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With over 40 years of teaching between us, we’ll help you improve your English and take it to the next level.
In this episode: The London Accent and Cockney Rhyming Slang
Listener Feedback: Audio feedback Juan, Colombia: The Cockney accent a “bottle of beer”. “Got to get a lot of it.”
Listen to the Eastenders TV series for examples of the London cockney accent:
Cockney Rhyming slang – A type of slang in which a words are replaced by a words or phrases they rhyme with.
Apple and pears = stairs
To hide meaning from the law and/or to exclude outsiders
Lists of Cockney rhyming slang:
to have a butcher’s (hook) = a look
She’s brown bread = She’s dead
(Aunt) Joanna – piano
Boat race – face
North and South = mouth
Ruby Murray (popular singer in the 1950s born in Belfast) = curry
Rub-a-dub-dub = pub (public house)
pig’s ear = beer
George Raft = draught
Gregory Peck = neck
plates of meat = feet
Pen and Ink = stink
Porky = pork pie = lie, e.g. “He’s telling porkies!
jam jar = car
jugs (of beer) = ears
Adam and Eve = believe = as in “would you Adam and Eve it?”
dog and bone = phone
whistle (and flute) = suit
trouble (and strife) = wife
Tom and Dick = sick
china (plate) = mate
Tea leaf = thief
Rosie = Rosie Lee = tea e.g. “Have a cup of Rosie”
Brahms and Liszt = “pissed” = drunk
Would you Adam and Eve it, I was down the rub-a-dub-dub with the trouble having a couple of pigs when a tea leaf nicked my wallet!
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There’s a bit of rhyming slang outside London in the UK, but it’s almost not known at all outside its own environment. For example:
BELFAST-
corn beef = “deef” = deaf (‘mutton’ or ‘Mutt and Jeff’ = ‘deaf’ in cockney rhyming slang)
tatie bread = dead (tatie bread is potato bread)
mince pies = eyes
a wee duke = a quick look
NEWCASTLE-
a deek = a quick peek
MANCHESTER-
Newtons = teeth (from “Newton Heath”, rhymes with “teeth”). In London they use ‘Hampstead Heath’ as rhyming slang for teeth.
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On next week’s episode: Engineering
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Wow, first time I need to listen the podcast twice.. Didn’t understand a single word of that slang lol
Very interesting as always.
I’m pleased to hear we’re stretching your ears a bit, Raul. Cockney slang is hard, even for native speakers who are not from the London area.
I guess it’s the same for non-spanish people when they face spanish accents for the first time.
Sometimes I, being from the north of Spain, find it difficult to understand people from the southern parts of Spain. (and viceversa)
And I thought I was mastering english accents just being able to distinguish between british and american accents, lol.