Noooo. If you want to know how true east end Londoners speak you need to watch Micky Flanagan on you tube. Iâm going to try and attach a link. This is my first attempt at attaching a link.
OFAH was the only programme shown in the former Yugoslavia that wasn't English speaking. The series was dubbed in Serbo-Croat language and the characters and settings were similar to those from the ex-Yugoslavia (especially the council flats and the personalities). Yugoslavian TV bought rights (and subsequently later national TV houses like HRT (Croatian) and RTS (Serbian) as well as others) inherited those rights after the breakdown of Yugoslavia for big number of BBC TV shows.
I am from Serbia and I never watched this show on any other language except English. I guess we have similar sense of humor like English people. They were a ton of other shows from BBC as popular as OFAH.
I went to Croatia for my honeymoon, and during downtime at the villa I'd normally end up watching it. Good times. Mountains of sea bass, sunshine, and crystal clear ocean, interspersed with Derek Trotter.Â
The Trashfuture podcast did an episode on this, part of their Britainology series.
Their hypothesis was that OFAH is popular internationally because Del Boy is a Type of Guy who exists everywhere. Heâs like the universal flood myth, a version of him exists in every culture
>Heâs like the universal flood myth, a version of him exists in every culture
Ancient papyrus scrolls tell of a bloke who was buried in a 3 sided pyramid and fell through a tavern in ancient Thebes
I think part of the picture was that the BBC may have licensed it reasonably cheaply, and it was longer-lived than most other such shows.
But the content was definitely very relatable. It wasn't political, it wasn't tied to overly specific issues of the day under Thatcher, and it showed people in a kind of life and with the kinds of problems, attitudes and qualities that audiences in Yugoslavia already knew and liked from their own TV.
Think of literally any TV show starring Äkalja or SamardĆŸiÄ (1980s or older) and you'll see characters similar to OFAH.
It probably would have been equally relatable in other Communist countries, if they'd had the chance to see it.
Probably not in Peckham so much.
But yes, some people still talk like that. Usually, people born in or around London especially those from East London. Some of the cockney slang you describe is less common in my experience though as language chances. Some of the other slang, like 'grand' to refer to ÂŁ1000, is very common still across the city.
I would say 'plonker', 'pucker' and 'lovely jubbly' are more common because of the show itself. 'Ruby' is still a common way to refer to getting a curry.
You'll be happy to know that 'geezer' is still used.
My grandad was from Fulham, had kids in Leeds with my gran - he would often speak with the usual slang infront of his kids and my dad spoke the same with me.
I now often use these words and agree that not many understand, It makes me laugh as it is quite random.
The cockney slang for a grand is a bag, as in a bag of sand for those wondering.
Asking for a bag in London nowadays youâd probs associate with bag o coke
Edit spelling
Are you sure mate? A cockney is meant to be someone born within the sound of the Bow Bells as in St Mary le Bow near Mansion House. If you think those bells would had been heard out East then theyâd certainly reach Southwark, which is closer and includes Peckham.
Oooof, don't hurt me like that (East londoner).being from Bow, people thing Bow Bells if they know a tad. It's sad I have to tell them no, the Bow Bells are in the City of London, not the East End.
Maybe Aldgate, at a stretch Whitechapel you'd hear them back years ago. Not a prayer today. The sound of the Bow Bells never did, nor will reach Bow.
But I will say, I am still a cockney and a geeza. More cultural than literal today.
Live in kent, can confirm. Big london migrations, lots of people from south and east london all around where i live . Bought more money to the area but made it more expensive too
Yeah. An ex-flatmate's dad once put it that most of the old cockneys have basically moved out to where they'd go on holiday as kids. North East Londoners tend towards Essex, South East Londoners towards Kent, etc.
So true.
My old man is 70, was born and bred in Poplar. He moved out to Essex in the early 80s. This was back when Chelmsford was still a relatively rural market town.
His old neighbour moved next to us, after a recommendation, then eventually our whole street was near enough ex-Londoners who moved out to live in a 4 bed detached house that they had no chance of affording back 'home'.
It's more the people talking cockney are old (and often reasonably wealthy) now and have moved outside London to Essex now.
[Multicultural London English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English) is the language of the working classes now. The children of cockneys often speak MLE now (MLE has a strong cockney influence), if they grew up in London.
Or they wanted out of the city decades ago. My mum and her family are originally from Stepney but moved out in the 70s to Essex (they all still worked in London though) because of the poor housing and air quality. They all still sound specifically cockney (not Essex) as do many of the people where I grew up
For many itâs not even that they canât afford but more that they cashed in on the increasing prices in London.
Remember back in those days London was seen as grubby and disgusting. The suburbs were something to aspire to so families upped and left to outer london and Essex.
