COCKNEY DIALECT DYING

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6543, 13 November 1924, Page 3

COCKNEY DIALECT DYING

Observations made by visitors to London serve to emphasise the fact that the Cockney accent is slowly but surely disappearing, points out a teacher of English in the “Star.” Particularly noticeable has been the improvement, such visitors declare, among those whom everyone hears speaking at some time or other—railway porters, ’bus conductors, cornmissionaries, cloakroom attendants, or hawkers in the street. Nor is it surprising if one 1 remembers that mbch of the English teaching in schools in London and in the boroughs round the Metropolis is, at present, and has been for some few years past, directed towards the elimination of the Cockney accent. Head masters have found that boys •who have left school without an accent have been invariably successful in obtaining desirable situations when competing with boys whose accent had remained untouched. This would seem to indicate that employers have a decided predilection for pure speech among their employees. A feW schoolmasters have even emphasised this point to the pupils’ parents, and have asked for their co-operation, partly because they have found “Cockney” much more difficult to get rid of when the bOys come from homes in which not so much attention is paid to correct diction. Once, however, the eliminating process has commenced, results follow quickly, especially when the boy himself is made to realise the social advantages of unaccented speech. Much use is generally made of phonetics—an idea borrowed from the teaching of French—and of the correct recitation of English poetry. Ejjery fault in diction is remorselessly pointed out, and even the aid of humorous stories has been invoked. Many boys have taken more trouble with their speech after hearing the story of the Scotswoman who rang up a paper to ask for a piper and was asked “What edition, madam?” or the one of the boy who asked his father what a bison was, and was told, “Oh! one of them things your mother makes the puddings in.”