. I had a Chinese student at one time from China, and... But I noticed she had some sort of... She sounded a little bit Cockney when she spoke English, so I asked her about that-and she worked in finance, I think in investment banking-and she said: “Oh, my boss... It’s my boss, he’s Cockney, so I sort of hear him speaking and it influences me.“ So someone in a sort of very high professional job could have a Cockney accent, so there’s no difference, really, nowadays. But the thing is: If your boss speaks with a certain accent, there is a tendency to try to speak like them just to be able to relate to them well in your work, so that does happen. Depending on who you’re with, your accent can change. So, it happens to me as well. Okay. So... So what I’ve done here, I’ve just chosen six aspects or features of the Cockney accent just to explain what they are and to demonstrate how they sound, so that when you do hear a Cockney speaker, even if it’s just in a film or a television program or on the radio, you will know what you’re hearing and you’ll think: “Ah, okay, I know what that should be. What that word is“, because you know how the Cockney accent changes some of the consonant sounds, and makes some of the little changes to what we would call RP, the standard British pronunciation. So here’s a little summary, then, of the Cockney accent and some of the main features. So, first of all, the “th“ sound, which a lot of people... If you’re learning English, you may not have “th“ in your own native language, and so people have difficulty pronouncing: “th“, “th“, “th“, like that. […]