Do you know the difference between a pony and a monkey? Know your Peckham Rye from your Bethnal Greens? Not sure what we’re talking about? Read on…
Today we’re launching Cockney as a new language, adding to the 130+ already available on our new cross-platform app uTalk. And we’re celebrating with a big knees up at G Kelly Pie and Mash shop on the Roman Road in East London (keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter for pics and videos)!
All Londoners will be offered the chance to download Cockney free from Thursday July 21st and uTalk will be teaching Cockney as part of the Roman Road Summer Festival 2016 on Sunday July 24th.
Our language expert Nat’s been researching how to translate this traditional East End dialect into a language learning tool for two years. She’s had a lot of fun finding ways to make genuine Cockney slang work with our language games and negotiating the controversy over what is and isn’t Cockney. We’ve gone for a more traditional interpretation and tried to avoid Mockney – the use of famous people’s names that’s come out of Essex.
There are lots of traditional Cockney words for parts of the body and money, but more modern language isn’t always represented. So we’ve brought in some fun new modern phrases like Plastic Fantastic (Credit Card) and hope it will make people smile, celebrate and most importantly debate the language, feeding back on words in use. Where there isn’t something genuine we’ve still pronounced words as they would be in the East End, dropping ‘t’s and ‘h’s’ all over the place!
Our launch of Cockney coincides with the Roman Road Summer Festival 2016 on Sunday, where we’ll be providing Cockney language lessons for locals.
Details of how to get the free Cockney content will be in the London Evening Standard and then their website from July 21st for one month. If you download Cockney you’ll also get a month’s free subscription to the rest of the uTalk app, so you can access 130+ more languages spoken in London and beyond.
Intrigued? Here are some classic Cockney phrases to get you started:
- dog an’ bone – phone
- Rosy Lee – tea
- ‘a’penny dip – ship
- Odin an’ Thor – door
- North an’ South – mouth
- tit for tat – hat
- Bethnal Greens – jeans
- Sinbad the sailor – tailor
- Rockin’ ‘orse – sauce
- Lollipop – shop
- Toby jug – mug
- Stingin’ nettle – kettle
- Fisherman’s daughter – water
- Linen draper – paper
- Toast an’ crumpet – trumpet
Original and humorous translations:
- plastic fantastic – credit card
- Jaffa juice – orange juice
- Look with your mince pies not your brass bands! – Don’t touch!
- I’m well mustard at tennis – I’m good at tennis