Cockney (was: basic vocab)

At 8:12 pm -0400 20/9/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Mangiat wrote:
>> Indeed I meant Standard English. I've never heard Cockney, but isn't that
>> dialect famous because it's full of glottal stops?
>
>Among other things.  There's also the loss (not sure if it's complete
Complete

> or
>just in certain environments) of /T/ and /D/, so that "brother" comes
>out as "bruvver".  Also drops /h/ and
Both features, i.e. /T/ pronounced [f], /D/ pronounced [v] and dropping /h/
are found fairly widely in colloquial speech in other places, e.g. south
east Wales coastal belt.

Even more typically Cockney, perhaps, is the pronunciation of 'dark l' as
[w], thus 'filled' [fIwd], 'bell' [bEw] etc.  This has, however, spread
into the regions around London and is probably still increasing.  I grew up
in West Sussex; but my village was only 40 miles from London and this
pronunciation had spread there at least 50 years back. Mingled with the
Sussex pronunciation (still very much current) of /au/ as /Ew/, I
pronounced _tell_, _tail_, _tale_ and _towel_ as homophones when I was
young [tEw].

>is also famous for "rhyming
>slang", like "dog and bone" for "telephone".
Yep, tho even that has spread beyond the strictly Cockney area.  However,
me ol' chinas, it still seems to be largely confined to the London area and
its environs.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================