Cockney is the traditional working-class dialect and accent of the East End of London, historically defined as belonging to anyone born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church, the Bow Bells. Long stigmatized as a marker of low social status, it is now as often celebrated as a marker of London identity, even as inner-city use has declined since the 1980s in favor of the newer Multicultural London English, with Cockney speech surviving most strongly today in the Essex and outer-London communities of what is sometimes called the Cockney diaspora. Its best-known features include th-fronting, which turns thin into fin and this into vis, and t-glottalization, which replaces /t/ with a glottal stop in words like Clapham and bottle.
Facts
RegionLondon, especially the traditional East End, historically defined as the area within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church 1 Speaker Communityhistorically associated with working-class and lower-middle-class Londoners; the accent has been in decline in inner London since the 1980s as younger residents increasingly speak Multicultural London English, though it persists strongly in the Cockney diaspora of Essex and elsewhere 1 Distinguishing Featuresth-fronting, in which /theta/ becomes [f] and /eth/ becomes [v], so thin is pronounced fin; t-glottalization, replacing /t/ with a glottal stop in many positions, as in Clapham pronounced Cla'am; grammatical features such as me for my and habitual double negation, as in I didn't see nuffink 1 Classification
Variety Kind Connections
Descends From
Source Wikipedia: Cockney
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Cockney
Wikimedia FoundationNomenclature section, citing Fynes Moryson, 1617
Londoners, and all within the sound of Bow Bells, are in reproach called Cockneys.
Variety kind, Cockney entity page
Cockney is the traditional working-class dialect and accent of the East End of London, historically defined as belonging to anyone born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church, the Bow Bells.
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