We are all fully aware of the importance of exposing learners to the whole gamut of varieties of spoken English, especially the most distinctive ones used worldwide such as British, American, Australian and Indian English. Learners not surprisingly have enormous difficulties understanding the many different ‘Englishes’ that are spoken in all the five continents in the world. If we now consider for a moment just the English in the UK with its vast diversity of dialects, sociolects and accents it is a wonder that learners of English manage to understand anything at all. Even I myself as a native English speaker have difficulty understanding sometimes!
Languages are, of course dynamic, and accents are changed and created all the time, often at a surprising speed. A significant development emerged in England in the late 20th century and has progressed astonishingly quickly. The new voice of young people is called MLE, which stands for Multicultural London English. MLE is a way of speaking that has become prevalent in England, especially among young people in London and the south of England, but it is also an accent that is rapidly spreading around the country.
Cockney is the variety of English traditionally associated with working-class Londoners born in the East End of London in an area covered by “the sound of Bow Bells”. But Cockney appears to be losing ground to Multicultural London English and slowly being eased out. As the name suggests, MLE is spoken by people of all ethnic backgrounds and has strong multicultural influences, and a mix of sounds from places as diverse as the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
Here are just a few of the specific features of Multicultural London English.
1. Both MLE and Cockney use Th-fronting – i.e. the TH is pronounced as F or V. So maybe we should cut our young students some slack if they pronounce the th as f or v. They’ll sound really cool to other young people in the UK!
2. MLE has maintained some other elements of Cockney, but interestingly, has reversed the H-dropping, so characteristic of the Cockney pronunciation. MLE pronounces the H at the beginning of a word.
3. All tag questions are limited to ‘isn’t it’, often reduced to ‘innit’. If the trend continues, we may soon be able to stop teaching all those difficult question tags.
4. The past tense of the verb ‘to be’ uses only ‘was’ for all persons and ‘weren’t’ for the negative. So all we are left with is – ‘I was, you was, he was, we was, they was’ and in the negative – ‘ I weren’t, you weren’t, he weren’t etc. So much easier, innit?
5. Vowels in MLE are more like monophthongs and speakers move the mouth much less. This is good news for lazy speakers and teenagers who tend to move their mouths less when speaking.
It is an incredibly exciting time to be exploring accents in the UK, with ethnic and multicultural influences all around the country. Young people in the UK have grown up being exposed to a mixture of second-language English and the local English, and new varieties are emerging from that mix. It is also fascinating to see how these changes have occurred so quickly during only one generation.
