I need help picking up a cockney accent.

[Kevalan]

Hey guys, I'm an American who's interested in learning a standard London cockney accent, rhyming slang and all. Any natives here who could help me? I'm having some trouble changing my vowel sounds. I can drop my h's and stop my t's but the vowels keep screwing up. =/

[PAnZuRiEL]

You have to hear it, you can't just be "told" how over the internet.

What's more, you need the linguistic sense to detect and reproduce the phonetic qualities. It's not just a matter of sticking in glottal stops or alveolar flaps wherever you think they belong.



This is the best help you're likely to get, if you're even able to understand it.

[yogipogi]

why do you need to know such things

[WhipWhip]

I have actually just been looking into this myself... and there are a few ways to do it. (any accents)

First is to find a good representation of the accent you want. Do you know anyone personally that could record the phrases you want to learn? If not, find and actor or someone who has an accent close to what you want and literally listen and repeat everything they say. I do this for a lot of accents... become a parrot... practise often and discover what the nuances of the accent are and practise those as often as possible.

If you are having trouble with actually forming the vowels... there are some devices that are similar to an EEG or and ECG which involve putting electrodes to your throat and chin and they feed back information to a computer showing you how your vowels look visually... then you can use some form of software that will play the cockney (or any accent) vowels and sounds and show you what they look like, and also what the sound you are making looks like,too so you can have a visual reference to match them! That is extreme, but if you need it for something specific, it can help!

[E113]

Watch Eastenders

[Valkyrie_Fallen]

Whatever you do, don't end up sounding like d**k Van Dyke.

[PiercedPixie2]

Here is some rhyming slang...


Go up the apple and pears on your plates of meat keeping your mince pies open, To point you because you wanted a pony and trap ;D

[Dr Promethius Vomit]

Go watch Mary Poppins, and copy d**k Van Dyke EXACTLY. You'll be cockney in no time.