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English in Southern England[a] is the collective set of different dialects and accents ofModern English spoken inSouthern England.
As of the 21st century, a wide class of dialects labelled "Estuary English" is on the rise inSouth East England and theHome Counties (the counties bordering London), which was the traditional interface between the London urban region and more local and rural accents.
Commentators report widespread homogenisation in South East England in the 20th century (Kerswill & Williams 2000; Britain 2002). This involved a process oflevelling between the extremes of working-classCockney in inner-city London and the careful upper-class standard accent of Southern England,Received Pronunciation (RP), popular in the 20th century withupper-middle- andupper-class residents. Now spread throughout the South East region, Estuary English is the resulting mainstream accent that combines features of both Cockney and a more middle-class RP. Less affluent areas have variants of Estuary English that grade into southern rural England outside urban areas.[1]
Outside of South East England,West Country English (ofSouth West England) andEast Anglian English survive as traditional broad dialects in Southern England today, though they too are subject to Estuary English influence in recent decades and are consequently weakening.[2]
London and greaterThames Estuary accents arenon-rhotic: that is, the consonant/r/ (phonetically[ɹ]) occurs only before vowels.
General characteristics of all major London accents include:
Features of working- or middle-class Estuary English, spoken in the counties all around London in the 21st century, include:
It retains some aspects of Cockney, such as thevocalisation of[ɫ] (dark L) to[o], andyod-coalescence instressedsyllables (for example,duty[dʒʉːʔi]) and replacement of[t] with[ʔ] (theglottal stop) in weak positions, or occasionally with d). Wells notes traditional aspects of rural South East speech as lengthened[æː] intrap words[3] and use of[eɪ] or[ɛʊ] inmouth words.[4]
Cockney is the traditional accent of the working classes of the areas immediately surrounding theCity of London itself (most famously including the East End). It is characterised by many phonological differences from RP:
Multicultural London English (abbreviated MLE), colloquially called Blockney, is adialect (and/orsociolect) ofEnglish that emerged in the late 20th century. It is spoken mainly byyouths inmulticultural parts of working-class London.
The speech ofJamaicans, or children of Jamaican parents, in London shows interesting combinations of the Jamaican accent with the London accent. For example, inJamaican English,/θ/ is replaced by[t], for exampleboth/boːt/. In London, word-final/t/ is realised as[ʔ], as mentioned above. In Jamaican-London speech, glottalization of/t/ applies also to/t/ from/θ/, for exampleboth of them[bʌʊʔədem].Hypercorrections like[fʊθ] forfoot are also heard from Jamaicans.[5]John C. Wells's dissertation,Jamaican pronunciation in London, was published by the Philological Society in 1973.
Berkshire andHampshire are on the modern-day border between Estuary English andWest Country English. Berkshire is predominantly non-rhotic today, but traditional accents may still be found across the county. Parts ofWest Berkshire may still be rhotic or variably rhotic today, though this feature is quickly becoming ever less frequent.[6] In country areas and Southampton, the older rhotic accent can still be heard amongst some speakers, for example in the speech ofJohn Arlott,Lord Denning andReg Presley. Since the 1960s, particularly in Andover and Basingstoke, the local accent has changed reflecting the arrival of East Londoners relocated by London County Council. It can be argued that Hampshire is a borderline county moving East, linguistically.
"Estuary-isms" can be found inPortsmouth or "Pompey" English, some of which may actually originate from Portsmouth rather than London.[7][8]
South West England or "West Country" English is a family of similar stronglyrhotic accents, now perceived as rural. It originally extended an even larger region, across much of South East England, including an area south of the "broad A"isogloss, but the modern West Country dialects are now most often classified west of a line roughly fromShropshire viaOxfordshire. Their shared characteristics have been caricatured asMummerset.
They persist most strongly in areas that remain largely rural with a largely indigenous population, particularly theWest Country. In many other areas they are declining because of RP and Estuary accents moving to the area; for instance, strongIsle of Wight accents tend to be more prevalent in older speakers.
As well as rhoticity, here are common features of West Country accents:
In traditional Southern rural accents, the voicelessfricatives/s/,/f/,/θ/,/ʃ/ always remain voiceless, which is the main difference from West Country accents.
