Excuuuuse you - to be a real 'Cockney', one had to be born within 1 mile of Bow Bells, or, within earshot of them, depending on the person you speak to!!!
@Steven Jacobs you literally made that up on the spot. noun /ˈakˌsent/ 1. a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class. "a strong German accent" Tell me where it says one cannot speak their own language in an accent?
As a true Cockney (someone that was born within the sound of bow bells which is not in Bow by the way ) i understood everything . I moved to Suffolk about 13 years ago and still drop the odd phrase in now and again to watch their faces. There is a further development of rhyming slang that was not mentioned .The slightly removed slang . i .e you will often hear someone referring to me arris meaning backside. Where this comes from is aristotle that rhymes with bottle then bottle and glass = Arse . Also a true cockney will only ever mention hat as a titfer and does not ad the tat to it like what was mentioned in the video about not saying the second word. Well i am just off out up the frog for a ball of chalk as its a lovely day and the current bun is out .
My dad is pure cockney, so when I was watching this I was like my dad wouldn't have added tat at the end either! I get confused with a Sherman and a Septic 😉
I can’t tell you how much this video has helped me! I had to learn the cockney accent for an audition for “Sherlock Holmes” and because I rewatched and practiced with this video I got one of the lead roles! So thank you for doing what you do!!!
As an Aussie from rural NSW, in a part of the country where there was primarily Welsh settlers, I'm kinda surprised just how much Cockney is in our accent. Even some of the rhyming slang has made it into it.
I am several generations British-Irish heritage Australian and my FIL was born in Essex, lives in Scotland. He and I sound more alike (and pronounce more words alike) than he does with his Scottish wife. As noted above, a lot of our rhyming slang in Oz is locally developed from the Cockney "rules", so you might guess what it means but sometimes you need a local background to truly understand. E.g. "having a shocker" in UK would be a "Jarvis" (Cocker), but in Australia was popularised as a "Barry" (Crocker).
People love to remind Aussies of their more or less criminal ancestry, seeing as Australia was used as a penal colony for some time, but I can imagine this actually being a large part of how the Australian accent/dialect came about. Many of the convicts who were brought to Australia must have been speaking Cockney, as it was the language of the working class and the underbelly. The merchant class and posh aristocratic lawbreakers, after all, were not sent to the colonies for backbreaking labour.
@Sir_spenj I have heard that colonies tend to have a habit of exaggerating the language and culture of the homeland and locking it in time, so I'm inclined to believe you. I'm gonna assume that the rest of the colonists picked up the cockney on the ships or in the port towns.
its the other way round mate ..in London in the 1700's we sounded Aussie. I get what your saying though ive spent plenty of time in rural NSW, loved it. From a cockney speaker
Being Swedish we learned only "standard English" at school and other dialects/accents only through the movies and TV which was reflected in the way I spoke English. But later I bacame friends with some exchange students and one of them had such an outrageous dialect that I could hardly understand him for a few weeks. After some time though I got used to it and could almost fully understand him. 😅 The downside of that was that my own way of speaking had begun to change a bit after spending so much time with him and a guy from Scotland. So for quite some time I had some kind of mashup of different dialects blended with the typical "Swenglish". It must've sounded atrocious. 🤣🤣 The 2nd Cockney level sounded like 98.5% of "The Streets" songs. 😄
OMG. It makes so much sense now! When I was a kid, my mom remarried into a British family and my new step-grandad had the Cockney accent....I thought he was crazy! He would speak, and look at me expectantly, as if I was to answer him but I had no clue what he was saying! It seemed like a bunch of garbled mismatched words lmao ....I thought he had dementia! 🤭 Bless him, I bet he thought I was slow in the head too...😂
My father's friend, who spoke almost entirely in rhyming slang, introduced my parents to some friends of his as Crystal & Fred. My mother, trying to break the ice, said to the lady, "Crystal, what a pretty name". The response was "Me name ain't Crystal luv, it's Alice, Crystal Palace-Alice. (Crystal Palace is a suburb in south London)
I was born in Merseyside, spoke with a Scouse accent, which softened when I served in the army, due to what I believe as learning German, also serving in the sappers for 12 years, a Corps with accents from around the UK and Eire. Now I've lived down under in Australia for 36 years, my accent is over the place. Aussie's know I'm a POM, but when I've been back to the UK, people call me an Aussie, even people I went to school with. Even better, when I return back home to Australia, my born and bred Australian wife and kids can't understand me, as I'd picked up / fell back into a Scouse accent. All good fun.
This was fascinating to me! I have spent time in the Caribbean and there is a similar way the locals code their English like the cockney. Each Island has its own form of Creole spoken. When I hear it, I know I am listening to English words.... but the order and meaning are different..
I found this while browsing around and it was interesting. For me, level 1 was fairly easy to understand since the pronunciation changes in the examples weren't too big. Level 2 was somewhat harder but still mostly OK for me. I guess watching a bunch of British comedies and such over the years helped me pick up some of the words used here. I was basically lost on level 3 though. :) I understand the concept of the rhyming slang, but without already knowing what phrases are used, much of what was said doesn't make sense to me, especially when only the first part is said. I don't think I realized that obscuring the meaning was the objective of such slang (at least originally), so that was another interesting piece of information. Thanks for the video!
Yes when someone say they are going to "put me titfer on me uncle and go for a ball to the German for a pigs" it's hard to translate into putting his had on his head and going for a walk to the boozer for a beet.... titfer (tit for tat... hat) Uncle (uncle ned..head)... ball of chalk (walk) German cruiser (boozer...pub) and pigs ear... beer..... Fair makes ya barnet stand on end innit?
I'm from South Mississippi. People say we talk slow but I see the similarities of shortening words. My ancestors came from England and Wales on the 1600s. People still have a strong accent in the Carolinas. I think it's called Elizabeth talk. A mixture of country and British accents.
Most of the coastal Carolina areas tend to have some odd mix of Welsh/Scottish/Irish accent baked into their speaking. If you get rid of the country twang, you sound like you're not even from North Carolina.
True cockneys are few and far between. I'm from south east London and cockney influences are everywhere in the modern dialect, and I think most of us in SE can imitate it pretty spot on, but hearing the proper real old fashioned cockney accent is a rarity even in London.
Native English speaker from America here. I understood most of the cockey from watching British movies over the years. This is a fun and educational channel.
It's really weird. My mother was English but I was born and raised in New Zealand. I always pronounced innit, fanks, bruvver and summing (something) etc growing up. It just seemed easier to get out and not so posh. As a Kiwi growing up in the 60s and 70s I was typically using G'day a lot and virtually every sentence ending with 'ay'. I emigrated to England in the late 80s for 14 years and the past 20 years I have been in Ireland with very little if any Kiwi interaction. My brother who lives in Australua since the mid 90s came to visit me in Ireland a few years ago and he kept on telling me I said 'Yeah Nah' a hell of a lot. I was completely unaware I was even saying it, and in the 60s to 80s there was no highlighting of New Zealanders using this term. Nowadays it is a very common thing for a Kiwi to say. I can't for the life of me understand how I picked up the Yeah Nah having been away from NZ for 34 years. But I still proudly have a Kiwi accent
@Richard Silver I'm a bit late, but that's the point. This is "coded speak". And the way to decode it is to have grown up in this area so that you are used to their culture and idioms. Basically it's "high context language", such a language can only be fully understood and appreciated within the culture from where it arose. "Low context league" is the short of international English, which everybody that learned English can understand.
I’m from Upstate NY, USA…this was the best, most entertaining video I’ve seen (maybe ever!) I’d be totally lost if I was speaking to someone with a Cockney accent, but I absolutely ADORE it. I’d be laughing all day (and not understanding anything)
As long as i know, the accent is the way to pronounce words, the dialect is a complete new set of words and grammatical rules, and this seems to be more a dialect than an accent. Here in Italy we have a thousand of different dialects and a miriad accents
In Amsterdam/the Netherlands there was a language like that, too. Under different names, but to directly translate the more meaningful term, it was called thieves language. It's died out, but some elements remain. I think an uncle of mine spoke it fluently. Had something to do with his "career" and "peer group"...
