Chapter 8:
The Echoes of an English Voice (293-336)
The Echoes
of an
English
Voice
34
1
The Story of English
By Don L. F. Nilsen
Based on The Story of English
By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil
and William Cran (Penguin, 2003)
34
2
The Raj:
The sun never sets on the British Empire.
• English East-end convicts (Cockney
speakers) were sent to New South Wales,
Australia.
• British loyalists ended up in New Zealand.
• British subjects also colonized Rhodesia
(Cape Colony) in Southern Africa, Singapore,
Hong Kong, parts of China, parts of Canada,
India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan,
Thailand, Tanzania, the Falkland Islands and
America.
• (McCrum 293-294)
34
3
English Raj (McCrum 274/297)
34
4
Cockney
• The word “Cockney” refers to a “cock’s
egg,” and is considered of little value.
• In the 16th century, Cockney was the
language of all Londoners who were not part
of the Court.
• During the industrial revolution, the destitute
farmers in Essex, Suffolk, Kent, and
Middlesex moved to London’s East End.
This is where Cockney developed.
• (McCrum 295)
34
5
Cockney English (London’s West End) (McCrum
278/302)
34
6
Cockney in Culture &
Literature
• Cockney is the language of the girls
murdered by Jack the Ripper.
• Cockney is the language of Sam Weller in
Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.
• Cockney is the language of George Bernard
Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle
• Cockney is the language of Sweeney Todd.
• Cockney is the language of Michael Cain in
Alphie
• Cockney is the language of Charles Dickens’
Oliver Twist.
34
7
• Cockney speakers say “year’oles” and “chimbley”
for “ear holes” and “chimney.”
• They say “bruvver” for “brother.”
• In “butter,” “bottle” and “rotten” they have a glottal
stop.
• They drop the final –g in “eatin’” and “drinkin.’”
• They often use the tag, “isn’t it.”
• They have an intrusive –r in “gone,” “off” and
“cough” so they become “gorn,” “orf” and “corf.”
• “You” becomes “yer”; “tomato” and “potato”
become “tomater” and “potater”
• “God help us,” and “God blind me” become
“Gawdelpus” and “Gorblimey.”
• (McCrum 300-301)
34
8
Cockney Rhyming Slang
• In Cockney rhyming slang “row” and “table”
become “bull and cow” and “Cain and Abel.”
• “Suit”  “whistle and flute”; “hat”  “tit-fortat”; “gloves”  “turtle-doves”; “boots” 
“daisyroots”; “nude”  “in the rude”; breast
 “Bristol City”; wife  “trouble and strife”;
“liar”  “holy friar”; “money”  “bees and
honey”; and “talk”  “rabbit and pork”
34
9
• In Cockney Rhyming Slang, the word for
“teeth” is “Edward Heath,” because this was
one of the prominent feature’s of the
premier’s smile. And “John Selwyn” became
the word for “Bummer” because his last
name was Gummer.
• Because Cockney Rhyming Slang is an
Argot, the speakers try to make the
expressions cryptic, therefore the
expressions above get reduced to: whistle,
titfer, turtles, daisies, Bristols, trouble, holy,
bees, and rabbit.
• The word for “backside” is “Khyber.” This is
because of the British soldiers who had been
stationed in the “Khyber Pass.”
34
10
• (McCrum 303-305)
Foreign Influences on
Cockney
• The Cockney word “pal” for “friend” is the Romany
word for “brother.” “Dukes” is the Romany word for
hands, as in the expression, “Put up your Dukes.”
• The Cockney words “schlemiel” (idiot), “schmutter”
(clothing), “gelt” (money), and “nosh” (food) come
from Yiddish.
• Cockney “parlyvoo” (chat), “San fairy ann” (it
doesn’t matter), and “ally toot sweet” (hurry up)
come from French.
• And Cockney “bullshit” (rubbish) comes from
American English.
(McCrum 306)
34
11
Back Slang
• Another secret language that developed
during the 19th Century was back slang.
• Instead of saying the numbers “one, four,
five and six” they would say “eno, rouf, efiv
and xis.
• In back slang, “fat” and “boy” become “taf”
and “yob.”