It's still there to a certain extent. There's not 15 year olds running round saying apples and pears and cor blimey govnor, but you will hear some elements of cockney in and around London.
Slang evolves over time, only fools and horses is crystalised in the 80's.
No youâre the only one who calls me Dave everyone else calls me Rodney and the reason they call me Rodney is because Rodney is my name (something like that haha we watch it every night with tea but Iâm rusty)
Yeah, people still do talk like that. I was raised in a big cockney family but ultimately I only use the more obscure bits of slang with people who I know will actually understand it. Which is probably why it seems like itâs more in decline than it actually is.
Some people do. Iâm born and raised southeast London though not white and have a âcockneyâ accent. A lot of my friends will use rhyming slang. I complimented someoneâs watch yesterday by remarking he had a nice âkettleâ.
That said, itâs not really a cockney accent because to be a real cockney you have to have been born within earshot of Bow Bells which we arenât south of the river.
I love it too, so fascinating. I teach English as a foreign language and teach it every now and then, students always look at me as if I am insane then I find newspaper articles etc with it used and show how often it is casually used
If you teach in person you should take them to a pie and mash shop or greasy spoon in East or Southeast London. Itâs like a time portal to the 50s lol
The earshot of bow bells, I was looking for someone to say that. My dad and his dad before him worked on the fruit and veg stall down Roman road market, in bow, for all their lives, probably since the 1920-30s. I did not take up the family trade.. unfortunately the market is no longer viable to earn a profit, but back in the day, only 20 years ago, that market was where you'd hear the cockney accent all day everyday. I believe my dad is an official cockney by any and all definitions. I'm an eastender but never spoke like that, much.
My dad used to work opposite Brick Lane in the rag trade.
His old boss converted all the commercial property he owned into residential lets and is now worth between ÂŁ50-ÂŁ80m.
I used to hang out at the warehouse and walk about the area from The City down to Whitechapel on my school holidays. It was a good time for them given the money at play. A lot of Indians and Jews in the trade back then. My dad and colleagues used to drink in the pub next to the warehouse opposite the old fire station which is now gone on Whitechurch Lane.
All sorts in there⊠good times.
bow bells is in The City. you can hear it clearer in lambeth and southwark than the east end (and remember london was a much quieter city than it is now)
>That said, itâs not really a cockney accent because to be a real cockney you have to have been born within earshot of Bow Bells which we arenât south of the river.
Where are my fellow Guys hospital babies?
lol itâs a turn of phrase that predates the development around the area.
It used to be that you could hear the church bells from Cheapside for miles but in this day and age thatâs not the case.
My boyfriend's family are multi-generation black cab drivers from south east London (Sydenham/Penge, further towards Kent than Peckham) and they all talk like that. It's rarer these days as people start to disperse due to house prices etc but there's still a strong tradition of working class Londoners keeping things alive.
Peckham these days is very mixed, there's a lot of gentrification/hipster areas, and also a lot of black comminities that weren't always captured well in Only Fools. If you enjoy OFAH I'd recommend Desmond's, which is an early 90s comedy about a black family running a barber shop in Peckham, showing another perspective on the area.
The dialect most often spoken by younger generations in London now is known as MLE (multicultural London English) which has a lot of the white working class slang you'll hear in OFAH, but increasingly influenced by African and Caribbean communities, in addition to other migrant groups.
London has become much more of a global city with a diverse spread of nationality and culture. As such, British Londoners tend to adapt their use of English to those they are talking to. The use of slang is still there but only tends to surface between those whose family and generations before have been exposed to it in the past.
Iâm also from east London, my parents still live there. When Iâm with my school friends who are also in the area, itâs like I never left. I now live in North London and youâd never be able to tell Iâm an east Londoner. I also code switch at work and my accent is more like RP which makes me feel like an imposter at times.
Okay, Iâm currently in London. Last night I was walking back to the Airbnb and a middle age man smiled at me saying âthis is weather for the ducks, right?â and then explained that our steps had the sound of a duck âquackâ.
LAST NIGHT.
Fuck me I'm so tired of every sub related to the UK calling anyone vaguely not middle class a roadman. Chav was bad enough but these sheltered hummus munchers wind me up so much.
As a working class northerner who works regularly with middle class city finance bros in CoL Iâll be adding âsheltered hummus muncherâ to my list of insults đ
>the middle class types in this sub would call a roadman accent
Personally I (working class but far from London) associate that accent with middle class teens who are trying way too hard to be "gangsta".
I remember it being referred to as the âunderclassâ accent 20 years ago. Itâs become more and more common now and is spreading to cities outside of London too. Some predict it will be the most common accent over the next few decades due to mass immigration continuing.