A glorious foray into the undergrowth of one particular segment of regional English. Thanks, Maestro. You made my evening worthwhile. Even though my mom was Brum, she would say "my old china" (to translate: china plate>mate), or "up the apples" (apples and pears>stairs), and as schoolkids we'd say "Give us a butchers" (butcher's hook>look), "What great plates" (plates of meat>feet), "Use your loaf" (loaf of bread>head)... this in Devon, mindl. Well, yes - but was years before I realised their provenance. Many times, however, RS is used to cover obscenities, or maybe to bowdlerise them... but I won't go further down this track (other than perhaps 'raspberries'). Anthony Burgess wrote his favourite: 'Aris'. Aris>Aristotle>bottle> and glass>ass. Thus Aris turned itself around into a word very similar to the word they were meaning (both are pronounced 'arse')
As someone born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, cockney accent and rhyming slang are not unfamiliar to me. I heard it every day at school and on work-sites. Maybe it was due to the large numbers of 10 Pound Poms who came to Australia after WW2. It seems to have always been part of the Australian dialect, but not so much these days. Great video, btw.
Zajefajne. (Polish youth slang. Mixture of zajebiste (fucking awesome) and fajne (nice)). I think I have to look into English translation of Stanisław Lem's The Cyberiad. That must have been a challenge. On the other hand in Poland we have two translations of A Clockwork Orange: one leaving the English and another one leaving the Russian. Both by the same man, R.I.P. Robert Stiller. Great work, subbed'n'liked!
It's crazy how much Australian English shares with Cockney ( I'm Australian) - When I speak at a normal pace, I pronounce full words. When speaking fast or telling a story in an animated fashion, a lot of my words are snipped just like the ' Head vs Ed example '
You've got a new subscriber - this video is super interesting. The Mighty Boosh is my favorite show, but being an American, even after watching every episode countless times over the past 15 years or so, I still discover words or phrases that I've misunderstood or misinterpreted all this time. In the intro to the first episode, I always thought Vince (referring to his hair) said, "If my bonnet didn't look right, people would be furious." Bonnet made sense since it's a head covering and I never thought about it any further. Now I know it's "Barnet" because of your video - thanks!
8:03 I have been told I have a knack for many different accents of English. I’m an American from the Deep South and I have very little difficulty understanding cockney at any level. Only occasionally do I fail to get the full phrase but I never fail to catch the context and respond correctly.
The mere fact of you explaining "This letter sounds like this other letter" (for example, TH sounds as V) is the main reason why I love Spanish xD You pronounce what you see.
@Lomu you read what you see for the most part in English too. We just have more rules than spanish. In standard English, which they'll understand worldwide. Even dialects just have different rules.
@no no My native language is Spanish. I do know about different Spanish dialects, however, wherever you go, if you pronounce what you read, they'll understand you; you might sound weird, but they'll understand. However, you cannot do that in English. Try looking for "Ghoti is Fish" on internet. That's what I mean.
Someone's never learned Spanish or at least the accents of spanish 😂😂😂 try v=b in Colombian and some Spain ll- "y" in Spain and "j" in much of Latin America S's (Carribean) and D's are dropped off completely at the end in a lot of countries. Also G, depending on where you place it can be silent, vocal fricative (some dialects), or like English "g"
I got the biggest kick out of this! Very informative and entertaining! Loved when the cockney meter was turned up on cousin Bob! I'm American. I went to England on student exchange in '77.
Congrats! A good outline of Cockney. I taught English in Poland for almost thirty years, and it was sometimes necessary to lift students from apathy. So I did my 'cockney' lesson.How we laughed! My having spent time in London enabled me to speak well in cockney, to the point that I was once chatting to 'a cockney' in a pub in London, and he told me was amazed to discover that I'm from Manchester. I'll check your channel for other accent/dialect analysis. Rermember that 'accent' is the sound of what is said, and that 'dialect' is the content of what is said. My fave accent/dialect, with its wonderful idiosynchrasies, is one of many in Yorkshire, England: "Eee! Am reet peckish. Al nip dearn t' new chip oil on t' Slaithwai' Roaerd an' ge' me sen some reet good scran." IN RP? "Oh, gosh! I am really hungry. I will quickly go to the new fish-and-chip shop on Slaithwaite Road to get myself some really good food." Am I kidding? No! Yorkshire is a beautiful place, where satire and sarcasm are delivered better than anywhere else, IMHO. Take care, and travel! PS: Regarding 'dearn' and 'Roaerd' .... these represent diphthongs much used by the fine people of Yorkshire, and perhaps further afield. I adore them! Both the people and the diphthongs! Take care!
As an American I can understand most accents of English. We have a lot of them here on this side of the pond. I can even understand them when the speaker is three sheets to the wind, but there is one accent that perplexed me. I found myself sitting next to a dockworker from Liverpool in a bar in Medan, Sumatra back in the late 70's. He was well into his cups when he initiated conversation and for the life of me I couldn't understand a word he was saying. All I could do was nod at what seemed to be the appropriate times..
Lots of fun. Did you know that in Buenos Aires men in jail , often of Italian descent, who wanted their own language changed words too, often saying them backwards.(Lunfardo) The city of Buenos Aires has its own accent, "porteno" because it's a port.There is so much slang that I often can't understand them at all and I'm fluent in Spanish.
@Rob Golding The B.A. Spanish ("Castellano")is Porteno( BA is a port) and so full of slang that I have trouble speaking with them and understanding them.
You know what they say about Argentinians. They are Italians that speak Spanish, think they are French and wish they were English. I speak passable Italian but my Spanish is not so good but when I visited BA some years ago I found that if I was having trouble with my Spanish I could speak to almost anybody in Italian and they would reply in that language.
soy de Buenos Aires y los porteños como decís tenemos un slang llamado Lunfardo que es un mix de palabras italianas, francesas, españolas de ciertas regiones. Igualmente cambió mucho, muchas palabras no se usan más y ahora hay otros slang de la cárcel (que son de barrios marginales y no de inmigrantes del siglo XX) y del inglés mezclados. Depende de la edad que tengas y la clase social. Por ejemplo: che chabón, tenés altas llantas. (Het, dude , you have a very good sneakers). También usamos el "vos" y no "tú". Difícil aprender español en Argentina. Yo soy ex profesora de español. Espero que me hayas entendido, saludos "capa" (that means you are a kind person, like the capo mafia but in a good way).
I actually feel like I understand level 3 more so than I have any business doing but as long as you kinda know the rhymes and there aren't too many too fast it makes a lot more sense. I always thought there was some folksy story behind all those things like what's the lemon when I guess it's actually pretty simple
This is so funny!! I’m from Mexico City and we do the same thing we exchange words for something else when speaking slang. The most common example is saying “Simón” instead of “si”.
Fantastic! So good! My father was born in England and I was brought up by my British Grandparents mostly. It’s been years since I’ve been there. Traveled there twice….. once age 5 and then again at age 7. I am now 37 years young, lol. I’ll make it to England again someday, I pray! ❤
in Chile the inmates in the prisons developed a spanish variation called “coa”, it’s used inverting the syllables on each word, kinda reminds me of your explanation of the lv 3 cockney, both are weird and difficult to understand, though almost nobody uses the coa here I think…
As someone who has grown up with tons of Appalachian English, a lot of this wasn't too hard to understand for me actually. There are so many made up words in Appalachia and southern dialects that you just have to get really good at context clues and infer the meaning of the sentence.
Don't worry. Even most English people only understand a little bit of Cockney rhyming slang and wouldn't understand past level 2. Although its funny how many single slang words do come from it, that even non-cockney English people still use. For example, loaf for head or knackered for tired.
Very helpful and interesting, thanks. There's an episode of 8 out of 10 cats does Countdown in which Dany Dyer is the guest on dictionary corner and Susie Dent lets him read this tongue twister about buying better butter to make his bitter butter better. Now I understand why he's supposed to struggle but he mastered the bit perfectly.
I’m Australian, lived in London for a couple of years 04-06. Walked into a caf in Faringdon and heard to boys going at in Cockney rhyming slang. Was surprised how much I understood as we use a dialect of Cockney here it seems. I did a Jack The Ripper walk and there was a young girl selling toffee apples, Cockney accent, but I could recognise a bit of the Sydney accent in her… Funnily enough, stumbled across a Lonely Planet Language Guide to Australian 😂 anyway, book said the Australian accentbwss starting to form with the first generation of kids off the boats.. Makes sense why I identify the East London twang, as I’m sure many sent out here were from there.
