The dialect spoken by many people from the South and South East of
England, including parts of London, although cockney and Received Pronounciation (the Queen's English) are far more common.
Received Pronounciation can be heard in the same areas as Estuary English, however RP tends to be spoken by the upper classes while Estuary English is spoken by the lower and working class.
Estuary English is also far more common in Younger people, with
parents who have RP. So the decline in RP is likely to continue and be replaced with Estuary.
Many features of the Estuary accent include:
- The broad A. This includes pronouncing
words such as 'fast > farst' and 'path > parth'
- Regular Glottal stops - This is not pronouncing the letter 'T' in most
words. i.e
water is pronounced
war'er.
Th-Fronting - This is prouncing most
words that start a 'Th' with an
F. i.e 'Three > free', 'think > fink' and 'north > norf'. If 'th' is in the middle of a word, it is usually replaced with a 'V'. i.e 'other > ovver' 'southern > sovvern'
L-vocalisation - This is not pronouncing the letter 'L' in certain
words and tends to be ended with a 'w' sound instead. i.e 'fall > faw' and 'milk > miwk'.
- H-Dropping - not pronouncing the letter 'H' at the start of most
words. i.e 'here > ere' and 'hate > ate'
- G's are also not pronounced at the end of
words. 'swimming > swimmin'
Other things are included in the accent other than just the pronounciation. This includes double negatives and finishing a lot of sentances with questions even ifthey are not asking a question. i.e I didn't
mean to, did I? and 'we should shouldn't we?'
