The church of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside.

The term cockney refers to Londoners from the working class and living east of the city. According to tradition, this word refers, strictly speaking, those who could hear the bells of Bow, that is to say the bells of the church St. Mary-le-Bow. They were silent the Second World War until 1961.

The word Cockney was employed for the first time in the early seventeenth ^century by Samuel Rowlands in his satire The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine, where it refers to a "Bow-bell Cockney '.

According to Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, the word cockney could derive from the French expression " Cockaigne ", a term that the Normans used to refer to London, a place of idleness and luxury. Another possible etymology is the expression formed from cock (penis) and egg (egg), designating a malformed egg ( 1362 ), and figuratively a person ignorant of local customs ( 1521 ).

The region covered by the term cockney, in the sense described in the introduction, has varied progressively.

The talk Cockney

Focus

The cockney refers also to talk about how Cockneys. It is a very popular accent in that it denotes a low social class. The features of Cockney speech include:

Firstly, there are regional components that denote the southern and south-east:

• has voted serious and long before affricates consonants : grass The rhyming slang

  People speaking cockney cockney willingly use the rhyming slang , which is a slang expressions imaged. As its name suggests, this slang is based on rhymes, but rhymes are implied in the practice: the idea is to match any word with a pair of words which rhyme, then remove the second word of the pair in the spoken language. Ex: stairs rhymes with apples and pears, apples and they will say so and say stairs. The same phone will rhyme with dog and bone dog and will mean phone.

  In practice, the cockney rhyming slang does not in abundance. Also its overuse is often indicative of a counterfeit of the accent, sometimes called the Mockney that numbers of actors, singers, etc.. adopt.

  Emphasis Cockney rhyming slang and are also very active in Australia , many Australians are Anglo-Saxon direct descendant of Cockneys.

  Famous Cockneys

  Fiction

  • Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw , as in My Fair Lady by George Cukor ;
  • In the film Austin Powers in Goldmember Austin and his father, while surrounded by Americans, decided to use the old slang spoken of the past that is to say the cockney, so that they can not disclose what 'they will say. The ensuing dialogue becomes incomprehensible to the American public alike.

  Personalities

  • David Beckham , Damon Albarn , David Bowie , Steve Harley , Mike Skinner (from The Streets ), Steve Marriott (of Small Faces ), Eddie Argos (of Art Brut ), Jimmy Pursey (of Sham 69 ) Pete Doherty , John Meillon , Billy Elliot or Kate Nash are among the most famous Cockneys.

  Related articles

  • Slang (linguistics)
  • London portal

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