Então você estuda inglês direitinho, fica na frente do espelho praticando o "th", colocando a língua entre os dentes. Londrinos: "th" com som de "f", falam "weaver" em vez de "weather", etc kkkkkkk. Essa é pra você valorizar mais o seu sotaque, não tenha medo de falar como consegue, cada qual tem o seu jeito de falar. Interessante vídeo!
So what I learned today is that for some reason I’m already familiar with a lot of level-2 style cockney words (no idea why) but level-3 is like another language entirely; my brain simply cannot keep up 😵
I've studied english as second language ever since I went to school. I was taught traditional pronunciation all the way up to university. I was quite surprised when I was asked to speak normal when I went to America as exchange student: "Can you speak normal? What are you, a Brit" Needless to say nobody expected a russian student to correctly pronounce every single word when speaking )
I'm Italian and I felt so lost at the end... 😭😂 I'm here for David Bowie ❤ and also because one of my cousins is British Italian from London, I want to try some sentence 😂 Thank you for this video! Ciao!
I lived in London as a student and played table tennis at a club in Southwark a bit too far south to hear Bow Bells. But I picked up their language quite easily. My mother was a Londoner from Muswell Hill and she taught in Greenwich so she knew a lot of the rhyming slang so it was part of my childhood vocabulary. A hat was always a Titfa. Also the h was dropped from some words but added to others which had no H. Though I moved out of the London area I kept the ability to turn on the London accent. My children can do Posh (RP) and the Gloucestershire Accent. But I did not hear much of the London accent, so my cockney has stayed around 1970. When I hear a London accent now it is quite different, and has gain quite a lot of a clipped Jamaican influence which I remember from visits to Brixton market. I went to school in Croydon, so I can do that accent as well.
Makes me think of the relation between Canadian French and Metropolitan French. We learn the same writen french but when French come over to Quebec for the first time, they can barely understand anything. I've heard ol' China in a song and figured out that it meant friend/mate/pal, but it's interesting to see where it actually comes from! Might try to bring some Cockney into my french now, sounds like a fun exercise!
Me: Excuse me, where can I get a hamburger around here? Brit: oi mate u cannae get a blo’y right bleed innit bruv sik ya well lad Me: Please I’m so hungry.
“Cannae “ is pure Scottish. The letter “d” is emphasised not dropped. The letters “t” and or “h” are more likely to be dropped .In this case the whole “ham”! No one says “hamburger” or “around here “ ! The letters “a “ and “h” are definitely not pronounced either. Nice try though-innit !!
I grew up in Southwark, South London and had a strong Cockney accent. It was literally knocked out of me at the age of 11 when I went to grammar school under the threat of physical violence. I ended up with a different accent to the rest of my family. I emigrated to Australia at the age of 21 after getting married. Here I had to slow my speech down to almost half speed to be understood properly. Sydney is the only place I have ever heard rhyming slang used other than London but very different expressions. A lot of words still used here are left overs from the English language from over 200 years ago almost like an historic time capsule. When I return to London, people pick me as an Aussie but here people still think I talk like a pom. Love your posts. Well done mate !
As a Norwegian I was quite pleased passing stage 2 with relative ease. But stage 3 gave me a run for my money though. Yet I learned enough to decipher the last messege fairly fast for greenie, so…
When my daughter was learning to talk she fell into using F and V for the unvoiced and voiced TH sounds. But she also put a hard T in place of the -ED to make past tense of verbs. So I heard things like, "Bad wevver, it fundert!" = "Bad weather, it thundered!" Somehow a little Texan was coming out with Cockney German. 😄
As a foreigner, my mum fussed a lot about my not pronouncing in "proper" BBC RP like she had learned (also a foreigner). After eventually living in London and Scotland for a few years I gave up even trying: There are so many regional and international English accents in use in the UK, and nobody speaks that 50s PR. So to heck with it!
Same thing in the US for me lol but since I moved out at 14 from New England to the Mid West to the Deep South to the west coast back to the East I’m fluent in every kind of English accent this side of the ocean
My first visit to London will be this summer. I do hope that most Londoners speak perfectly standard english though because I wouldn't understand a word. I'm from Sweden so english is not my main english either.😅😅 But I have to say that the Gick ner accent sounds really charming actually. I love all the rimes and I can sense the humour in it too.
This explains a lot for me, I was born an American English speaking person and sometimes I understand Cockney speakers the same way I understand German, I can't speak it but I understand a lot of it without knowing why lol
I have a general rule: The standard form of a language is wherever it has the most native speakers, ergo standard Spanish is Mexican Spanish, standard Portuguese is Brazilian Portuguese, etc. Tonnes of fun telling my London raised cousins that they’re speaking my language wrong, in a thick Southern accent of course.
I'm from the states, but my grandpa was from Brighton, he was very against talking cockney in his house and I caught hell for it if I imitated it, he told me I had 2 choices, either speak The Queen's English or US English, but no cockney. My dad americanised, but I took after grandpa and ended up with a mixed us and Brighton accent.
That last line where your cousin didn't understand you speaking Cockney made me think of that movie Cockneys vs Zombies where a lot of east Londoners are constantly unable to understand each other because they're always trying to outslang each other Then there's an old guy halfway through the movie who rhyming slangs the rhyming slangs sometimes several layers deep so whenever he's forced to explain it it takes a whole minute 😂😂😂
Yeah, I lived I Jakarta for a while and got fascinated by the street languages like pro-kem. They start off with an infix, then they move to drop it and reorder statement. So stages of this would Gilay lo (you're crazy, lo is you) then in a dramatic shift it becomes GiLO lay, so they've moved the item for you to become an infix in the word for crazy. It's a general passtime, everyone laughs all the time. Best use I ever put my linguistics training to.
I remember when i was in London i've been taught: apples and pears = stairs whistle and flute = suit almond rocks = socks These are the only i can remember at this precise moment coz it was maaaaany years ago. When i went back home my mom who learned the posh english and heard my cockney accent, got mad at me telling me: "what the hell did you learn in england?" 😂
I noticed the same thing in Thailand, in a small country you don't have to drive that far to find different dialects and accents. In America you have to drive thousands of miles before somebody sounds different.
Londoner born and bred. There are different accents depending on where you are born. West, North, South and East all have distinct sounds. Ask any Londener to say the word South. You'll soon hear it. Sarf, Saaf, Syth, Sowf etc. The true East End accent is in Chatham (outside London), where Henry VIII moved lots of his shipbuilders to build a new fleet.
This, is prolly the best thing I have watched this year. I'm a HUGE Guy Ritchie fan and now the lingo is making sense. I'm gunna have to watch this about another five limes but I think I'll catch on.
@John Rekesius What you are talking about is African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and has its origins in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade when Africans were brought to the U.S., the Carribean, and Latin America. Creole languages developed because the slaves classes were not allowed to be educated with mainstream or upper-class societies. Thus, these creole languages and dialects were formed to adapt to the circumstances. The standard or "proper" dialects are for official and academic purposes to ensure that everyone understands and communicates in a way that is officially accepted, much like S.I. Units are accepted internationally for science and engineering to facilitate accurate communication and avoid confusion. Common dialects outside of that are for colloquial and everyday speech, and are not restricted by professional or academic expectations. Context is everything when it comes to language -- and while I agree that a university lecture hall shouldn't use "valley girl speak" to teach students, it's not up to any one person or group to decide if a dialect is valid or not. Dialects form and exist regardless of your approval or prejudice, because language changes and/or evolves depending on the culture and socioeconomic classes and trends. People will find ways to communicate with or without approval from the dominant culture or social class. That's just how language works.
Great vid, thanks. A few years ago I found out what the word 'berk' actually meant. Apparently it come from Cockney rhyming slang. I found it quite funny because when I was a child my parents would call me a 'great berk' occasionally when I was being silly. My parents didn't know where it came from. All I can say is that it didn't come from Berkshire! All the best......
Thank you for sharing. We had in Spain, XVI century, something similar that was called "Germanias" meaning something like "brotherhood" and the aim of that was to keep privacy in their bussiness (not legal ones of course). Seville was the epicenter of all of that. Some of these words are still being used in jails by the inmates for the same reasons as 400 years ago.
