{"id":5527,"date":"2016-07-28T14:59:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T14:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=5527"},"modified":"2016-08-19T08:33:16","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T08:33:16","slug":"ave-a-butchers-at-our-cockney-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/ave-a-butchers-at-our-cockney-app\/","title":{"rendered":"‘ave a butcher’s at our Cockney app!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, we at uTalk were immensely proud to release our Cockney dialect app! It\u2019s taken us years to get to this stage and we\u2019ve already had a fantastic response. But it\u2019s been one of the most unusual languages we\u2019ve ever produced, and we knew you\u2019d want to hear more\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

First off, what is Cockney?<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

A\u00a0dialect of English spoken in the East End of London, traditionally by the market traders and costermongers. What makes it unique is the rhyming element, whereby an unconnected phrase represents a word it happens to rhyme with – apples and pears\u00a0for stairs, dog and bone for phone, plates of meat for feet, Hampstead Heeth for teeth – and then, literally to confuse outsiders, the rhyming part is dropped: I\u2019m going up the apples; My plates are sore; I\u2019ve got crooked Hampsteads; Answer the dog!<\/span><\/p>\n

Confused? No need: grab uTalk<\/a> on your way to London town to start getting to grips with it!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dog<\/p>\n

So… why did uTalk do Cockney?<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s a big part of East End culture, but Cockney\u2019s also a big part of the national culture over here. Shows like Only Fools and Horses and The Sweeney have made the Cockney dialect recognisable\u00a0throughout the country, even if some of their slang phrases are a bit imaginative!\u00a0<\/span>And, at uTalk, we\u2019ve always wanted to produce a Cockney app. We\u2019ve got so many other minority language from around the world (Alsatian, Breton, Chuvash, Friulian etc.) that it seemed ridiculous not to have the one from our own backyard.\u00a0We want people to use it and have a bit of fun, which is the essence of our teaching philosophy, and to realise that learning a few phrases in another language\u00a0really isn’t that hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

How did we do it?<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Ironically, Cockney\u2019s been the biggest challenge yet – harder than Greenlandic<\/a>, Fijian<\/a> and Tok Pisin<\/a> all put together! It\u2019s not, by any means, a standardised dialect, and although there have been attempts to create books and websites collecting together various Cockney phrases, there\u2019s often no consensus on what\u2019s proper Cockney and which is the best variant. There are a few classics which everyone observes (I\u2019ve never heard anyone use anything but \u2018mince pies\u2019 for \u2018eyes\u2019, or \u2018Barnet Fair\u2019 for \u2018hair\u2019), but others\u00a0which have multiple variants: a nose can be an ‘I suppose’ or a \u2018fireman\u2019s hose\u2019, and a \u00a35 note (a fiver) can be either a ‘Lady Godiva’ or a \u2018Jacks’ (from Jack\u2019s Alive). This really comes down to personal preferences and what you\u2019ve grown up with.<\/span><\/p>\n