It is worth analysing each sound that the main three speakers use. All accents are more or less cockneyfied, so sometimes they share common features, but at some other points they differ, which allows us to judge their level of formality. Below you can find a table with several Cockney features and short notes next to them, wherever the changes were noticed:
|
Cockney features
|
Kate Nash
|
Tony Blair
|
Simon Reeve
|
|
Glottalisation
|
Yes, (e.g. li?e, star?ed, recen?ly)
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. wha?, abou?, tha?, differen?, but not in: politics, taking, that)
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. government?, bu?,Dorse? but: little, different, start, beauty)
|
|
Monophthongisation
|
Partly / only sometimes, (e.g. somehæ:, fæ:nd but: ara?nd, aba?t, a?tside)
|
—
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. abæ:?, but: ta?mes)
|
|
H-dropping
|
—
|
—
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. _imself, _ell, but: heading, holiday, horn)
|
|
G-dropping
|
Yes, (e.g. talkin, enjoyin, tryin)
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. changin, gettin, but: taki?)
|
—
|
|
Post-vocalic /l/
|
—
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. schoo?s, but: sensible)
|
—
|
|
Th-fronting
|
—
|
—
|
—
|
|
Th-stopping
|
Yes, (e.g. dat)
|
—
|
Yes, (e.g. dis, dere)
|
|
Yod-dropping
|
—
|
—
|
—
|
|
Yod-coalescence
|
—
|
—
|
—
|
|
Vowel lowering
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. bitt?, litt?, pitt?, but: whenev?, numb?)
|
—
|
—
|
|
Vowel shift
|
Partly / only sometimes (e.g. not in: fa?nd, ka?nd, tra?)
|
—
|
—
|
|
Triphthongs
|
—
|
—
|
—
|
|
Others
|
situational accent-switching
|
condensed pronunciation, e.g. [‘g?n?]; situational accent-switching
|
condensed pronunciation, e.g. [‘g?n?]; no accent-switching
|
Fig. 6 Comparison table: Cockney changes
As can be noticed in figure 6, there are some features that are not used by any of the three speakers and occur only in a “full” Cockney accent. The other ones are chosen according to the speakers’ will – they prefer to pronounce one Cockney-like sound and to leave the other ones unchanged.
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