My grandad (born in London's East End in the 1890's) spoke fluent rhyming slang when he was with his mates but could turn it on and off as the situation required. There were (are) literally thousands of phrases to learn. It seemed to me that its primary purpose was humour but there was also almost something tribal about it. My guess is that it fell out of mainstream use when shipping moved to containers and London Docks went into decline (in the 1960's).
@pinkyman5155 You are probably right but I had always though of cockney slang as a badge of honor for "true" East Endenders (born within range of Bo Bells) and therefore primarily dockers. They were a very tight knit community and had their own code (you could not get a job on the docks unless you had a father or uncle working there). My grandfather (a blacksmith, who shooed horses at the large horse stables at Camden) was born half a mile outside the approved radius and he described himself as not a genuine cockney, with some obvious envy.
I think most of the Cockney accent originated from the markets, Billingsgate, Smithfield and Covent Garden, so prices could be set without the punters understanding. Owhay uchmay orfay hatay ( How much for that) along with the slang it was almost impossible to work out. Cushtie (Gypsy word)
That's was a nice explanation of cockney rhyming idea and great examples nicely worded by the cousin. I knew "trouble and strife" and "take a butcher's hook", in fact I used it myself when I was in England, however even native English speakers are used to saying "take a butcher's" that they have no idea there is a rhyme with hook, funny! One bloke couldn't believe when I told him that.
Thank you very much for this video! Awesome!! When you speak with a cockney accent, you really sound like Michael Cane. But, most of all, I like it because it reminds me of The Only Fools and Horses TV show. Lovely jubbly! =)
The Beatles never tried to change their accents and that's why they are so unique and so adored. The same with Elvis, he never tried to change his accent which made him so special.
Americans have one accent north faster than South, scousers never lose their accent especially adults I moved down south from Liverpool 15years ago an still got a very strong accent
I grew up in South London and had a stronger Cockney accent as a child, we moved outside of London and my English teacher gave me a hard time because of my accent saying I don't speak the Queens English, and some family members use to berate me over it, I have worked hard to try and loose it, for a long time I felt ashamed of it, even now I still fall back into it especially when angry or speaking to family who still have it, funny thing is the family members who went on at me about my accent now have a stronger Cockney accent than me 😂, but I will say that people never had a problem understanding me, infact a French student at school had problems understanding everyone else but me. People no matter your language, accent, dialect, be proud of the way you speak, it would be pretty boring to all speak the same, I love hearing all the differences :)
@Sarah Johnson fair point, wasn't clear from your initial comment linking south London to the cockney accent as if they were intrinsically paired. If your family moved from the east then it makes sense.
@A B It migrated because cockney people moved to other parts of London, there isn't a barrier preventing them leaving the sound of the Bow bells, I get that they are called Cockney because of where it originated, but that does not mean it will stay there for eternity.
Much the same applied to me with a Black Country accent - which I duly lost. I do like the accent though, when I hear it I'm reminded of my apprentice days in Brierly Hill and the great folks I met.
I spent an incredible evening drinking in a rinky dink London pub shooting the shit with an older Londoner gentleman (who also grew up some in Liverpool) and his straight up Gaelic friend. Needless to say I understood like 10% of what they said that night, it was all vibes 🍻
I'm Irish through and through and love Cockney rhyme. It is so creative and intelligently funny. When I was young we had a mug at home and written on it was "Bow Bells Chime with Cockney Rhyme" with quite a few of the better known rhymes plastered all over it. That got me started. The TV series Minder had some beauties too...Arthur Daley in his new 'whistle' (whistle & toot = suit)...another male character sporting a 'syrup' (syrup of fig = wig)...gawd look at the Bristols on 'er. I leave you to work out that one!
In the comedy series featuring Reginald Perrin on TV years ago there was a character who kept referring to his children as "dustbins" (because "dustbin lids" rhymes with "kids"). 😃
Say something nice
Geeza
something nice
Excuuuuse you - to be a real 'Cockney', one had to be born within 1 mile of Bow Bells, or, within earshot of them, depending on the person you speak to!!!
@Vaughan Green Nah may'. Mee' yah
How about opening by INTRODUCING yourself? (I'll assume you have a name.)
It's not just an accent its a whole dialect.
A culture that’s been shat on
I realized this watching Lock,Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.
@Stefan Kretzschmar no
Cokney? 😒
@Steven Jacobs you literally made that up on the spot. noun
/ˈakˌsent/
1.
a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class.
"a strong German accent"
Tell me where it says one cannot speak their own language in an accent?
Wow, I thought American urban English was tough. 🤣 This was hilarious! Thank you for posting this for us non-Cockney speakers.
💯
@Ryan fuller Hostile Muhh-Fuhhhh...
@ARCH LAB 7"
WhatchU-talkin'bout? asshole!" - gary coleman, postal 2
WhatchU-talkin'bout?
As a true Cockney (someone that was born within the sound of bow bells which is not in Bow by the way ) i understood everything . I moved to Suffolk about 13 years ago and still drop the odd phrase in now and again to watch their faces. There is a further development of rhyming slang that was not mentioned .The slightly removed slang . i .e you will often hear someone referring to me arris meaning backside. Where this comes from is aristotle that rhymes with bottle then bottle and glass = Arse . Also a true cockney will only ever mention hat as a titfer and does not ad the tat to it like what was mentioned in the video about not saying the second word. Well i am just off out up the frog for a ball of chalk as its a lovely day and the current bun is out .
I’m not a native speaker and I’m real confused rn
@Paul or a bird barf
My dad is pure cockney, so when I was watching this I was like my dad wouldn't have added tat at the end either!
I get confused with a Sherman and a Septic 😉
Are you going to drop by the Rubbity for a quick 'arf?
@Alan Taylor So....curry, and a wig?
I can’t tell you how much this video has helped me! I had to learn the cockney accent for an audition for “Sherlock Holmes” and because I rewatched and practiced with this video I got one of the lead roles! So thank you for doing what you do!!!
Alrighty mate
Jolly good show. Well done mate!
@ChelissaMoon Mr cumberbatch?
Congratulations 🎉 break a leg
As an Aussie from rural NSW, in a part of the country where there was primarily Welsh settlers, I'm kinda surprised just how much Cockney is in our accent. Even some of the rhyming slang has made it into it.
@Evolutiongat and add "Oi"
I am several generations British-Irish heritage Australian and my FIL was born in Essex, lives in Scotland. He and I sound more alike (and pronounce more words alike) than he does with his Scottish wife. As noted above, a lot of our rhyming slang in Oz is locally developed from the Cockney "rules", so you might guess what it means but sometimes you need a local background to truly understand. E.g. "having a shocker" in UK would be a "Jarvis" (Cocker), but in Australia was popularised as a "Barry" (Crocker).
People love to remind Aussies of their more or less criminal ancestry, seeing as Australia was used as a penal colony for some time, but I can imagine this actually being a large part of how the Australian accent/dialect came about. Many of the convicts who were brought to Australia must have been speaking Cockney, as it was the language of the working class and the underbelly. The merchant class and posh aristocratic lawbreakers, after all, were not sent to the colonies for backbreaking labour.
@Sir_spenj I have heard that colonies tend to have a habit of exaggerating the language and culture of the homeland and locking it in time, so I'm inclined to believe you. I'm gonna assume that the rest of the colonists picked up the cockney on the ships or in the port towns.
its the other way round mate ..in London in the 1700's we sounded Aussie. I get what your saying though ive spent plenty of time in rural NSW, loved it. From a cockney speaker
Being Swedish we learned only "standard English" at school and other dialects/accents only through the movies and TV which was reflected in the way I spoke English.
But later I bacame friends with some exchange students and one of them had such an outrageous dialect that I could hardly understand him for a few weeks. After some time though I got used to it and could almost fully understand him. 😅
The downside of that was that my own way of speaking had begun to change a bit after spending so much time with him and a guy from Scotland.
