Southern English Accents

We now turn to an examination of regional non-RP accents of England and we shall first give a brief outline of the group of Southern accents.

As was stated above, educated Southern speech is very much near-RP accent whereas non-standard accents are very much near Cockney. Therefore we shall focus our attention on the rather detailed description of uneducated London accent — Cockney.

Cockney accent. It has been long established that Cockney is a social accent — the speech of working-class areas of the Greater London. Here are some pronunciation peculiarities of it.

In vowels

1. [л] is realized as [esi]: blood [bkd) — (blaeid);

2. [ae] is realized as [e] or [ei]: bag [basgj — |begj, [beig];

3. [i] in word-final position sounds as [i]: city I'sitil — I'siti;];

4. when [o:] is non-final, its realization is much closer, it sounds like [o:]: pause [po:z] — [po:z]; when it is final, it is pronounced as [y.9]:paw [pa] — [рэ:э];

2. the diphthong [ei] is realized as [aei] or [ai]: lady ['leidi] — ['laeidi:], [laidi:];

3. RP [зи] sounds as [aeu]: soaked [saukt] — [saeukt];

4. RP [аи] may be [аеэ]: now [паи] — [пжэ].

In consonants

6. [h] in unstressed position is almost invariably absent;

7. [?] is widely spread in Cockney speech: paper ['paei?pa], butterfly [Ъл?1эПа!];

8. The contrast between [9] and [f] is completely lost: thin [fin], booth [birfj;

9. The contrast between [d] and [v] is occasionally lost: weather ['weva];

10. when [d] occurs initially it is either dropped or replaced by [d]: this [5is], them [(d)am];

11.[1] is realized as a vowel when it precedes a consonant and follows a vowel, or when it is syllabic: milk [mrvk], table [teibv]; when the preceding vowel is [o:], [1] may disappear completely;

1. [n] is replaced by [n] in word-final position: dancing ['dccnsm] or it may be pronounced as [ink] in something, anу- thing, nothing: ['nAfirjk];

2. [p, t, k] are heavily aspirated, more so than in RP;

3. {t] is affricated, [s] is heard before the vowel: top [tsop].

2. Northern and Midland Accents

Midland accents, Yorkshire, for example, West Midland and North-West accents have very much in common with Northern ones. Therefore they are combined in this book into one group; peculiar realization of vowels and consonants will be marked, of course, when each subgroup is described separately.

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