LONDON

LONDON A city on the River Thames in southern England, the ancient capital of England and the capital and seat of government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The city has experienced many languages: CELTIC, the LATIN of Roman Britain, OLD ENGLISH, NORMAN FRENCH, MIDDLE and MODERN ENGLISH, and the languages of immigrants, diplomats, merchants, and visitors. It is, in the late 20c, one of the world's great cosmopolitan and polyglot cities, identified in particular with four varieties of English: KING'S/Queen's ENGLISH, BBC ENGLISH, COCKNEY and more recently, ESTUARY ENGLISH. The primacy of London (in England, in the United Kingdom, and in the British Empire) has in the past given a certain status to the language used there. However, the city did not play a major part in Old English culture until the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042–66). Prior to that period, Winchester to the south-west was the seat of the Saxon kings and West Saxon was the literary dialect. Through the medieval period, London grew in importance, and the triumph of Middle English over Norman French in the 14c gave preference to the variety of the East Midland dialect that was becoming current in London. The poet Geoffrey CHAUCER, a Londoner of the time, generally used slightly older and more southern forms, with traces of Kentish.

Capital and provinces

The comparative stability of the Tudor period, with London as the seat of the royal court and major litigation, brought still greater regard for its superiority in language. In 1589, Puttenham advised the use of ‘the vsual speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London with lx [sixty] myles, and not much aboue’ (The Arte of English Poesie, 1589). The introduction of dialect speakers in drama, like Shakespeare's Welsh captain Fluellen and Scots captain Jamy in Henry V, and the use of ‘stage southern’ as affected by Edgar in King Lear, showed that Londoners were aware of their distinctive speech and amused by other varieties. The tendency is even more marked in later 17c comedy, in which country characters are differentiated by their speech: the restored Stuart court and the London location of groups like the new Royal Society made the city seem ever more significant than ‘the provinces’. Discussions about the correct forms of English and the possibility of an ACADEMY to regulate the language were carried on mainly by London speakers.

Perhaps because London usage was taken for granted by so many of the influential, there is not an extensive record of its nature before the 19c. When dialogue was written for plays or novels, only speakers of other dialects were marked by deviant spelling, the established ORTHOGRAPHY being used for the rest. The hymnographer Isaac Watts, in his Art of Reading and Writing English (1721), dismisses the ‘dialect or corrupt speech that obtains in the several counties of England’ and lists words that are written differently from ‘their common and frequent pronunciation in the City of London’. He adds that ‘there are some other corruptions in the pronouncing of several words by many of the citizens themselves’ and cites among others yourn for ‘yours’, squeedge for ‘squeeze’, yerb for ‘herb’. However, Samuel Pegge notes, in Anecdotes of the English Language (1803), words whose pronunciation ‘is a little deformed by the natives of London’; as well as Cockney features like the confusion of /v/ and /w/, he mentions some that ‘savour rather of an affected refinement’ like daater for ‘daughter’ and saace for ‘sauce’.

London English

True Cockney is relatively limited, though some of its features are shared by Londoners who are not themselves Cockneys. Some vowel and diphthong sounds, notably the nasalization of the diphthong /au/ as in now and the changing of /ei/ to /ai/ which makes paper sound like piper, are frequently heard, as is the dropping of initial h (We're 'appy to 'elp you). Characteristics of neighbouring counties are heard in London, particularly in the outer suburbs, which have penetrated into what were once rural areas of Surrey, Kent, and Essex. It would be an acute or very bold observer who could guarantee to analyse all the features of speech among a random selection of Londoners

The speech of educated Londoners is not necessarily to be equated with RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION, but this is the model which has traditionally been followed by the upwardly mobile. In many instances, however, there appears in the later 20c to be a levelling-out in the speech patterns of younger, educated Londoners of many backgrounds, including RP, into a distinctive ‘Estuary’ accent and voice quality. Currently, however, the situation is complex, and London speech ranges from ‘core’ Cockney usage through a wide variety of intermediate forms to RP and forms of RP that some may regard as prestigious and others as affected or ‘posh’.

See CAXTON, CHANCERY STANDARD, DIALECT (ENGLAND), DICKENS, EAST MIDLAND DIALECT, ENGLISH IN ENGLAND, HISTORY OF ENGLISH, JOHNSON, KENSINGTON, RHYMING SLANG, SHAKESPEARE, SHAW, STANDARD ENGLISH.