Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. What
we're talking about today is the London accent, and it's called
"Multicultural London English" by linguists, but I'm going to
call it "Real London English". It's the accent that a lot of people speak...
Speak, like, if you come to London and you're just walking around the street, you're going
to hear this accent a lot. Yeah? And I made a different video about this accent, all the
words that you can use to sound like this, all the slang and stuff. I made... That's a
different video. But in this video I'm going to talk about the grammar, because you know
what? A lot of people when they hear this kind of accent, they say: "Oh, that's... That's
lazy speech or they're not speaking correctly." But actually this is a variety of English.
It does has its own rules of pronunciation and grammar. It's not like people just make it
up themselves and they're all just sounding a bit wrong. You know, it's a... It's a style
of English, like you've probably heard of RP is a particular style, a posh style of
English, this also has rules. So I'm going to tell you some of those rules. What I'll mention first is it's a London accent,
but the London accent you've probably heard of is Cockney English, and I would say that not
so many people speak with a Cockney accent anymore if they're... If they're a youngish
person, they don't really speak with a Cockney accent. It's kind of dying or is dead. And
this accent has replaced it. But what we see in this accent is a lot of similar details
that we have in the Cockney accent, so I'm going to tell you all
about those similarities. First I just want to talk generally about
the qualities of this accent. What do you actually hear from this accent? So, the pace
of the accent is quite slow, you don't really rush what you're saying. Although, if it's in
a hip hop track or a grime track and you're listening to music, it can be really, really
fast as well. But in general, the pace is slow. If you can, you got to make your voice
lower. You got to speak from not high in your throat. You got to low... You got to lower
what you're saying, speak from your lungs, speak low. Keep it deep. Also, I'm going to
say it's sharply iambic, that means you go up, down, up, down. When you're speaking it's
like there's different steps in what you're saying; stress, unstress, stress, unstress,
stress, unstress. And I think that altogether it gives this a musical... A musical quality
on my ears, anyway, as a native speaker. It's not... It's not a very harsh-sounding accent.
It's... Cockney on the... Cockney, on the other... On the other hand is a lot sharper
and like spoken higher in the throat. Yeah? And it might be the kind of accent that gets
on your nerves. No offence, Cockneys, I'm just making a comparison between the music
of the two... Of the two varieties. So, bearing this in mind, what are the actual
rules of speaking like this? So, a "t" sound becomes a "d" sound at the beginning of words.
So, instead of saying: "that" with a "t" at the end, it's: "dat"; "there", "dere";
"them", "dem"; "then", "den". Also, these words here, I'll say them in proper English: "something",
"nothing", "anything". Compare these to Cockney English: "somefink", "nuffink", "anyfink"
because in Cockney English you change the "ing" to a "k", and you change the "th" to an
"f", so in Cockney English it's like that. "Somefink", "nuffink". But in this accent
we're putting a glottal stop in the middle of the word, so instead of saying: "something",
"su-in", "nu-in", "anytin". So, it's quite different to Cockney English in
this respect, saying those words. But it's the same as Cockney English in that for
both varieties, both these different accents we do something called "h" dropping, we don't
say the "h" all the time at the beginning of words. So, for example, the word
"have" becomes "ave". "Ave you seen dat? Ave you seen dat?" That
was the word "that". "Have you seen that?" Not
grammatically-sounded English, but something that
could be said in this variety. And I mentioned to you just now a glottal
stop. Maybe you don't know what a glottal stop is. It's when we don't say a "t" sound
in London accents. So, Cockney English, this accent, also the accent that I have which
is called Estuary English sometimes, quite a lot I'm not saying "t". I just make a sort
of absence of sound, not saying something. And instead of "t" there's nothing. So,
for example, this is: "What you got?" I said that with t's. I'll say it without t's now.
"Wha you go? Wha you go?" "O" with no "t". So, we're very keen of glottal stops in London.
