The cockney dialect, as associated with the late EastEnders icon Dame Barbara Windsor, may not be as prevalent in today’s London, but it remains possibly the most influential English dialect across the world, according to academic research.
No longer the preserve of those born within earshot of the Bow Bells in the City of London, today cockney is more likely to be spoken in Essex.
But its influences can be found across the UK – particularly the south-east, more surprisingly in Glasgow – and even in Australia and New Zealand.
Young people in London today increasingly speak multicultural London English, a different dialect including elements of cockney as well as other languages and English dialects, which is also now spreading to other UK urban centres.
But cockney has not disappeared. With some minor modifications, it has been transplanted to Essex by those who left the East End’s poverty and overcrowding over the 20th century, according to Dr Amanda Cole, a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Essex.
Cole, the author of numerous papers on dialects and accents among young Londoners, was among the first generation of people born in Essex to east London-born parents.
“What we find is cockney has been really influential, particularly in Essex, and across the south-east and the country. And a lot of people’s accents have been changing to become more cockney-like. Not exactly cockney, more estuary English,” she said.
Past studies have shown even the late Queen Elizabeth II was not immune to a bit of estuary English, a mixture of cockney and received pronunciation, with researchers at Macquarie University in Sydney analysing her Christmas broadcasts and concluding, in 2000, that the monarch was no longer speaking the Queen’s English herself.
Compared with the 1950s, by the 1980s the way she said “goose”, “food” or “moon”, for instance, had changed subtly, said Cole. Her later pronunciation, with the tongue a little bit farther forward in the mouth, was in line with the general patterns of change in southern England.
“I think what is disappearing is cockney as this sort of emblematic accent: think Barbara Windsor, Ray Winstone. That isn’t spoken by young people.
“But actually, there is this modified cockney, this very south-eastern accent, where a lot of people do use features that are quite cockney.”
Due to migration and settlement, the way vowels were pronounced in places such as Australia and New Zealand had notable similarities with cockney, she said. Like cockney, the Australian way of saying “bake” sounds more like the word “bike”.
Those who emigrated took that pronunciation with them. Today it is even more pronounced in Australia, while in the UK it has lessened due to prejudice against working-class accents, particularly cockney, which was judged very negatively, according to Cole.
While migration accounts for much of the dialect’s influence, media also plays a part, such as among EastEnders viewers in Glasgow.
Cole’s research has led her to conclude younger people in Essex speak slightly different cockney to their east London-raised elders.
“They are less likely to drop an ‘h’ or say ‘anyfink’. And their vowels are less extreme. ‘Mouth’ is slightly less likely to become ‘mahf’.
“They also say new things that are much less common among their London-raised parents and grandparents such as ‘at the end of the day’ when introducing the most important point in a discussion, or saying ‘yous’ when referring to more than one person,” she has previously written on The Conservation website.
“The cockney dialect has lived a rich and colourful life. She has travelled widely, borne a large family of children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and she even met the queen. She hasn’t died – she’s just called ‘Essex’ now.”