(McCrum 303)
34
12
Market Language
• When greengrocers trade wholesale in
fruits and vegetables, they are
sometimes talking to two or three
customers at the same time. The
greengrocer might say,
• “Right, George, you can be a rouf
there.” and he knows that he has
bought at four pounds, and the other
person, who might be buying the same
thing for five pounds, doesn’t know.
34
13
• The slang numbers that are used in London’s
East End are meant to be confusing.
• Cow’s calf is “half,” “nicker is “one,” bottle is
“two,” carpet is “three,” rouf is four,” jacks is
“five,” Tom Nicks is “six,” neves is “seven,”
garden gate is “eight,” and cock and hen or
cockle is “ten.” One greengrocer remarks,
• “There’s no rules. The other day this bloke
said, ‘Do they come to an Alan Whicker
then?’ Meaning ‘nicker,’ which is a pound.”
• (McCrum 304-305)
34
14
• In My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle is
Professor Pickering’s Project.
• She doesn’t pronounce /h/ sounds and
she adds /t/ to words like “orphant”
and “sermont.”
• She pronounces “thrust,” “farthing”
and “feather” as “frust,” “farding” and
“fever.”(McCrum 295)
34
15
• Instead of “flowers” and “Go on” and “A B
C” she says “flars,” and “Garn” and “Ay-ee,
Ba-yee, Sa-yee.”
• She doesn’t pronounce her /h/ sound and
has to learn “In Hartford, Hereford and
Hampshire, hurricanes hardly every
happen.”
• She pronounces “chain,” “strange” and
“obtain” as “chyne,” “straynge,” and
“obtayn,” and has to learn “The rain in Spain
falls mainly on the plain.”
• (McCrum 295)
34
16
Cockney Friendship
• Cockney English has many different terms to
indicate the closeness of a relationship, ranging
from
• Duck
• Love
• Dear
• Cock
• (My old) chum
• Guvnor and
• Mate
• The people that a Cockney speaker mixes with
socially are known as “the mates.”
(McCrum
307)
34
17
Australian English (McCrum 286/311)
34
18
Australian English
•
•
•
•
•
•
Billabong: Water hole
Billy: Coffee
Boomerang: Throwing stick
Coolibah: An Australian tree
G’day
Illywhacker (con man)
34
19
More Australian English
• Jumbuck: Sheep
• Kangaroo, Dingo, Jooey, Koalla, Kookaburra,
Wallabee, and Wombat: Australian animals
• Outback
• Swagman: Hobo, tramp
• Tucker-Bag: Bag for holding “tucker”
• Walkabout: Mindless meandering
• Waltzing Matilda: A song
34
20
Waltzing Matilda
• Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong.
• Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
• And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy
boiled,
• “Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?”
• Waltzing Matilda,
• Waltzing Matilda,
• “Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?”
• And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy
boiled,
• “Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me?”
34
21
• Down came a jumbuck to drink at the
billabong:
• Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him
with glee.
• And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in
his tucker-bag,
• “You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
• Waltzing Matilda,
• Waltzing Matilda,
• “You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
• And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in
his tucker-bag.
• “You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
• (McCrum 314)
34
22
Is Australian English
like British or American English?
• Australians (like Paul Hogan, a.k.a. Crocodile
Dundee) are independent.
• Unlike Cockney speakers, there is no glottal
stop in Australian English, and they don’t
drop their /h/. (McCrum 319)
• Australians say both “biscuit” and “cookie,”
both “nappy” and “diaper,” both “lorry” and
“truck.”
• They ride in both “elevators” and “lifts.”
34
23
• Australians get their water from
“faucets” not “taps,” and their cars run
on “petrol” not “gas,” and drive on
“freeways,” not “motorways.
• Americans borrowed “kangaroo” from
Australia, and the Australians borrowed
it back in the expression “kangaroo
court.”
(McCrum 315, 327)
34
24
Let Stalk Strine
• Afferbeck Lauder entitled his book, Let Stalk
Strine. He shows how
• “How much is it?”  “Emma chisit?”
• “They ought to.”  “Aorta.”
• “Nothing but a…”  “Numb Butter…”
• Aussies also love metaphors like “as scarce
as rocking horse manure” and “as bald as a
bandicoot.” And they might describe
teenage bliss as “feed, a frostie, and a
feature” meaning “food, beer and sex.”
