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MLE (multicultural London English)

Some people will believe anything.

Swear Down!

You should talk to my students, my neighbours.....it is happening in front of us. If our students don't drop the dialect, their children will start life with it. I can see the predictions being true.
 
Interesting. The language has certainly evolved in my lifetime. I also heard an archive piece of Gardeners' Question Time from the first series in 1948 or similar, it was recorded in the Manchester area and a chap asked his question, the Lanc accent was comedic to modern ears. If you'd sent that out today as English as spoken in Lancashire you would have generated a million complaints about Northern stereotypes. Will this new variant take over? Maybe. Estuary English was going to take over a few years ago, it has taken over a large chunk of the South East and I've heard on here that the original rural Essex accent has disappeared. Rural Suffolk still has one, it's quite distinctive, I encountered it in the factory and surrounding towns earlier this year, but I didn't hear it spoken by anyone under about 40.
 
In That London? Surely everyone still speaks in a mixture of Jacob Rees Mogg affected poshness and the clipped public school Englishness of the 1940s BBC and Ealing comedies etc?

PS I’m taking the piss obviously. That London has always been a melting pot for language as it is a truly diverse and metropolitan city. The BBC etc has always given an entirely false middle class white revisionism to a city that in reality sounded nothing like its presenters or actors. Different areas and social groups have always sounded totally different to one another, used entirely different slang terms etc. Countless variations. Modern social media will obviously give new words and phrases a far wider reach, but that’s a good thing IMO. Language should always be a fun and evolving thing. It is just a tool, no one owns it, anyone can modify it if their new word or phrase gains sufficient traction. It is certainly not owned by the white academic classes, or even worse the bloody Daily Mail!
 
there was a thing on LBC last night about accentism being a real and growing issue.

I recall when i was working in Hyderabad, talking to someone in the bar of a hotel, and he was there to run accent neutralisation courses for new call centre workers.........
 
When I was growing up in Wickford, Essex, I could tell whether someone was from my town, Basildon, Billericay, Southend or Chelmsford just by their accent. It all makes me cringe now.
I’ve no idea where people think I’m from.
 
When I was growing up in Wickford, Essex, I could tell whether someone was from my town, Basildon, Billericay, Southend or Chelmsford just by their accent. It all makes me cringe now.
I’ve no idea where people think I’m from.

I’ve moved around the country so much mine has mostly gone. It started as Wirral (think OMD, they lived streets away), but is far less than that now. Just a hint of ‘generic north’ now I guess.
 
It's just evolution. Listen to newsreels from the 40s, 60s, 80s etc. The accent and formulation change dramatically through time. No reason why this wouldn't be the case now. And crucially (as the Guardian piece points out) it's not the actual words which will stick. I heard my students using "hench" a decade ago, but have never heard "peng" uttered by a life-form. Which is good, and also good.

Mind you, I'm still coming to terms with the orphan "Enjoy", so I'm lost.
 
If the premise is that everyone will speak gangsta-rap stylee, then I can't see it.

Much more likely is the that everyone will speak tv show american.
 
I'm not convinced. People adopt these sorts of language conventions to set themselves apart, and by definition, if the language moves for this linguistic style to be prevalent, then the next generation will adopt yet another dialect to again distance themselves.

But yes, there's lots of it about, and i find it amusing and creative. What's not to like?
 
Is it going to cause further gammon rage face? I’m sure Nadine and whoever’s the current Education Secretary will weigh in to take back control of this pillar of the nation’s heritage. Shakespeare would be callin the Po-po.
 
In the depths of darkest Lincolnshire (north-ish), the street youths are definitely speaking London English fam....
 
I am guessing many of the posters on this thread don't have children, this is old news and all about them creating their own individuality whilst desperately confirming. Also yes language changes.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
 


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