So for quite some time I had some kind of mashup of different dialects blended with the typical "Swenglish". It must've sounded atrocious. 🤣🤣
The 2nd Cockney level sounded like 98.5% of "The Streets" songs. 😄
@Aaron Alcock bloody hell a white man from Birmingham? he's an Endangered Species at this point
Mike Skinner's grew up in Birmingham so you're a tad out fella 😂 but to be fair I know what you mean
OMG. It makes so much sense now! When I was a kid, my mom remarried into a British family and my new step-grandad had the Cockney accent....I thought he was crazy! He would speak, and look at me expectantly, as if I was to answer him but I had no clue what he was saying! It seemed like a bunch of garbled mismatched words lmao ....I thought he had dementia! 🤭 Bless him, I bet he thought I was slow in the head too...😂
@eddyvideostarhutcho gob bout being topper, all language is fade up
W
He wouldn't be the only one to think that 🤷🏻♂️
😂😂😂😂
My father's friend, who spoke almost entirely in rhyming slang, introduced my parents to some friends of his as Crystal & Fred. My mother, trying to break the ice, said to the lady, "Crystal, what a pretty name". The response was "Me name ain't Crystal luv, it's Alice, Crystal Palace-Alice. (Crystal Palace is a suburb in south London)
I was born in Merseyside, spoke with a Scouse accent, which softened when I served in the army, due to what I believe as learning German, also serving in the sappers for 12 years, a Corps with accents from around the UK and Eire.
Now I've lived down under in Australia for 36 years, my accent is over the place. Aussie's know I'm a POM, but when I've been back to the UK, people call me an Aussie, even people I went to school with.
Even better, when I return back home to Australia, my born and bred Australian wife and kids can't understand me, as I'd picked up / fell back into a Scouse accent.
All good fun.
Hahahaha great story. I'd imagine you're not the first POM in this situation. Either way, you're Australian now, whatever your accent.
It's not POM, it's POHM. "Prisoner Of His Majesty."
This was fascinating to me! I have spent time in the Caribbean and there is a similar way the locals code their English like the cockney. Each Island has its own form of Creole spoken. When I hear it, I know I am listening to English words.... but the order and meaning are different..
I found this while browsing around and it was interesting. For me, level 1 was fairly easy to understand since the pronunciation changes in the examples weren't too big. Level 2 was somewhat harder but still mostly OK for me. I guess watching a bunch of British comedies and such over the years helped me pick up some of the words used here. I was basically lost on level 3 though. :) I understand the concept of the rhyming slang, but without already knowing what phrases are used, much of what was said doesn't make sense to me, especially when only the first part is said. I don't think I realized that obscuring the meaning was the objective of such slang (at least originally), so that was another interesting piece of information. Thanks for the video!
@KathrynLiz1 You wot?
Yes when someone say they are going to "put me titfer on me uncle and go for a ball to the German for a pigs" it's hard to translate into putting his had on his head and going for a walk to the boozer for a beet.... titfer (tit for tat... hat) Uncle (uncle ned..head)... ball of chalk (walk) German cruiser (boozer...pub) and pigs ear... beer..... Fair makes ya barnet stand on end innit?
I'm from South Mississippi. People say we talk slow but I see the similarities of shortening words. My ancestors came from England and Wales on the 1600s. People still have a strong accent in the Carolinas. I think it's called Elizabeth talk. A mixture of country and British accents.
Most of the coastal Carolina areas tend to have some odd mix of Welsh/Scottish/Irish accent baked into their speaking. If you get rid of the country twang, you sound like you're not even from North Carolina.
Yep, Appalachian accents can be traced directly back to old Scottish-English accents
Me: "Help I'm lost"
Bloke: *explains directions using rhyming slang*
Me: "Help I'm lost on multiple levels."
Do not ever ask for directions in Cambridge....no one lives there! Always tourists....even the locals bus in n haven't got the foggiest. Amusing ! 😁
@Inspector Javert
Me: I- You- do we kiss now? Or is that later? I just am absolutely bamboozled here
😂😂😂😘
True cockneys are few and far between. I'm from south east London and cockney influences are everywhere in the modern dialect, and I think most of us in SE can imitate it pretty spot on, but hearing the proper real old fashioned cockney accent is a rarity even in London.
@Dean Fowles you can try
@Terry anock u shpark aaat yew mug
@Dean Fowles you must be 'avin a bubble mate
Yew faackin mauppit!
Native English speaker from America here. I understood most of the cockey from watching British movies over the years. This is a fun and educational channel.
@Terry Peake wadder is New Jersey but I guess nowhere else 😂
USA has cockney. Wadder(water), sodder(Solder), nucular, aluminum ve-hic-le lol.. just drawing a parallel.
It's really weird. My mother was English but I was born and raised in New Zealand. I always pronounced innit, fanks, bruvver and summing (something) etc growing up. It just seemed easier to get out and not so posh. As a Kiwi growing up in the 60s and 70s I was typically using G'day a lot and virtually every sentence ending with 'ay'. I emigrated to England in the late 80s for 14 years and the past 20 years I have been in Ireland with very little if any Kiwi interaction. My brother who lives in Australua since the mid 90s came to visit me in Ireland a few years ago and he kept on telling me I said 'Yeah Nah' a hell of a lot. I was completely unaware I was even saying it, and in the 60s to 80s there was no highlighting of New Zealanders using this term. Nowadays it is a very common thing for a Kiwi to say. I can't for the life of me understand how I picked up the Yeah Nah having been away from NZ for 34 years. But I still proudly have a Kiwi accent
@Paul Watson same reason I say "innit" and "dya know what I mean" without meaning to 😂
@Ryan Parker You see, I sometimes start a chat with Yeah Nah. I can't understand why I do it.
Yeah Nah = I acknowledge what you're saying but I disagree/refuse
Nah Yeah = I know its hard to believe but its true
Thats how I hear these phrases
If I had an English teacher like this guy when I was in school, I might have paid attention. 😄
Felix speaking Italian makes me laugh so hard even when his pronunciation is on point
"Cockney uses rhyming slang"
Me: oh cool!
"Sometimes we drop the word that rhymes"
Me: 😳
@Richard Silver but we’ve just learned that “lemon” means time, doesn’t it?
😂😂
@Richard Silver Right. It's straight ridiculous at this point. Dog for phone, lemon and lime for time, Get outta here with that nonsense.
@Richard Silver I'm a bit late, but that's the point.
This is "coded speak". And the way to decode it is to have grown up in this area so that you are used to their culture and idioms.
Basically it's "high context language", such a language can only be fully understood and appreciated within the culture from where it arose.
"Low context league" is the short of international English, which everybody that learned English can understand.
@S Toy Where I'm from, berk is slang for boyfriend. Or even guy/dude/bloke. But mostly boyfriend.
I’m from Upstate NY, USA…this was the best, most entertaining video I’ve seen (maybe ever!) I’d be totally lost if I was speaking to someone with a Cockney accent, but I absolutely ADORE it. I’d be laughing all day (and not understanding anything)
As long as i know, the accent is the way to pronounce words, the dialect is a complete new set of words and grammatical rules, and this seems to be more a dialect than an accent. Here in Italy we have a thousand of different dialects and a miriad accents
Yes saw this very thing in Jakarta.
This is just amazing. Plus this guy's humor is fantastic 😆
In Amsterdam/the Netherlands there was a language like that, too. Under different names, but to directly translate the more meaningful term, it was called thieves language. It's died out, but some elements remain. I think an uncle of mine spoke it fluently. Had something to do with his "career" and "peer group"...
Wow! I think that’s what my great grandfather spoke! So fascinating to learn the secrets behind language usage! 😊
"Say hello Bob." Bob: " Ellow" this was the best and funniest example of the accent.
Just call this Michael Caine.
"hello, how are you?"
"shabat shalom, mareshma?"
There was an old show called ello ello about the French in ww2. Idk why I mentioned that
@Tryst46isn’t sad at all 😂
@some polish girl Whats funny about Bob? It’s short for Robert.
A glorious foray into the undergrowth of one particular segment of regional English. Thanks, Maestro. You made my evening worthwhile.
Even though my mom was Brum, she would say "my old china" (to translate: china plate>mate), or "up the apples" (apples and pears>stairs), and as schoolkids we'd say "Give us a butchers" (butcher's hook>look), "What great plates" (plates of meat>feet), "Use your loaf" (loaf of bread>head)... this in Devon, mindl. Well, yes - but was years before I realised their provenance.
Many times, however, RS is used to cover obscenities, or maybe to bowdlerise them... but I won't go further down this track (other than perhaps 'raspberries').