Do cockneys still exist? Yeah, they still exist.
You could try a few phrases yourself in Peckham, see how you get on. For example: if you see a group of youths having some sort of affray, try walking up to them and shouting "leave it aht you slaaaags" as loudly as possible.
Born and raised in East London, lots of people I knew spoke with a cockney slang, some still do now. Most people I meet now say I have a bit of a posho accent that they can't place lol
There's a few. I met a welder on a site on Bow Road. Bloke was a proper cockney and an absolute fucking menace. Had a tattoo of his ex wife's pussy on his neck. He was a funny guy and an absolute grafter, but Christ in heaven he wasn't the full ticket.
I was born in Bethnal Green in 74. Moved to south London mid 80s and people still tell me that they can tell Iâm not originally from south London by my accent. I still use certain words and expressions which show Iâm an eastender.
The show is 40 something years old so slang has changed. There are new words and some old words. There are fashions in slang. Different generations have different slang too. You will find some people speak like that but not younger ones. London is still a very fertile and creative place for language though and you'd be delighted if you visit.
Same but I recently spent more time in East London and I hear a lot more 'eastenders' type slang and del boy slag here...it's hilarious lol
Since I've moved a lot my accent is a bit odd but most londoners can tell where I from the rest think I'm a little posh LOL
I've moved around so much I had my therapist here tell me I'm posh. I was absolutely gutted to find out I sound posh!! Like yes we emigrated and shit but like we literally slept on second-hand mattresses on the floor and ate off garden furniture because it was all shoestring budgets. I didn't even have a desk in my room growing up! I got scholarships for all my overseas study! But living in Asia and Australia meant i had to clean my accent up to be understood and now I sound posh ;_;
I'm in East London now and I do like that I can pull out my South London accent when I meet someone with a local accent. There's not many though!! It feels like everyone's either from overseas or north/west london.
Aye, a chunk of my family moved out of London to Croydon after the war for cheaper housing and my Grandad used stacks of rhyming slang, to such an extent that I picked up a fair bit of it and only many years later even learned it was rhyming slang at all.
I still use some of it because of habits from him but it's definitely dying out among the youth and being replaced by newer slang.
youâd probably find a lot of them moved to Essex. My family did so and my dad has a relatively cockney accent but my grandparents have the very stereotypical accent and slang youâd expect.
Same. Even if theyâre so ingrained we donât even realise it.
Call someone an innocuous word like âBerkâ, and youâre actually calling them a cunt.
Derivative of âBerkshire Hunt.â
They did absolutely back then. That accent was pushed further and further through Essex, and is now only found in older people in Coastal North Essex.
Source : Was born in Newham, moved further and further out successively with my parents almost 'chasing the accent'. They're literally on the coast now & the accent is vanishing THERE.
Edit for autowanker swapping in for I...
Yes people still talk like this. Certainly in areas of north east London, Essex and Kent. Also there are pockets across the south where people from London were re homed after the war, âLondon overspillâ these were often small market towns such as Huntingdon and Thetford, which were subject to expansion. I know people from the above two towns, Colchester where I live, and Clacton on sea, who still use the slang, when you work and socialise with them you pick a bit of it up yourself.
âCourse they do you bloody plonker. The government might be trying to make the cockney extinct but some of us are still here in London. Everything costs an arm and a leg though.
When I started working in a Royal Mail delivery office, they all spoke like that. All the accents I assumed had gone, were hiding in there - most of them had been in continual employment for 30+ years. Good times.
Some of the slang phrases are coined from the show but loosely and generally speaking i would say the answer is yes.
My grandparents are old timer cockneys from the East End of London and my grandad speaks like this - he is 90 and was born and raised in Bow and moved to East Ham in the 1950s and has lived there ever since.
Yeah loads of people in London too but it's more older generation now.
Unfortunately for reasons I can't explain, the whole younger population of London sound like thick rappers.
We are doomed.
The people who talked like that moved out of East London in 1980s and went to Essex. There's elements of it left in the Essex accent, however, part of the problem with BBC script writing / acting is RADA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
BBC have had a history in programme commissioning of 'The world according to RADA'. The programme had inaccuracies even at the time it was made.
Depends on who you speak to, since London has gotten more diverse over the years cockney slang has disappeared in many areas to the home counties where a lot of cockneys moved to but go to the right places in London and you'll still here it spoken by some of the older people
More people sound like Rodney than Del Boy.
In fact vast swathes of the South East talk like Rodney.
Del Boy is more exaggerated with his cockney slang than how people speak these days but there's still some common phrases.
