The Cockney Accent

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Languages, dialects and accents have always been a special interest of mine. The Cockney accent is one of my favorites, with its distinctive sound and rhyming slang. I've heard this accent will be extinct in a few decades. My parents know someone who was raised by a mother and father with a Cockney accent and their own kids couldn't understand their rhyming!

What can be done about accent and dialect preservation? I love languages and would hate to see the Cockney accent vanish.

I didn't know where else to put this, so into the Science forum it went!

Many accents around the world and languages themselves are dying out, it seems to be a natural phenomenon. My guess is that it is due to technology providing more widely distributed communications such as television, radio and other sources. People also travel much more than they did, so the melting pot has become larger. Gone are the days when someone born in a particular town would stay there for their entire life and rarely come into contact with people speaking with other accents.

Its hard for me to believe that working class Londoners would all start speaking in BBC English anytime soon.

The late Amy Winehouse was on a satellite link up to some american music awards show a few years ago, and when she was speaking (and not singing) she spoke in distinct (but understandable) cockney. As does Micheal Caine when hes being himself, and not acting.

The ryhming slang might be dying out but not the dialect as a whole.

But even the ryhming slang has left its mark.Today Americans "duke it out".

Originally in England it was "Put up your forks" ( because hands look like forks). Then it became the cockney ryhming slang "put up your Duke of Yorks" which of course got shortened to "Dukes".

So for generations both Brits and American would "put up thier dukes". Recently americans have made the further step of turning "duke" from a noun into a verb!

Where I stay, people speak a mixture of standard English, Scots and Glaswegian. Scots is dying out and you have to go into the most south western parts to hear it being spoken frequently. My mum uses Scots words, but I don't hear it much here, other than when it's spoken by her. It's decline has been caused by kids, for generations, being told to 'speak properly' and punished at school for not using standard English. Even my daughter corrects my Mum, although I've told her the Granny is speaking in Scots dialect and we're trying to keep it alive. I'm pretty sure the teachers are still telling kids off for not speaking English. It's really sad, because it is a very vibrant and melodic dialect. Robert Burns must be turning in his grave.