DOOMED AT LAST

Evening Star, Issue 22353, 1 June 1936, Page 16

DOOMED AT LAST

THE COCKNEY ACCENT LONDON ATTACKS HER OWN London is trying to eliminate the Cockney accent from its schools (writes Charles Pound, in tho_ New York * Times A. tL Cockney ” is said to be one of the worst handicaps a boy can have after leaving school._ Phonographs and records have accordingly been installed in the schools in order to teach pupils correct diction, in the hope that the Cockney pupil will presently disappear into the past as the Cockney teacher lias done. Outside the schpols “ Cockney ” is already disappearing. Nowadays this London dialect is very thin stuff compared to what it m ust have been in the days of Bam \Veller and of ‘ Villikins and His Dinah. There is less of it about than there was as recently as 1914, when London buttoned on its khaki with a murmur of “’Arf a mo, Kaiser!” For about 100 years it has been one of the most famous of English dialects. It has given ns “ Rand the tarn.” “ ’E dunno where ’e arc,” and all the rich, racy world of music halls, hansom cabs, and Phil May. Now that they are beginning to stamp it out of th'e schools, its final disappearance can hardly bo far off. No doubt it is a handicap. Robert Lyncl tells a story to tlio effect that ho once went into a druggist’s near Euston station in London to get some pne pastilles for a sore throat. The druggist was a Cockney, who naturally thought that “ pine ” meant “ pain.” “ Wot sort of pine do you want them for? ” be asked. Mr Lynd said that ho didn’t want them for a pain, he just wanted some pine pastilles. “ Yes,” persisted the druggist, “ but wot I’m asking you is, where have you got this pine ? ” In the end Mr Lynd gave it up and got some glycerine pastilles. Obviously there are thousands of good London jobs which are closed to such twisters of the King’s English. People whose jobs take them into constant contact with the general public have to use the standardised English that the public uses. This applies to post office employees, tram, bus, and underground conductors, doormen and elevator men in big office buildings, and very many others. ALL DIALECTS. As far as London is concerned, the pressure is not only against “ Cockney,” but against any dialect. Like any other capital, London attracts a ceaseless stream of new blood from the provinces, but there arc always men and girls—telephone girls, for example—who are kept away by dialects which are taken for granted in the provinces, hut not in London. “ Cockney ”is hit hardest because it is Loudon’s own dialect. In addition to this economic pressure, there is also a social pressure that militates against dialect of any kind—except, of course, the dialect of the public schools. What is known in England as a public school is the exact reverse of an American! public' school. It offers, in fact, the most expensive and, socially, the most exclusive secondary education to be had in England. Because it imposes its own more or less Oxonian dialect, any local dialect in after-school life is taken as evidence of a less expensive schooling; usually, indeed, of a hoard school education, which -costs very little and is therefore the lowest form of education known to the English.

The English scene is more complex and overcrowded than the social landscapes in the newer countries. It is made orderly and manageable by so many subtle hues that the slightest intonation suffices to “ place ” a man. His county, his parentage, and his schooling are all revealed as soon as he uses “ow ’’ for “ o,” or “oi ” for “ i.” The delighted American woman who once heard an Archbishop of Canterbury speak and discovered to her surprise that ho had “ practically no English accent, he didn’t drop a single ‘ h,’ ” had not quite grasped the essentials of the English scheme.

A man who drops his “ h’s ” might conceivably rise to high position in the Baptist, Methodist, or Congregational pulpit, it is not likely, but it is conceivable. On the other hand, it is utterly inconceivable that lib would be tolerated for an distant in the humblest of Anglican pulpits. The Church of England can (and does) mutilate the King’s English in tho approved public school manner. “He that hath yaw toyaw, let him yaw” was (and is) an Episcopal contribution to the comedy of English pronunciation. But the dropped “ h ” of the board, schools—never 1 MATTER OF TIME.

Under these economic and social pressures, the disappearance of “ Cockney ” seems to be little more than a matter of time. Londoners presumably will continue to be born within sound of the St. Mary-le-Bow, but they will not always use a recognisable dialect of their own. Just where they got the dialect that once flourished among them seems to be open to endless debate. It may have been the result of a mingling of all the provincial dialects that have streamed into London in the past. It was certainly the London street markets that gave it its greatest breadth and force. “ Cockney ” became the “ pearlies ” of linguistic Loudon.

In Dickens’s time when it flourished all through the inner suburbs—St. Giles, Lambeth, the Borough, and Clerkenwell—it consisted largely of the substitution of “ v ” for “w” and “ f ” or “ v ” for “ th,” ns in “ fing ” or “ thing and “ fevers ” for “ feathers.” “Ou ” became “ ah,” as in “ abaht ” for “ about,” and the long “a ” became the long “ i,” as in “ Dyly Myle ” for ‘ Daily Mail.’ Also the “ h ” was dropped, but this has never been peculiar to “ Cockney.” You will find the dropped “h ” in the board schools of every county in England. Cockney In its great days was London’s own, and its great days must be regarded as past. Albert Chevalier and Marie Lloyd are both dead and they have no successors. They lifted “ Cockney ” to world fame around about the turn of the century. At least a dozen of the 70 or 80 songs that are associated with Chevalier’s name are Cockney classics— ‘ My Old Dutch,’ ‘ Mrs ’Enery ’Awkins,’ ‘ Knocked ’Em in the Old Kent Road,’ ‘Our Little Nipper,’ ‘ Wot Cher!’ ‘Wet’s the Good of Hanyfink? Why Nuffink,’ etc. Songs like these are as Dickensian as anything that Dickens ever wrote. They have Dickens’s own power of making the Cockney eccentricities and extravagances appear more tearfully and laughably real than the Cockney himself. Will they live as Sam Weller has lived P - Probably not. They certainly will bo sung long after “ Cockney ” has censed to be spoken on the London kerbs.