Anthony Burgess wrote his favourite: 'Aris'. Aris>Aristotle>bottle> and glass>ass. Thus Aris turned itself around into a word very similar to the word they were meaning (both are pronounced 'arse')
As someone born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, cockney accent and rhyming slang are not unfamiliar to me. I heard it every day at school and on work-sites. Maybe it was due to the large numbers of 10 Pound Poms who came to Australia after WW2. It seems to have always been part of the Australian dialect, but not so much these days.
Great video, btw.
@Irene Jennings Yeah nah, ghan get...
Leave it out mate 😂
We need to bring it back here on Australia.
Zajefajne. (Polish youth slang. Mixture of zajebiste (fucking awesome) and fajne (nice)). I think I have to look into English translation of Stanisław Lem's The Cyberiad. That must have been a challenge.
On the other hand in Poland we have two translations of A Clockwork Orange: one leaving the English and another one leaving the Russian. Both by the same man, R.I.P. Robert Stiller.
Great work, subbed'n'liked!
I'm an American that's just obsessed with Cockney sounds, i love it so much. ❤️
It's crazy how much Australian English shares with Cockney ( I'm Australian) - When I speak at a normal pace, I pronounce full words.
When speaking fast or telling a story in an animated fashion, a lot of my words are snipped just like the ' Head vs Ed example '
I'm going to England and now I'm scared people will talk to me like this.
The glottal stop is already spidering through America. I run into it everywhere including radio.
how was ur trip
@Mystery Crumble Lol! Yes!
@Nathaniel Barton lmao the irony
For a while Madonna spoke British....
You've got a new subscriber - this video is super interesting. The Mighty Boosh is my favorite show, but being an American, even after watching every episode countless times over the past 15 years or so, I still discover words or phrases that I've misunderstood or misinterpreted all this time. In the intro to the first episode, I always thought Vince (referring to his hair) said, "If my bonnet didn't look right, people would be furious." Bonnet made sense since it's a head covering and I never thought about it any further. Now I know it's "Barnet" because of your video - thanks!
this is so hilarious! so now I know why so many actors have to be subtitled in British movies! 🤣this channel is awesome!
8:03 I have been told I have a knack for many different accents of English. I’m an American from the Deep South and I have very little difficulty understanding cockney at any level. Only occasionally do I fail to get the full phrase but I never fail to catch the context and respond correctly.
I'm 24 and you made learning fun I appreciate it I wish had more teachers like this probably would retain a lot of information 😅
The mere fact of you explaining "This letter sounds like this other letter" (for example, TH sounds as V) is the main reason why I love Spanish xD You pronounce what you see.
@Lomu you read what you see for the most part in English too. We just have more rules than spanish. In standard English, which they'll understand worldwide. Even dialects just have different rules.
@no no My native language is Spanish. I do know about different Spanish dialects, however, wherever you go, if you pronounce what you read, they'll understand you; you might sound weird, but they'll understand. However, you cannot do that in English. Try looking for "Ghoti is Fish" on internet. That's what I mean.
Someone's never learned Spanish or at least the accents of spanish 😂😂😂 try v=b in Colombian and some Spain ll- "y" in Spain and "j" in much of Latin America S's (Carribean) and D's are dropped off completely at the end in a lot of countries. Also G, depending on where you place it can be silent, vocal fricative (some dialects), or like English "g"
Imagine walking in London with your dog and a guy with a cockney accent comes up to you and said: can I use your dog?
I'd burst out laughing.
You literally killed me
@Ifeyecouldpaint Nobody says just 'dog ' - we say 'dog'n bone'.
@Kingsford Gray 7
@Kingsford Gray mk
I'd say ee's bark'in
I got the biggest kick out of this! Very informative and entertaining! Loved when the cockney meter was turned up on cousin Bob! I'm American. I went to England on student exchange in '77.
Congrats! A good outline of Cockney. I taught English in Poland for almost thirty years, and it was sometimes necessary to lift students from apathy. So I did my 'cockney' lesson.How we laughed! My having spent time in London enabled me to speak well in cockney, to the point that I was once chatting to 'a cockney' in a pub in London, and he told me was amazed to discover that I'm from Manchester. I'll check your channel for other accent/dialect analysis. Rermember that 'accent' is the sound of what is said, and that 'dialect' is the content of what is said. My fave accent/dialect, with its wonderful idiosynchrasies, is one of many in Yorkshire, England:
"Eee! Am reet peckish. Al nip dearn t' new chip oil on t' Slaithwai' Roaerd an' ge' me sen some reet good scran."
IN RP?
"Oh, gosh! I am really hungry. I will quickly go to the new fish-and-chip shop on Slaithwaite Road to get myself some really good food."
Am I kidding? No!
Yorkshire is a beautiful place, where satire and sarcasm are delivered better than anywhere else, IMHO.
Take care, and travel!
PS:
Regarding 'dearn' and 'Roaerd' .... these represent diphthongs much used by the fine people of Yorkshire, and perhaps further afield. I adore them! Both the people and the diphthongs!
Take care!
As an American I can understand most accents of English. We have a lot of them here on this side of the pond. I can even understand them when the speaker is three sheets to the wind, but there is one accent that perplexed me.
I found myself sitting next to a dockworker from Liverpool in a bar in Medan, Sumatra back in the late 70's. He was well into his cups when he initiated conversation and for the life of me I couldn't understand a word he was saying. All I could do was nod at what seemed to be the appropriate times..
Lots of fun. Did you know that in Buenos Aires men in jail , often of Italian descent, who wanted their own language changed words too, often saying them backwards.(Lunfardo) The city of Buenos Aires has its own accent, "porteno" because it's a port.There is so much slang that I often can't understand them at all and I'm fluent in Spanish.
@Rob Golding The B.A. Spanish ("Castellano")is Porteno( BA is a port) and so full of slang that I have trouble speaking with them and understanding them.
You know what they say about Argentinians. They are Italians that speak Spanish, think they are French and wish they were English. I speak passable Italian but my Spanish is not so good but when I visited BA some years ago I found that if I was having trouble with my Spanish I could speak to almost anybody in Italian and they would reply in that language.
@Ticiana Loduca Che, que pinta!?
soy de Buenos Aires y los porteños como decís tenemos un slang llamado Lunfardo que es un mix de palabras italianas, francesas, españolas de ciertas regiones. Igualmente cambió mucho, muchas palabras no se usan más y ahora hay otros slang de la cárcel (que son de barrios marginales y no de inmigrantes del siglo XX) y del inglés mezclados. Depende de la edad que tengas y la clase social. Por ejemplo: che chabón, tenés altas llantas. (Het, dude , you have a very good sneakers). También usamos el "vos" y no "tú". Difícil aprender español en Argentina. Yo soy ex profesora de español. Espero que me hayas entendido, saludos "capa" (that means you are a kind person, like the capo mafia but in a good way).
I actually feel like I understand level 3 more so than I have any business doing but as long as you kinda know the rhymes and there aren't too many too fast it makes a lot more sense. I always thought there was some folksy story behind all those things like what's the lemon when I guess it's actually pretty simple
I am a born and bred Londoner living in Canada for the past 39 years. I have never lost my London accent and cockney slang. Thanks for the refresher.
I love my Londoner accent too, I shifted to Birmingham few yrs ago missing my birth place.
Fing is Canadians & yanks dont understand it , they fink your aving a Giraffe .
Right im having the off ,stay lucky ! /UK
it Can be done by many people.
@El canal del emprendedor Absolutely right bro.
Nice one mate. I’m from Brighton, and the accent is very London; only 50 miles away. All the best mate, be lucky…
This is so funny!! I’m from Mexico City and we do the same thing we exchange words for something else when speaking slang. The most common example is saying “Simón” instead of “si”.
Fantastic! So good!
My father was born in England and I was brought up by my British Grandparents mostly. It’s been years since I’ve been there. Traveled there twice….. once age 5 and then again at age 7. I am now 37 years young, lol. I’ll make it to England again someday, I pray! ❤
in Chile the inmates in the prisons developed a spanish variation called “coa”, it’s used inverting the syllables on each word, kinda reminds me of your explanation of the lv 3 cockney, both are weird and difficult to understand, though almost nobody uses the coa here I think…
hahaha, Bob got me into tears 😂😂funniest accent I've ever heard. Please give us more🙏🙏
As someone who has grown up with tons of Appalachian English, a lot of this wasn't too hard to understand for me actually. There are so many made up words in Appalachia and southern dialects that you just have to get really good at context clues and infer the meaning of the sentence.