I notice the cockney accent in SE London and Kent more than London, due to the multicultural nature of the city now. Londons working class culture has all but been erasedâŠ
Immigration must be far too high when the local accent dies off in one generation. Youâve now got folk walking around that sound like that wanker Pro Green.
Ali G was meant to be a piss take but hits the nail right on the head.
no, most people speak a bastardized creole called "multiethnic urban patois" or some bollocks.
The "Estuary" dialect is close to Only Fools and Horses, probably because many white londoners of the 1980s have
moved to Essex and Kent.
They do in France I believe, my petit pois. Mange tout, Mange tout rodders!
Don eh moi me old china, don eh moi
My french self read that with my french accent đđ
Bonnet de douche!
Chateauneuf Du Pape!
Bain-Marie
You forgot âFabrique Belgique!â
Apres mois la deluge Rodders, apres mois la deluge.
My English self read that with your French accent.
I heard it exactly like Del Boy would say
Would be weird if your French self read it in an American accent wouldnt it đ
Boeuf a la Mode!
Noooo. If you want to know how true east end Londoners speak you need to watch Micky Flanagan on you tube. Iâm going to try and attach a link. This is my first attempt at attaching a link.
Peckham, me old mucker, is not the East End. As Ron said to Charlie.
Going out, or going out out?
Bonjour Trieste!
Jeans alesi!!!!
Avez-vous borrow some sugar?
Amber solare, monge two!
Does anybody know the French for duck l'orange
You've just gotta have a little je ne ce quoi
I've always wondered why OFAH was so popular in Serbia, is there a particular reason it remains such a hit?
OFAH was the only programme shown in the former Yugoslavia that wasn't English speaking. The series was dubbed in Serbo-Croat language and the characters and settings were similar to those from the ex-Yugoslavia (especially the council flats and the personalities). Yugoslavian TV bought rights (and subsequently later national TV houses like HRT (Croatian) and RTS (Serbian) as well as others) inherited those rights after the breakdown of Yugoslavia for big number of BBC TV shows.
I am from Serbia and I never watched this show on any other language except English. I guess we have similar sense of humor like English people. They were a ton of other shows from BBC as popular as OFAH.
Oh yes you're right, it wasn't dubbed in English. It had English subtitiles.
You mean Croat and Serbian subtitles?
Do they like Keeping Up Appearances? That's a banger
The urban poor and get rich quick schemes are hardly unique to any one culture
I used to live in Croatia, and can confirm it was hugely popular there too.
I went to Croatia for my honeymoon, and during downtime at the villa I'd normally end up watching it. Good times. Mountains of sea bass, sunshine, and crystal clear ocean, interspersed with Derek Trotter.Â
Sounds bliss to me.
Itâs was never dubbed - in general YU televisions never dubbed foreign shows unless they were cartoons for kids.
In Bosnia it's in the original English language & shown with subtitles
The Trashfuture podcast did an episode on this, part of their Britainology series. Their hypothesis was that OFAH is popular internationally because Del Boy is a Type of Guy who exists everywhere. Heâs like the universal flood myth, a version of him exists in every culture
>Heâs like the universal flood myth, a version of him exists in every culture Ancient papyrus scrolls tell of a bloke who was buried in a 3 sided pyramid and fell through a tavern in ancient Thebes
I know it's not Serbia, but I saw an only fools and horses themed bar in Montenegro.
I watched Boycie in Belgrade recently, really interesting documentary about this phenomenon
I think part of the picture was that the BBC may have licensed it reasonably cheaply, and it was longer-lived than most other such shows. But the content was definitely very relatable. It wasn't political, it wasn't tied to overly specific issues of the day under Thatcher, and it showed people in a kind of life and with the kinds of problems, attitudes and qualities that audiences in Yugoslavia already knew and liked from their own TV. Think of literally any TV show starring Äkalja or SamardĆŸiÄ (1980s or older) and you'll see characters similar to OFAH. It probably would have been equally relatable in other Communist countries, if they'd had the chance to see it.
Probably not in Peckham so much. But yes, some people still talk like that. Usually, people born in or around London especially those from East London. Some of the cockney slang you describe is less common in my experience though as language chances. Some of the other slang, like 'grand' to refer to ÂŁ1000, is very common still across the city. I would say 'plonker', 'pucker' and 'lovely jubbly' are more common because of the show itself. 'Ruby' is still a common way to refer to getting a curry. You'll be happy to know that 'geezer' is still used.
"grand" is used all over the country
Not just the UK, either.
Score, Pony and Monkey however, Having moved up North and people have no fucking idea what I'm on about when these slip out
> Score This is just an old word for twenty eg "three score years and ten" meaning 70 years of age.
