Cockney

Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, East End London.

A cockney, in the loosest sense of the word, is an inhabitant of the underworld of London's East End. This area is made up of the Aldgate, Bethnal Green, Bow, Hackney, Limehouse, Mile End, Old Ford, Poplar, Shoreditch, Stepney, Wapping and Whitechapel districts. According to an old tradition, the definition is limited to those who are born within the area where the Bow's bells are heard, that is, the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside.

The term has been used in this way since 1600, when Samuel Rowlands mentions "a Cockney of Bow bells" (a Bow-bell Cockney) in his satirical work The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine. John Minsheu (or Minshew) was the first lexicographer to define the word in this sense, in his work Ductor in Linguas of 1617. However, the etymologies he presented (from 'cock'; and 'neigh' or from the Latin incoctus, 'uncultivated') were mere assumptions. Some time later, the Oxford English Dictionary definitively explained the concept and determined its origin in cock and egg, its first meaning being "rarely shaped egg&#34.; (1362), then an ignorant person with country manners (1521) and later the meaning with which the concept is currently associated. Instead, linguist Anatoly Liberman disagrees, linking it to the French "acoquiner" and "coquin", derived from the Latin "coquinus", adjective of "coquina", 'kitchen', which was already used in Low Latin with the meaning of 'beggar'.

The Church of St. Mary-le-Bow was destroyed during the Great Fire of London and was rebuilt by Christopher Wren. Since the bells were destroyed in 1941 during World War II by bombing raids by Nazi Germany and not replaced until 1961, there was a period when it can be said that 'authentic' Cockneys were not born.

Cockneys have a distinctive dialect and accent, and often use Cockney rhyming slang.

The following are examples of Cockneys in works of fiction:

• Eliza Dolittle, in Pygmalionby George Bernard Shaw (see also My Fair Lady).
• Liza de LambethWilliam Somerset Maugham's novel.
• Alfie, protagonist of the film of the same name.
• Sam Weller, in the novel The Pustumos Club Papers PickwickCharles Dickens.
• Cockneys vs. zombieswhere the protagonists who fight against zombies are a group of cockneys.
• Sid, in The fall of the giantsKen Follett's novel.

Phonology and pronunciation

• It's not a rhotic accent.
• When -er is at the end, it is pronounced or [.] or [.].
• Suffer a phenomenon called Th-fronting^{[chuckles]required]} which consists in that the sound /θ/ is changed to /f/ and the sound /ð/, by /v/, except when it is at the beginning of a word (like in "the", "that", "them").
• The /h/ word start is never pronounced. When he goes after, sometimes he doesn't pronounce.