Estuary English?!?

J.C.Wells, University College London

Handout for a talk first given at the BAAP Colloquium, Cambridge, 1992, and later revised

1. �Estuary English� (EE) was defined by Rosewarne (1984) as: �a variety of modified regional speech, [...] a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation�. It received great media attention in 1993. Coggle�s book (1993) is subtitled �the new Standard English�. The Tory Minister of Education condemned it as �a bastardized version of Cockney dialect�.

2. EE differs from Cockney in that it lacks

	/h/ dropping (in content words)	�hQnd �n �hA�t (�Qnd �n �A�?)
	TH fronting	TINk (fINk), �fA�D� (�fA�v�)
	MOUTH vowel monophthong	mQUT (ma�f), dQUn (da�n)
	T glottalling within a word before a vowel	�b�t� (�b�?�), �wO�t� (�wOU?�)

3. EE agrees with Cockney, but differs from RP, in having (perhaps variably)

	tense vowel in HAPPY	�hQpi, �k�fi, �ve�ri�s
	T glottalling finally (etc.)	�teIk I? ȁf, �DQ? �Iz, �p�?ni
	vocalization of preconsonantal/final /l/	�mIok �b�to, �dZento/�dZen?li
	yod coalescence in stressed syllables	�tSu�zdeI, rI�dZu�s, �stSu�d�n?
	(?) diphthong shift in FACE, PRICE, GOAT	f�Is, prAIs, g�U?
	(?) striking allophony (phoneme split?) in sold	s�U(l�)d, �r�Ul�

4. Disregard Rosewarne's claims re

	glottalling of /d/	(!)
	phonetic quality of /r/
	yod dropping after /s/ and /l/	su�t, �Qbs�lu�t
	accenting of prepositions, use of rise-fall, use of question-tags
	usage: cheers 'thank you; goodbye'; there you go 'here you are' etc.
	international ratings (RP 84%, GenAm 71%, Australian 59%, EE 57%...)

5. Issues:

• Is EE a variety (lect, dialect) in its own right, or just the formal style for which Cockney is the informal?
• Does EE include stylistic variation? Does informal EE overlap with formal Cockney? (-ing? you?)
• Where is the boundary between EE and RP? Is localizability a workable criterion?

References

• Coggle, Paul, 1993. Do you speak Estuary? London: Bloomsbury.
• Coggle, Paul, 1994. �The changing sounds of English�. Sunday Times, London, 28 August 1994, 10.8-10.
• Kerswill, P. and A. Williams, 1994. A new dialect in a new city. ESRC.
• Margolis, Jonathan, 1994. �I�ll say that again�. Sunday Times, London, 28 August 1994, 10.9.
• Rosewarne, David, 1984. �Estuary English�. Times Educational Supplement, 19 (October 1984).
• Rosewarne, David, 1994a. �Estuary English: tomorrow�s RP?�. English Today 37.10.1 (January 1994), 3-8.
• Rosewarne, David, 1994b. �Pronouncing Estuary English�. English Today 40.10.4 (October 1994), 3-7.
• Wells, J.C., 1982. Accents of English. vol. 2: 4.2, London.
• Wells, J.C., 1995 �Transcribing Estuary English: a discussion document�. Speech Hearing & Language vol. 8, 261-267, 1994. UCL Phonetics and Linguistics.

Posted on the web 1998 Nov 09. SIL version 1999 01 18. John Wells

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