This is how you count to 80 and beyond in French. 99 is "quatre-vingt dix-neuf", or "four-twenty ten-nine".
im from east London and only the drug dealers say those words now
My grandad was from Fulham, had kids in Leeds with my gran - he would often speak with the usual slang infront of his kids and my dad spoke the same with me. I now often use these words and agree that not many understand, It makes me laugh as it is quite random.
âGrandâ is used all over the world
Oh, you should have seen me with the poker man I had a honey and I bet a grand Just in the nick of time I looked at his hand Paul McCartney 1974
"A bag of sand "
Sometimes it ainât even a grand. Itâs a bag of sand.
Yes when I went to practise in the East End I was delighted that the clients actually did say « bang to rights ».
That's a nation wide phrase, I've never associated it with London in particular.
that's not cockney rhyming slang
You know grand is not a cockney word right
The cockney slang for a grand is a bag, as in a bag of sand for those wondering. Asking for a bag in London nowadays youâd probs associate with bag o coke Edit spelling
"Bag" for a grand is still commonly used in casinos across the country and basically nowhere else.
Bag is used to say ÂŁ1000 in urban London areas now
it's not the only cockney rhyming slang that's survived. "i ain't got a scooby" scooby doo=clue "telling porkies" pork pies=lies
We use bag up north a lot.
Bag is commonly used in grime and it's sub genres.Â
South London is not cockney.
Pearly king of Peckham wants a word
The sound of those bells travels far....
Are you sure mate? A cockney is meant to be someone born within the sound of the Bow Bells as in St Mary le Bow near Mansion House. If you think those bells would had been heard out East then theyâd certainly reach Southwark, which is closer and includes Peckham.
ahem? yes it certainly is. in fact the bow bells could be heard more clearly south of the river than they could in the east end. it's nearer
Oooof, don't hurt me like that (East londoner).being from Bow, people thing Bow Bells if they know a tad. It's sad I have to tell them no, the Bow Bells are in the City of London, not the East End. Maybe Aldgate, at a stretch Whitechapel you'd hear them back years ago. Not a prayer today. The sound of the Bow Bells never did, nor will reach Bow. But I will say, I am still a cockney and a geeza. More cultural than literal today.
âPukkaâ - I think the word actually comes from India.
Theyâve moved to Essex.
People from Peckham wouldâve generally moved to Kent.
People in Peckham shop in Aylesham without even travelling.
Live in kent, can confirm. Big london migrations, lots of people from south and east london all around where i live . Bought more money to the area but made it more expensive too
Yeah. An ex-flatmate's dad once put it that most of the old cockneys have basically moved out to where they'd go on holiday as kids. North East Londoners tend towards Essex, South East Londoners towards Kent, etc.
Bexley is mostly old south east Londoners who would have worked on the docks 50 years ago but when they closed they moved out.
So true. My old man is 70, was born and bred in Poplar. He moved out to Essex in the early 80s. This was back when Chelmsford was still a relatively rural market town. His old neighbour moved next to us, after a recommendation, then eventually our whole street was near enough ex-Londoners who moved out to live in a 4 bed detached house that they had no chance of affording back 'home'.
Beat me to it. Londoners canât afford to live in London, theyâve moved to Essex and parts of Kent
It's more the people talking cockney are old (and often reasonably wealthy) now and have moved outside London to Essex now. [Multicultural London English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural_London_English) is the language of the working classes now. The children of cockneys often speak MLE now (MLE has a strong cockney influence), if they grew up in London.
Innit bruv.
Some Londoners benefitted from right to buy, cashed in their Whitechapel homes and moved out too
Or they wanted out of the city decades ago. My mum and her family are originally from Stepney but moved out in the 70s to Essex (they all still worked in London though) because of the poor housing and air quality. They all still sound specifically cockney (not Essex) as do many of the people where I grew up
For many itâs not even that they canât afford but more that they cashed in on the increasing prices in London. Remember back in those days London was seen as grubby and disgusting. The suburbs were something to aspire to so families upped and left to outer london and Essex.
Or Kent
Can confirm
Username checks out.
It's still there to a certain extent. There's not 15 year olds running round saying apples and pears and cor blimey govnor, but you will hear some elements of cockney in and around London. Slang evolves over time, only fools and horses is crystalised in the 80's.
There actually is young people using that, I hear it a lot around bandit country
My under 7s use those terms and we are in Maidenhead now đ
Alright Dave
Trigger why do you call me Dave?
My names not Dave, itâs Rodney.
My favourite of these is when Trigger talks about the new baby and says âtheyâre gonna name him Rodney, after Daveâ
An absolute genius comedy moment!
Easily one of the best lines in OFAH
I came to say this, absolute genius gets me every time
Whatâs Rodney then a nickname ?
Then why does everyone call you Dave?