I have been studying English for almost ten years now, yet I think after this video, I need another ten.
Same hahaha I'm laughing as hell
@David C I know knackered! Thought it was Mancoonian! So happy!
Don't worry. Even most English people only understand a little bit of Cockney rhyming slang and wouldn't understand past level 2. Although its funny how many single slang words do come from it, that even non-cockney English people still use. For example, loaf for head or knackered for tired.
Same here :)
@Rob Plazzman true, it is a bit obscure
Very helpful and interesting, thanks.
There's an episode of 8 out of 10 cats does Countdown in which Dany Dyer is the guest on dictionary corner and Susie Dent lets him read this tongue twister about buying better butter to make his bitter butter better. Now I understand why he's supposed to struggle but he mastered the bit perfectly.
I’m Australian, lived in London for a couple of years 04-06. Walked into a caf in Faringdon and heard to boys going at in Cockney rhyming slang. Was surprised how much I understood as we use a dialect of Cockney here it seems. I did a Jack The Ripper walk and there was a young girl selling toffee apples, Cockney accent, but I could recognise a bit of the Sydney accent in her… Funnily enough, stumbled across a Lonely Planet Language Guide to Australian 😂 anyway, book said the Australian accentbwss starting to form with the first generation of kids off the boats.. Makes sense why I identify the East London twang, as I’m sure many sent out here were from there.
Então você estuda inglês direitinho, fica na frente do espelho praticando o "th", colocando a língua entre os dentes. Londrinos: "th" com som de "f", falam "weaver" em vez de "weather", etc kkkkkkk. Essa é pra você valorizar mais o seu sotaque, não tenha medo de falar como consegue, cada qual tem o seu jeito de falar. Interessante vídeo!
😆 a great sence of humour you have, makes me even more interested in British culture than before, thank you Sir! 👍
Amazing class, amazing video, amazing diction (RP, since it's the only one I know a bit) and amazing interpretation. I had some good laughs!
Damn I’m so high I really didn’t realize Bob was just himself with glasses smh. Quality acting my guy
=]]
The funny thing is your sentence has a lot of words that arent direct either.
Damn
High
Glasses
smh
Two bob mob
More likely quality drug.
well you need a new pair of oglefakes
So what I learned today is that for some reason I’m already familiar with a lot of level-2 style cockney words (no idea why) but level-3 is like another language entirely; my brain simply cannot keep up 😵
I've studied english as second language ever since I went to school. I was taught traditional pronunciation all the way up to university. I was quite surprised when I was asked to speak normal when I went to America as exchange student: "Can you speak normal? What are you, a Brit" Needless to say nobody expected a russian student to correctly pronounce every single word when speaking )
I'm Italian and I felt so lost at the end... 😭😂
I'm here for David Bowie ❤ and also because one of my cousins is British Italian from London, I want to try some sentence 😂
Thank you for this video! Ciao!
I lived in London as a student and played table tennis at a club in Southwark a bit too far south to hear Bow Bells. But I picked up their language quite easily. My mother was a Londoner from Muswell Hill and she taught in Greenwich so she knew a lot of the rhyming slang so it was part of my childhood vocabulary. A hat was always a Titfa. Also the h was dropped from some words but added to others which had no H.
Though I moved out of the London area I kept the ability to turn on the London accent. My children can do Posh (RP) and the Gloucestershire Accent. But I did not hear much of the London accent, so my cockney has stayed around 1970. When I hear a London accent now it is quite different, and has gain quite a lot of a clipped Jamaican influence which I remember from visits to Brixton market.
I went to school in Croydon, so I can do that accent as well.
Makes me think of the relation between Canadian French and Metropolitan French. We learn the same writen french but when French come over to Quebec for the first time, they can barely understand anything. I've heard ol' China in a song and figured out that it meant friend/mate/pal, but it's interesting to see where it actually comes from! Might try to bring some Cockney into my french now, sounds like a fun exercise!
Me: Excuse me, where can I get a hamburger around here?
Brit: oi mate u cannae get a blo’y right bleed innit bruv sik ya well lad
Me: Please I’m so hungry.
“Cannae “ is pure Scottish.
The letter “d” is emphasised not dropped.
The letters “t” and or “h” are more likely to be dropped .In this case the whole “ham”!
No one says “hamburger” or “around here “ !
The letters “a “ and “h” are definitely not pronounced either.
Nice try though-innit !!
Cannae is Scottish specifically, good try though!
@princess candy isn't that "fook'in Bri'ish"?
@jabertcul 123 I think everybody caught that.
@Alexis Jankowski "You cannot get a bloody right bleed isn't it, brother" is as far as I got. What is a bleed? And cannae is Scots...
I grew up in Southwark, South London and had a strong Cockney accent. It was literally knocked out of me at the age of 11 when I went to grammar school under the threat of physical violence. I ended up with a different accent to the rest of my family. I emigrated to Australia at the age of 21 after getting married. Here I had to slow my speech down to almost half speed to be understood properly. Sydney is the only place I have ever heard rhyming slang used other than London but very different expressions.
A lot of words still used here are left overs from the English language from over 200 years ago almost like an historic time capsule.
When I return to London, people pick me as an Aussie but here people still think I talk like a pom.
Love your posts. Well done mate !
As a Norwegian I was quite pleased passing stage 2 with relative ease. But stage 3 gave me a run for my money though.
Yet I learned enough to decipher the last messege fairly fast for greenie, so…
I was in London a couple of times (I'm Dutch), but now I finally understand Londoners... Fantastic document, clearly explained. Tha.
It seems like you've had a lot of fun making this video! Great job and thank you very much! :D
When my daughter was learning to talk she fell into using F and V for the unvoiced and voiced TH sounds. But she also put a hard T in place of the -ED to make past tense of verbs. So I heard things like, "Bad wevver, it fundert!" = "Bad weather, it thundered!" Somehow a little Texan was coming out with Cockney German. 😄
Silly me, I thought English is my first language.
Lol. Same.
my first language is spanish and this accent was imposible to understand
Geonosian Commander geonosian? From Geonosis?
Clearly not since you can’t even write a single sentence without grammatical errors.
As a foreigner, my mum fussed a lot about my not pronouncing in "proper" BBC RP like she had learned (also a foreigner). After eventually living in London and Scotland for a few years I gave up even trying: There are so many regional and international English accents in use in the UK, and nobody speaks that 50s PR. So to heck with it!
Same thing in the US for me lol but since I moved out at 14 from New England to the Mid West to the Deep South to the west coast back to the East I’m fluent in every kind of English accent this side of the ocean
My first visit to London will be this summer.
I do hope that most Londoners speak perfectly standard english though because I wouldn't understand a word.
I'm from Sweden so english is not my main english either.😅😅
But I have to say that the Gick ner accent sounds really charming actually.
I love all the rimes and I can sense the humour in it too.
This explains a lot for me, I was born an American English speaking person and sometimes I understand Cockney speakers the same way I understand German, I can't speak it but I understand a lot of it without knowing why lol
I have a general rule: The standard form of a language is wherever it has the most native speakers, ergo standard Spanish is Mexican Spanish, standard Portuguese is Brazilian Portuguese, etc. Tonnes of fun telling my London raised cousins that they’re speaking my language wrong, in a thick Southern accent of course.
I'm from the states, but my grandpa was from Brighton, he was very against talking cockney in his house and I caught hell for it if I imitated it, he told me I had 2 choices, either speak The Queen's English or US English, but no cockney. My dad americanised, but I took after grandpa and ended up with a mixed us and Brighton accent.
That last line where your cousin didn't understand you speaking Cockney made me think of that movie Cockneys vs Zombies where a lot of east Londoners are constantly unable to understand each other because they're always trying to outslang each other
Then there's an old guy halfway through the movie who rhyming slangs the rhyming slangs sometimes several layers deep so whenever he's forced to explain it it takes a whole minute 😂😂😂
Good folm too
I know the one 🤣, having a tin bath cause he's a raspberry ripple (not being able to get up into the loft) 🤣
Londonistan you mean
God what a good movie. The retirement home zombie chase is AMAZING
Yeah, I lived I Jakarta for a while and got fascinated by the street languages like pro-kem. They start off with an infix, then they move to drop it and reorder statement. So stages of this would Gilay lo (you're crazy, lo is you) then in a dramatic shift it becomes GiLO lay, so they've moved the item for you to become an infix in the word for crazy. It's a general passtime, everyone laughs all the time. Best use I ever put my linguistics training to.