We don't like to say t's that much. Is it lazy pronunciation? Well, we must all be lazy
because you go around, that's what you hear, glottal stops. And in comments on my other
videos people have always left quite funny comments where they
say things like: "When I came to London I
remember standing at the bus stop, and this guy came up to me and
he said: 'Have you got a ligh-er?'" And the guy's maybe confused, doesn't
know what he's talking about. And finally he realized...
Realizes the guy was saying: "Do you have a lighter?"
And then from that realizing: "Oh, maybe 't' is not said here", so it's something to bear in
mind, you people who dislike lazy pronunciation. What else can we say? Shortened words. So a
word like "enough" becomes one syllable: "nuff". "Brother", when 10 years ago "brother"
turned to "bro", but now apparently the same word has turned to "bra", "bra". What you
sayin', bra? What are you saying, brother? Also the end of words, so this "ing" sound... We
mentioned it over here for "somefink", "nuffink", we're not... We're not saying it. We're
just replacing that. Either we're saying not... We're not saying "ing", "suhin". We're
not... We're not using it at the end of words. "Wanna" and "gonna" non-standard examples
of elision where you put "going to" and "want to"
together as one word. "Gonna", "wanna". "I'm
gonna go der later.", "I'm going to go there later." So, in this kind of accent we always
make contractions wherever we can just to make all the sounds flow together really.
Yeah, just to make it easier for pronunciation so you can speak quickly. And the last point I want to make is about
double negatives. You've probably heard the... This is non-standard grammar in English to
put two negative words or a negative verb and a negative in a sentence. So if you... If
you've heard the saying: "I didn't do nothing" is wrong, you're right, it's not standard
pronunciation. But in this accent, you would be expected to always use double negatives.
You would be expected to say: "I didn't do nuhin", rather than: "I didn't do
anything." People just wouldn't say that. It would sound a bit wrong. Double negatives are to be
used in this kind of style of speaking. These... These last couple of things, they're
not rules, they're just extra little things I think you should know. So we use this...
I don't know why I'm saying "we", because I don't speak like this, but I mean I'm speaking
as a Londoner. "Ain't". "Ain't" means something like "am not". "I ain't gonna do it.", "I'm
not going to do it." "Innit" is just a way of showing agreement.
For example... Oo, what am I going
to say about "innit"? That chicken shop is bare...
Is bare peng... No, no, no. That's really bad.
I don't know. "Innit" means "isn't it", and I can't think of anything
people say about it. You want someone to agree with you, you say: "I'm right,
innit?", "I'm right, isn't that true?" And also this is... You know the word "text",
the verb "text" for when you send a message to someone on your mobile phone, well, when I
was at school this word came into the language because before that we didn't do texting. And
I remember when I was at school when people started to use "text" as a verb, it was always
the same. It didn't have a past tense. So if you were talking about
the past, you would say: "I text him. I text him earlier.
I already sent the message." We didn't say: "texted". And what I
noticed later is that when, like, parents and everybody started texting, then
it became "texted", but many, many people still say: "I text", "I text" to talk about
the past, and I have to... I have to say that for me I'm more comfortable using the non-standard
way to say: "I text", talking about the past because it... To me it just seemed like other
people came along and just changed the language when it was already being
said one way. Anyway. That brings us to this one. Sometime... "Anyways"
is not a standard word. You won't find it in the dictionary, it would be wrong. But in
this accent you can say "anyways". Anyways, this lesson's finished now. This
lesson's done. Do you get me? So, what I'd like you to do is go
and do the quiz on this lesson now. I'm not telling you
to speak like this. I'm not telling you to speak like
this, but I'm pointing out something that exists if you come to London. Many people
speak like this, so this is for your listening benefit if you ever come here. Also just for
your general interest to know a little bit, just to even get that idea in your head that
just because somebody doesn't speak correctly like the textbook, it doesn't mean that they're
just lazy or sloppy. They still have rules in the way they speak, so
something for you to consider. I would like you to subscribe
here on my engVid channel. Plus, I would like you to subscribe
on my personal channel because I've got two YouTube channels. And that's it for today,
so I'm going to go now. Do you know what I'm saying?
I'm gonna go. Gonna get me... Get me some fried
chicken from that chicken shop, so allow that. See you later.