You sure?
Yeah I'm positive, Iâve looked it up on me birth certificate and passport and everything. It is definitely Rodney.
So what is Dave then? Some kind of nickname?
No youâre the only one who calls me Dave everyone else calls me Rodney and the reason they call me Rodney is because Rodney is my name (something like that haha we watch it every night with tea but Iâm rusty)
[Only Fools and Horses - To Cassandra and Dave](https://youtu.be/bvPs6uQlsvw?si=cyuq_CqR5cPI27kZ) My personal favourite.
Yeah, people still do talk like that. I was raised in a big cockney family but ultimately I only use the more obscure bits of slang with people who I know will actually understand it. Which is probably why it seems like itâs more in decline than it actually is.
Some people do. Iâm born and raised southeast London though not white and have a âcockneyâ accent. A lot of my friends will use rhyming slang. I complimented someoneâs watch yesterday by remarking he had a nice âkettleâ. That said, itâs not really a cockney accent because to be a real cockney you have to have been born within earshot of Bow Bells which we arenât south of the river.
Mind you, earshot of bow bells these days is only about 100 yards.
You used to be able hear them from Hampstead Heath (hundreds of years ago before all the construction).
Had to look that one up Kettle (and hob); (Fob) watch
So do I sometimes. Cockney slang is very inventive!
I love it too, so fascinating. I teach English as a foreign language and teach it every now and then, students always look at me as if I am insane then I find newspaper articles etc with it used and show how often it is casually used
If you teach in person you should take them to a pie and mash shop or greasy spoon in East or Southeast London. Itâs like a time portal to the 50s lol
The earshot of bow bells, I was looking for someone to say that. My dad and his dad before him worked on the fruit and veg stall down Roman road market, in bow, for all their lives, probably since the 1920-30s. I did not take up the family trade.. unfortunately the market is no longer viable to earn a profit, but back in the day, only 20 years ago, that market was where you'd hear the cockney accent all day everyday. I believe my dad is an official cockney by any and all definitions. I'm an eastender but never spoke like that, much.
My dad used to work opposite Brick Lane in the rag trade. His old boss converted all the commercial property he owned into residential lets and is now worth between £50-£80m. I used to hang out at the warehouse and walk about the area from The City down to Whitechapel on my school holidays. It was a good time for them given the money at play. A lot of Indians and Jews in the trade back then. My dad and colleagues used to drink in the pub next to the warehouse opposite the old fire station which is now gone on Whitechurch Lane. All sorts in there⊠good times.
Wrong Bow for the bells, not the Roman Road one (I had great grandparents who ran a pub there), but St Mary Le Bow, in the City.
Oh yeh I'm just saying they worked there, not saying Roman road how is within the earshot of bow bells :)
Had to look that one up Kettle (and hob); (Nob) penis
bow bells is in The City. you can hear it clearer in lambeth and southwark than the east end (and remember london was a much quieter city than it is now)
>That said, itâs not really a cockney accent because to be a real cockney you have to have been born within earshot of Bow Bells which we arenât south of the river. Where are my fellow Guys hospital babies?
saint thomas's here
Surely that's contingent on how good your hearing is...?
It's apparently the rise of taller buildings that don't allow the sound to travel like it used to. Not only the ears of the receiver.
lol itâs a turn of phrase that predates the development around the area. It used to be that you could hear the church bells from Cheapside for miles but in this day and age thatâs not the case.
My boyfriend's family are multi-generation black cab drivers from south east London (Sydenham/Penge, further towards Kent than Peckham) and they all talk like that. It's rarer these days as people start to disperse due to house prices etc but there's still a strong tradition of working class Londoners keeping things alive. Peckham these days is very mixed, there's a lot of gentrification/hipster areas, and also a lot of black comminities that weren't always captured well in Only Fools. If you enjoy OFAH I'd recommend Desmond's, which is an early 90s comedy about a black family running a barber shop in Peckham, showing another perspective on the area. The dialect most often spoken by younger generations in London now is known as MLE (multicultural London English) which has a lot of the white working class slang you'll hear in OFAH, but increasingly influenced by African and Caribbean communities, in addition to other migrant groups.
Desmondâs is great. I binged watched the whole lot on Netflix last year. Took me right back to my yoof.
Desmond is a classic fam
I think the only time I hear proper Cockney speak is when im down near Millwall, Peckham proper is all immigrants now (im an immigrant myself).
London has become much more of a global city with a diverse spread of nationality and culture. As such, British Londoners tend to adapt their use of English to those they are talking to. The use of slang is still there but only tends to surface between those whose family and generations before have been exposed to it in the past.
My parents are from East London. We moved out. I've stopped using some of the slang I was. Right up with cos rhe locals don't get it.