I remember when i was in London i've been taught:
apples and pears = stairs
whistle and flute = suit
almond rocks = socks
These are the only i can remember at this precise moment coz it was maaaaany years ago. When i went back home my mom who learned the posh english and heard my cockney accent, got mad at me telling me: "what the hell did you learn in england?" 😂
I loved this!!! So much fun! Specially at the end!!! Great job! Love the silliness!
I noticed the same thing in Thailand, in a small country you don't have to drive that far to find different dialects and accents. In America you have to drive thousands of miles before somebody sounds different.
Londoner born and bred. There are different accents depending on where you are born. West, North, South and East all have distinct sounds. Ask any Londener to say the word South. You'll soon hear it. Sarf, Saaf, Syth, Sowf etc. The true East End accent is in Chatham (outside London), where Henry VIII moved lots of his shipbuilders to build a new fleet.
This, is prolly the best thing I have watched this year. I'm a HUGE Guy Ritchie fan and now the lingo is making sense.
I'm gunna have to watch this about another five limes but I think I'll catch on.
I'm italian and now I'm really confused.
The third level is absurd.
It's not absurd, it's different. Be nice.
@thereis None Lor love a duck. Gor blimey. Anyway, I've got to go, the trouble and strife is calling me from dahn the apples.
@John Rekesius What you are talking about is African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and has its origins in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade when Africans were brought to the U.S., the Carribean, and Latin America. Creole languages developed because the slaves classes were not allowed to be educated with mainstream or upper-class societies. Thus, these creole languages and dialects were formed to adapt to the circumstances.
The standard or "proper" dialects are for official and academic purposes to ensure that everyone understands and communicates in a way that is officially accepted, much like S.I. Units are accepted internationally for science and engineering to facilitate accurate communication and avoid confusion. Common dialects outside of that are for colloquial and everyday speech, and are not restricted by professional or academic expectations.
Context is everything when it comes to language -- and while I agree that a university lecture hall shouldn't use "valley girl speak" to teach students, it's not up to any one person or group to decide if a dialect is valid or not. Dialects form and exist regardless of your approval or prejudice, because language changes and/or evolves depending on the culture and socioeconomic classes and trends. People will find ways to communicate with or without approval from the dominant culture or social class. That's just how language works.
I'm from the Pacific but I find English accent interesting and love hearing cockney accents on comedy shows
What's the lemon?....hhhhh
Great vid, thanks. A few years ago I found out what the word 'berk' actually meant. Apparently it come from Cockney rhyming slang. I found it quite funny because when I was a child my parents would call me a 'great berk' occasionally when I was being silly. My parents didn't know where it came from. All I can say is that it didn't come from Berkshire! All the best......
but the foxes knew who were chasing them
Level 3 was great!
I read a list of cockney rhymes years ago and tell people about it often.
This is why I love the English Accent. 😂👍
Thank you for sharing.
We had in Spain, XVI century, something similar that was called "Germanias" meaning something like "brotherhood" and the aim of that was to keep privacy in their bussiness (not legal ones of course). Seville was the epicenter of all of that.
Some of these words are still being used in jails by the inmates for the same reasons as 400 years ago.
Wonderful. Not only educational but hilarious too.
Thanks !
My grandad (born in London's East End in the 1890's) spoke fluent rhyming slang when he was with his mates but could turn it on and off as the situation required. There were (are) literally thousands of phrases to learn. It seemed to me that its primary purpose was humour but there was also almost something tribal about it. My guess is that it fell out of mainstream use when shipping moved to containers and London Docks went into decline (in the 1960's).
@pinkyman5155 You are probably right but I had always though of cockney slang as a badge of honor for "true" East Endenders (born within range of Bo Bells) and therefore primarily dockers. They were a very tight knit community and had their own code (you could not get a job on the docks unless you had a father or uncle working there). My grandfather (a blacksmith, who shooed horses at the large horse stables at Camden) was born half a mile outside the approved radius and he described himself as not a genuine cockney, with some obvious envy.
I think most of the Cockney accent originated from the markets, Billingsgate, Smithfield and Covent Garden, so prices could be set without the punters understanding. Owhay uchmay orfay hatay ( How much for that) along with the slang it was almost impossible to work out. Cushtie (Gypsy word)
Very interesting 👍
Would have been good to record them
Or when thousands of immigrants took over your city
That's was a nice explanation of cockney rhyming idea and great examples nicely worded by the cousin. I knew "trouble and strife" and "take a butcher's hook", in fact I used it myself when I was in England, however even native English speakers are used to saying "take a butcher's" that they have no idea there is a rhyme with hook, funny! One bloke couldn't believe when I told him that.
Thank you very much for this video! Awesome!! When you speak with a cockney accent, you really sound like Michael Cane. But, most of all, I like it because it reminds me of The Only Fools and Horses TV show. Lovely jubbly! =)
Great presentation and depth here. I think London owes you a debt of gratitude!
The Beatles never tried to change their accents and that's why they are so unique and so adored. The same with Elvis, he never tried to change his accent which made him so special.
Americans have one accent north faster than South, scousers never lose their accent especially adults I moved down south from Liverpool 15years ago an still got a very strong accent
Elvis had an accent? That is the first time I have ever heard anyone claim that.
This is simply great. I love it! ❤
Thanks!
I grew up in South London and had a stronger Cockney accent as a child, we moved outside of London and my English teacher gave me a hard time because of my accent saying I don't speak the Queens English, and some family members use to berate me over it, I have worked hard to try and loose it, for a long time I felt ashamed of it, even now I still fall back into it especially when angry or speaking to family who still have it, funny thing is the family members who went on at me about my accent now have a stronger Cockney accent than me 😂, but I will say that people never had a problem understanding me, infact a French student at school had problems understanding everyone else but me.
People no matter your language, accent, dialect, be
proud of the way you speak, it would be pretty boring to all speak the same, I love hearing all the differences :)
@Sarah Johnson fair point, wasn't clear from your initial comment linking south London to the cockney accent as if they were intrinsically paired. If your family moved from the east then it makes sense.
@A B It migrated because cockney people moved to other parts of London, there isn't a barrier preventing them leaving the sound of the Bow bells, I get that they are called Cockney because of where it originated, but that does not mean it will stay there for eternity.
I always thought it was my fellow Americans who didn't understand the difference between lose and loose, but it seems I was mistaken.
Much the same applied to me with a Black Country accent - which I duly lost. I do like the accent though, when I hear it I'm reminded of my apprentice days in Brierly Hill and the great folks I met.
Yes that’s right brother 😊
Double thumbs up. I laughed myself silly listening to this😂
My grandfather was a true cockney [ bo bells etc ] ,he passed many years ago this is like listening to him all over again
It's Bow Bells not Bo Bells
I spent an incredible evening drinking in a rinky dink London pub shooting the shit with an older Londoner gentleman (who also grew up some in Liverpool) and his straight up Gaelic friend. Needless to say I understood like 10% of what they said that night, it was all vibes 🍻
👏 good lesson! When I was improving my English in London, sometime I didn’t catch what people saying 😄
I'm Irish through and through and love Cockney rhyme. It is so creative and intelligently funny. When I was young we had a mug at home and written on it was "Bow Bells Chime with Cockney Rhyme" with quite a few of the better known rhymes plastered all over it. That got me started. The TV series Minder had some beauties too...Arthur Daley in his new 'whistle' (whistle & toot = suit)...another male character sporting a 'syrup' (syrup of fig = wig)...gawd look at the Bristols on 'er. I leave you to work out that one!
I know what they are, just not how we get there, lol
That was hilarious 😂 As an Aussie, I've always felt that our accent is midway between RP and Cockney, and this video illustrates that!
@BinaThere Yep! Sorry, SHOULD have emph my SARCASM! It's fixed now!
@ElizabethBrightEyes No, a big brown shark came...
@Jax SO was America!
@DMSProduktions wow... Are you sure?
In the comedy series featuring Reginald Perrin on TV years ago there was a character who kept referring to his children as "dustbins" (because "dustbin lids" rhymes with "kids"). 😃
This is a great episode. I couldn't help watching it again.