Features which can be found inEast Anglian English (especially inNorfolk) include:
There are differences between and even within areas of East Anglia: the Norwich accent has distinguishing aspects from theNorfolk dialect that surrounds it – chiefly in the vowel sounds. The accent ofCambridgeshire is different from the Norfolk accent, whilstSuffolk has greater similarities to that of Norfolk.[10]
The East Anglian feature ofyod-dropping was common in Essex. In addition,Mersea Island (though not the rest of Essex) showed some rhoticity in speakers born as late as the early 20th century,[11] a feature that characterised other rural dialects of South East England in the 19th century.Th-fronting, a feature now widespread in England, was found throughout Essex in the 1950sSurvey of English Dialects, which studied speakers born in the late 1800s.[12] Many words are unique to 19th-century Essex dialect, some examples includingbonx meaning "to beat up batter for pudding" andhodmedod orhodmadod meaning "snail".[13] Several nonstandard grammatical features exist, such as irregular plural forms likehousen for "houses".[14]
Modern Essex English is usually associated with non-rhotic Estuary English,[15][16] mainly in urban areas receiving an influx of East London migrants since World War II. The Essex accent has an east–west variation with the county's west having Estuary English speech features and the county's east having the traditional Essaxon and East Anglian features.[citation needed]
The region largely south of London, including Surrey, Sussex, and once even Kent, used to speak with what today would be lumped under a South West England or "West Country" dialect.[17] In all these counties, frontMOUTH, frontSTART, and high (or evenround)[11]PRICE vowels predominated in the 19th century, all of which are also shared with rural traditionalEast Anglian English.
Modern Kent and Sussex English is usually associated with non-rhotic Estuary English,[15][16] mainly in urban areas receiving an influx of East London migrants since World War II. However, rhoticity used to characterize the traditional rural accents in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, though it has long been a recessive feature.[17][18] Still, it is possible that some Sussex and Kentish rhoticity lasted until as recently as the early 21st century in certain pockets.[19]
The vowel/ɒ/ (as inLOT) is very occasionally used for theSTRUT vowel, normally/ʌ/; it has been reported as a minority variant in Kent and Essex.[20]
In the 18th and 19th centuries, in Essex, Kent, and east Sussex,[21] plus several other South East areas including London, Suffolk, and Norfolk,[22]/v/ was pronounced as/w/ in pre-vocalic position: thus,village sounded likewillage andvenom likewenom. In the 19th century, across all of Southern England,arter without anf (non-rhotically,/ˈɑːtə/) was a common pronunciation ofafter.[23]
The pattern of speech in some ofCharles Dickens' books pertains to Kentish dialect, as the author lived atHigham, was familiar with the mudflats nearRochester and created a comic characterSam Weller who spoke the local accent, principally Kentish but with strong London influences.[24]
Modern Estuary dialect features were also reported in some traditional varieties, includingL-vocalization e.g.old asowd,[12] as well asyod-coalescence in Kent.
A unique dialect existed as recently as the late 19th century in thehistoric county ofSurrey, in westernKent, and in parts of northernSussex,[25] though it has now almost entirely died out. It was first documented by Granville W. G.Leveson Gower (1838–1895), ofTitsey Place,[citation needed] during the 1870s and first published by him inA Glossary of Surrey Words in 1893.[25]
Gower was first made aware of the dialect after reading a letter in a local newspaper. Following that, and after his own enquiries, he expressed a fear that improved transport and the spread of education would cause such local dialects to disappear and be forgotten despite the fact that, in his words, "Old customs, old beliefs, old prejudices die hard in the soil of England".[26] Gower described certain standard English words with nonstandard pronunciations in the Surrey dialect:
Gowers mentions:
Acrost for across; agoo for ago; batcheldor for bachelor; brownchitis (or sometime brown titus) for bronchitis; chimley or chimbley for chimney; crowner for coroner; crowner's quest for coroner's inquest; curosity and curous for curiosity and curious; death for deaf; disgest for digest, and indisgestion for indigestion; gownd for gown; scholard for scholar; nevvy for nephew; non-plush'd for non-plussed; refuge for refuse; quid for cud, " chewing the quid; "sarment for sermon; varmint for vermin; sloop for slope; spartacles for spectacles; spavin for spasms. I knew an old woman who was constantly suffering from "the windy spavin;" taters for potatoes; wunst for once; wuts for oats, etc., etc."[26]
Syntax of the Surrey dialect included:
Phonological features included long-standingyod-coalescence, now typical of dialects throughout England,[27] as well as the increasingly disappearing feature of rhoticity.[17][18]
In addition to the above features, namely rhoticity, the traditional Sussex accent showed certain other features, like an extremely narrowPRICE vowel andth-stopping.Reduplicated plural forms were a grammatical feature of the Sussex dialect, particularly in words ending-st, such asghostesses in place of the standard Englishghosts.[28] Many old Sussex words once existed, thought to have derived from Sussex's fishermen and their links with fishermen from the coasts of France and the Netherlands.[29] A universal feminine gender pronoun was typical, reflected in a joking saying in Sussex that "Everything in Sussex is a she except a tomcat and she's a he."[30]
I saw the ghostesses, / Sitting on the postesses, / Eating of their toastesses, / And fighting with their fistesses.