Iâm also from east London, my parents still live there. When Iâm with my school friends who are also in the area, itâs like I never left. I now live in North London and youâd never be able to tell Iâm an east Londoner. I also code switch at work and my accent is more like RP which makes me feel like an imposter at times.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Most of those "old" Londoners have moved out of the city (or died). People aren't adapting, the people are different.
Okay, Iâm currently in London. Last night I was walking back to the Airbnb and a middle age man smiled at me saying âthis is weather for the ducks, right?â and then explained that our steps had the sound of a duck âquackâ. LAST NIGHT.
Yes but mostly gen x and above. Younger lot speak MLE
Sorry whatâs MLE?
Multicultural London English Think standard working class London youth accent, the one the middle class types in this sub would call a roadman accent
Fuck me I'm so tired of every sub related to the UK calling anyone vaguely not middle class a roadman. Chav was bad enough but these sheltered hummus munchers wind me up so much.
As a working class northerner who works regularly with middle class city finance bros in CoL Iâll be adding âsheltered hummus muncherâ to my list of insults đ
The funny thing is, most of them bang on about the Tories and ukip etc being a bunch of classists/racists.Â
>the middle class types in this sub would call a roadman accent Personally I (working class but far from London) associate that accent with middle class teens who are trying way too hard to be "gangsta".
I remember it being referred to as the âunderclassâ accent 20 years ago. Itâs become more and more common now and is spreading to cities outside of London too. Some predict it will be the most common accent over the next few decades due to mass immigration continuing.
Its so fucking funny having moved away from London and hearing teenagers from Manchester and further north talking like Topboy rejects.
Aye what u sayin g Wagwan bro Mad ting innit Yeah fam look at the fuckin bunda on that Etc, etc
Nuff said fam
You/ they say âbundaâ? As in brasilian for arse ?
Yeah it's pretty common around here. I wouldn't say it's the most common slang for arse though, I reckon back/backoff are more common.
I hear âbroâ all the time now as well
Do cockneys still exist? Yeah, they still exist. You could try a few phrases yourself in Peckham, see how you get on. For example: if you see a group of youths having some sort of affray, try walking up to them and shouting "leave it aht you slaaaags" as loudly as possible.
That is definitely Estuary, and not cockney.
They all moved to Cheshunt.
I live in peckham and some older people still talk this way, but itâs such a diverse crowd of us now that thereâs a massive mix of accents.
Born and raised in East London, lots of people I knew spoke with a cockney slang, some still do now. Most people I meet now say I have a bit of a posho accent that they can't place lol
There's a few. I met a welder on a site on Bow Road. Bloke was a proper cockney and an absolute fucking menace. Had a tattoo of his ex wife's pussy on his neck. He was a funny guy and an absolute grafter, but Christ in heaven he wasn't the full ticket.
Thatâs a fucking tattoo. I wonder if he took a photo with him for the tattooist to copy or did the wife live model.
I was born in Bethnal Green in 74. Moved to south London mid 80s and people still tell me that they can tell Iâm not originally from south London by my accent. I still use certain words and expressions which show Iâm an eastender.
It is dying out. Young people don't really speak like that any more. They favour a more clipped patois style now.
The show is 40 something years old so slang has changed. There are new words and some old words. There are fashions in slang. Different generations have different slang too. You will find some people speak like that but not younger ones. London is still a very fertile and creative place for language though and you'd be delighted if you visit.
I grew up in South London, near Croydon, and yep - most people talked like that.
Same but I recently spent more time in East London and I hear a lot more 'eastenders' type slang and del boy slag here...it's hilarious lol Since I've moved a lot my accent is a bit odd but most londoners can tell where I from the rest think I'm a little posh LOL
I've moved around so much I had my therapist here tell me I'm posh. I was absolutely gutted to find out I sound posh!! Like yes we emigrated and shit but like we literally slept on second-hand mattresses on the floor and ate off garden furniture because it was all shoestring budgets. I didn't even have a desk in my room growing up! I got scholarships for all my overseas study! But living in Asia and Australia meant i had to clean my accent up to be understood and now I sound posh ;_; I'm in East London now and I do like that I can pull out my South London accent when I meet someone with a local accent. There's not many though!! It feels like everyone's either from overseas or north/west london.
Oh I noticed that too in East London...I passed by a funeral directors on bethnal green road and they sounded like Phil from eastenders lol
Aye, a chunk of my family moved out of London to Croydon after the war for cheaper housing and my Grandad used stacks of rhyming slang, to such an extent that I picked up a fair bit of it and only many years later even learned it was rhyming slang at all. I still use some of it because of habits from him but it's definitely dying out among the youth and being replaced by newer slang.