(McCrum 326)
34
25
• Although Australia is the size of Europe, Australians
live in a “one-class society, united in a mixture of
hostility and nostalgia towards Mother England,
• United especially in the isolation and rigour of
Australian life.”
• The rising inflection has to do with Australian
insecurity.
• Aussies, who have a twang in their speech, feel that
the English use “Lah di dah talk.”
• They see English attitudes as “uppity.”
• Boys who use “proper speech” are often considered
to be regarded as “sissies,” or even worse,
“poofters.”
(McCrum 320, 323)
34
26
Australian Social & Gender
Dialects
• Even though there are no regional dialects in
Australia, there are three social dialects:
• Broad Australian
• General Australian
• Cultivated Australian.
• “Women and girls tend towards General or
Cultivated Australian, and…men and boys,
expressing mateship and machismo…, tend
towards General or Broad Australian.”
(McCrum 322)
34
27
What is a Pommy?
• An Aussie will call an Englishman a
“Pommy.”
• This is short for “pomegranate” because
Englishmen are often ruddy-cheeked.
• In Cockney Rhyming Slang an Englishman is
called “Jimmy.” This is short for “Jimmy
Grant” which slant-rhymes with
“pomegranate,” and which alludes to a
prototypical Englishman.
• (McCrum 315-316)
34
28
Barry Humphries
• On stage, Australian Barry Humphries
becomes Dame Edna Everage.
• One of her favorite targets is the “Wowser,”
which is a prudish teetotalling Englishman.
• Barry Humphries himself invented the word
“Wowser.” It came into the language when
he referred to Alderman Waterhouse as a
“white, wolly, weary, watery, word-wasting
wowser from Waverly.” (McCrum 316)
34
29
Dame Nellie Melba
• Dame Nellie Melba lamented the way
Australians use oi for I, and ahee for ay (in
“may” or “say”), and spoke caustically of
Australia’s “twisted vowels, distortions and
flatness of speech” which, “seriously
prejudice other people against us.”
• (McCrum 324)
• By the way, Dame Nellie Melba liked to eat a
special kind of toast.
• This later became “Melba Toast.”
34
30
New Zealand English (McCrum
302/331)
34
31
New Zealand English
• Samuel Butler was probably thinking of New
Zealand when he wrote his satire, Erewhon
(which is “Nowhere” backwards).
• About New Zealand speech, Butler wrote,
“The all-engrossing topics seem to be sheep,
horses, dogs, cattle, English grasses,
paddocks, bush and so forth.”
• New Zealanders, like Australians, have three
social dialects: Cultivated, General, and
Broad.
• (McCrum 329)
34
32
New Zealand & Britain
• There are a lot of Scottish settlements
in the South Island, and there they roll
their /r/. This is known as the
“Southland burr.”
• “If there is a choice between British
and American English usage, the New
Zealander will tend towards the British
where the Aussie may prefer the
American.” (McCrum 330, 333)
34
33
!South African English & Afrikans (McCrum 303/332)
34
34
!English vs. Afrikaans in South
Africa
• In June of 1976, the South African
government decreed that Afrikaans was
to be encouraged and English
discouraged.
• “The Afrikaaner authorities had
introduced a regulation that forced
schoolchildren to learn some of their
subjects through the medium of
Afrikaans instead of English.”
• (McCrum 334)
34
35
!!Afrikaaner words in English
• “Trek,” “veldt” and “apartheid” are
Afrikaaner words.
• Es’kia Mphahlele at the University of
Witwatersrand said,
• “English is…tied up with the Black
man’s efforts to liberate himself.”
• “Afrikaans, by contrast, has become
the language of the oppressor.”
(McCrum 335)
34
36
!!!Accompanying DVD
My Fair Lady by Lerner and Lowe
(originally from George Bernard Shaw’s
Pygmalion)
34
37
!!!Works Cited
• McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and
Robert MacNeil. The Story of English.
New York, NY: Penguin, 1986. (source
of map citations)
• McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and
Robert MacNeil. The Story of English:
Third Revised Edition. New York, NY:
Penguin, 2003. (source of text citations)
34
38