None of Britain's wide variety of dialects are more iconic than cockney, a patter that's no longer the exclusive domain of East End natives but now applies to the speech patterns of most working class Londoners. The term "cockney" has enjoyed a bizarre trajectory across the 6 centuries of its usage, starting out as a derogatory term "cokenay" or cock's egg, i.e. a freak of nature, to describe the vulgarity of its users and their language, but nowadays it's a badge of honour for those preserving its tradition. In its original location of East London within the sound of the Bow Bells, cockney has mutated into a more Carribean-tinged dialect among today's teenagers, but still remains the archetypal London lingo and has not changed in its essentials for 500 years.
Cockney owes its survival to being a vibrant oral tradition, spoken by workers and fishermen on the Thames but rarely, if ever, written down. Compared to standard English, which was promoted from its West Saxon origins via the literary tradition to become the official language of power at Westminster, cockney was demoted in the late Middle Ages to becoming the dialect of the uneducated and considered barbaric and unnatural by the elite. Still, despite this opposition bordering on condemnation during certain ages such as the Enlightenment, the cockney dialect has shown remarkable continuity with certain features that have lasted through the centuries such as the double negative, evolving from "he shuld neuer trobell the parish no more" to "I ain't done nothing", and H-dropping, i.e. "'im and 'is 'ouse".
Cockneys not only faced derision from the London establishment, but also from country dwellers who saw them as "milksops" or effeminate fellows who lacked the hardy self-sufficiency of farmers. It was only when popular writers like Dickens gave a more rounded and energetic portrayal of London's poor that the image of the Cockney began to change for the better. One of Dicken's most famous Cockney portrayals, apart from the Artful Dodger, was Sam Weller in The Pickwick Papers, a devoted working class servant who was also quick witted, well dressed, loyal and brave. Dickens also happened to be writing about London life during a time that the Cockney dialect was flourishing, with rhyming slang in particular dating to the start of the nineteenth century. This period also coincided with the birth of the music hall, which helped to preserve the Cockney idiom in songs like "The Lambeth Walk".
Today, despite the threat of formal education and the mass media creating a standard (or bland-ard) form of English, regional dialects are still thriving and cockney continues to grow by assimilation, having taken words from languages as diverse as French, Spanish, Arabic, Creole and Yiddish (kosher) over the centuries. It has also borrowed heavily and been energised by the underclass, whether via the chatter of thieves trying to avoid being "nicked", boxers involved in a "scrap", prisoners put away by "coppers" or the army man wearing his "titfer". The success of cockney reflects the vibrancy, sense of fun and success of London itself.
All this leads me to think whether my child, being the son of a London father and Norfolk mother, will preserve the Redford tradition of speaking cockney. Will he go out for a "ruby" on a Friday and get his "barnet" chopped at the barbers while having a "butchers" at the paper, or will he be wanting to "git on hum soon" after a hard day's "troshing"? Either way, I'd be happy for him to pepper his patois with some local flavour, and fight against the trend of a globalised, sterile form of English. He might need it too if he wants to use cash machines in the future (see http://bit.ly/jCv6R). And so to round this little essay off, and commemorate my newborn coming into the world in the next few months, I'd like to say the Lord's Prayer:
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