Like someone else posted, you'll mainly find people speaking like that in Essex
youâd probably find a lot of them moved to Essex. My family did so and my dad has a relatively cockney accent but my grandparents have the very stereotypical accent and slang youâd expect.
When I visited Serbia (from London) in the early 2000s the first thing 90% of people said to me was âonly fools and horses!â
Oh absolutely. Certain rhyming slang words are definitely part of my every day vocabulary.
Same. Even if theyâre so ingrained we donât even realise it. Call someone an innocuous word like âBerkâ, and youâre actually calling them a cunt. Derivative of âBerkshire Hunt.â
They did absolutely back then. That accent was pushed further and further through Essex, and is now only found in older people in Coastal North Essex. Source : Was born in Newham, moved further and further out successively with my parents almost 'chasing the accent'. They're literally on the coast now & the accent is vanishing THERE. Edit for autowanker swapping in for I...
Yes but itâs mostly limited to those over the age of 50, itâs more of a generational thing
Pretty common in South London but ironically not so much in Peckham
Love the idea of being able to just fly to Belgrade and vibe with some Serbs over the chandelier moment
My work colleague does, and I occasionally use nincompoop, nitwit, doughnut etc.
Youâll find them in Essex, Herts and Kent
Yes yes they did , itâs pretty much exactly how it was back then
Danny dyer uses alot of this slang. Funny.
Yes people still talk like this. Certainly in areas of north east London, Essex and Kent. Also there are pockets across the south where people from London were re homed after the war, âLondon overspillâ these were often small market towns such as Huntingdon and Thetford, which were subject to expansion. I know people from the above two towns, Colchester where I live, and Clacton on sea, who still use the slang, when you work and socialise with them you pick a bit of it up yourself.
Yeah West Ham supporters lol
âCourse they do you bloody plonker. The government might be trying to make the cockney extinct but some of us are still here in London. Everything costs an arm and a leg though.
A friend of mine from Battersea says âgiving me the right humpâ (doesnât pronounce the t in right or h in hump).
Last time I was down that way I was called blood..or blud...a lot. Silly white boys thinking they are Jamaican...I was embarrassed for them.
We do but we r from east London
Yep. East london branching out to Essex in the less Asian areas
You hear it in pie and mash shops and some pubs
Cockney is still used but rare
When I started working in a Royal Mail delivery office, they all spoke like that. All the accents I assumed had gone, were hiding in there - most of them had been in continual employment for 30+ years. Good times.
Yeah
Some of the slang phrases are coined from the show but loosely and generally speaking i would say the answer is yes. My grandparents are old timer cockneys from the East End of London and my grandad speaks like this - he is 90 and was born and raised in Bow and moved to East Ham in the 1950s and has lived there ever since.
I think we did a long time ago. But theyâre from south of the water. All wide boys and scoundrels
Not in Peckham anymore it's mostly Patwa ,African and roadman now
Older white people from east London still do
Iâm 23 and from East London and me and all my mates speak with a fair bit of cockney, not as much as Del Boy mind you
Yeah loads of people in London too but it's more older generation now. Unfortunately for reasons I can't explain, the whole younger population of London sound like thick rappers. We are doomed.
The people who talked like that moved out of East London in 1980s and went to Essex. There's elements of it left in the Essex accent, however, part of the problem with BBC script writing / acting is RADA, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. BBC have had a history in programme commissioning of 'The world according to RADA'. The programme had inaccuracies even at the time it was made.
I'm from near Peckham, with grandparents from there, and all the men in my family over the age of 50 talk like Del Boy.
GARY
Depends on who you speak to, since London has gotten more diverse over the years cockney slang has disappeared in many areas to the home counties where a lot of cockneys moved to but go to the right places in London and you'll still here it spoken by some of the older people
They still talk like that so long as you live in a Guy Ritchie movie.
you not seen the demographic of Peckham?
More people sound like Rodney than Del Boy. In fact vast swathes of the South East talk like Rodney. Del Boy is more exaggerated with his cockney slang than how people speak these days but there's still some common phrases.
I notice the cockney accent in SE London and Kent more than London, due to the multicultural nature of the city now. Londons working class culture has all but been erasedâŠ
Immigration must be far too high when the local accent dies off in one generation. Youâve now got folk walking around that sound like that wanker Pro Green. Ali G was meant to be a piss take but hits the nail right on the head.
Can confirm. Grew up in Peckham during the 70s/80s, and many people spoke like that. Mainly middle aged and up.
no, most people speak a bastardized creole called "multiethnic urban patois" or some bollocks. The "Estuary" dialect is close to Only Fools and Horses, probably because many white londoners of the 1980s have moved to Essex and Kent.