Multi Cultural London English (MLE)

Source: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/linguistics/multicultural/overview.htm

• MLE is colloquially known as 'Jafaican'
  
• It is a dialect of English that emerged in the late 20th Century.
  
• Spoken in Inner London.
  
• Gaining territory from Cockney.
  
• Contains elements of Caribbean, South Asia & West Africa.
  
• MLE is mainly used by young , urban, working class people.
  
  
  
  
  Grammar:
• The past tense of the verb 'to be' is regularised with was being regular, I was, he was, she was.
• In comparison to negative constructions were 'weren't' is used: I weren't, he weren't etc.
• Tag questions: Innit?
  
  Phonology:
• Non-Rhotic. (only pronounce R's if they're followed by vowels.)
• H-dropping.
• Th-fronting
  
  Research:

• London has long been considered by linguists as a motor of change in the English language.
  
• Focused on changes in the London periphery, especially Milton Keynes, Reading and (later) Ashford.
  
  
• We found 'dialect levelling', with local accents and dialects becoming less distinct by adopting a common set of pronunciation and grammatical features.
  
• For several features, the assumption that London is the origin of these changes is unsupported.
  
• Young Londoners' speech contains only some of the levelling changes, such as the very heavy use of 'f' for the 'th' in words like 'thin' and the use of universal 'was' and'weren't', giving 'I was, you was' and 'I weren't, you weren't' - though, surprisingly, ethnic minorities use less of these.
  
• Other features such as the vowels of words like 'face', 'goat', 'like' and 'mouth', many use new pronunciations which, phonetically, resemble Northern English but also Caribbean and Subcontinental Englishes.
  
• There is ongoing divergence between Londoners and London periphery residents.
  
• The changes which result in divergence are led by ethnic minority speakers, particularly Afro-Caribbeans.
  
• The degree to which 'Anglos' participate in these changes is strongly related to the ethnic mix of their peer groups.
   
• Outer Londoners' more 'Cockney' speech reflects the much smaller proportion of ethnic minority people there.
  
• The key to this is to understand the nature of what we call 'Multicultural London English' (MLE), the (supposedly) ethnically neutral way of speaking which still contains many 'ethnic' features.
  
• There is no clear boundary between and ethnically marked forms of English, eg Bangladeshi and Afro-Caribbean.
  
  
  Changes:
• As its traditional speakers emigrate to Essex and Hertfordshire, the 650-year-old accent is dying off in London.
  
• It is being replaced by MLE.
  
• Within a generation MLE is expected to be standard in London.
  
• “In much of the East End of London, the cockney dialect that we hear now spoken by older people will have disappeared within another generation,” <Paul Kerswill.
  
• “Cockney in the East End is now transforming itself into multicultural London English, a new, melting-pot mixture of all those people living here who learned English as a second language."
  
• since the 1960s, these areas of London have become home to immigrants from the West Indies, the Indian subcontinent and many other places, from South America and Africa to Central Asia and the Far East.
  
• Children were no longer learning their English dialect from local cockney speakers but from older teenagers, who themselves had developed their English in the linguistic melting pot.
  
• Out of all this, the new English which we call multicultural London English emerged, and this is the sound of inner-city London we hear today.”
  
•  “Jafaican”, is a mixture of cockney, Bangladeshi and West Indian.
  
  
  Lexis:
  COCKNEY GLOSSARY
  You're 'aving a laugh — I don't believe you
  Geezer — likeable fellow
  Mate — all-purpose sentence-closer
  Know what I mean? — Do you agree with me?
  China — cockney rhyming slang, from “China plate”: “mate”
  
  
  JAFAICAN GLOSSARY
  Buff — attractive
  Axe — instead of “ask”
  Creps — trainers
  Endz — area, estate, neighbourhood
  Low batties — trousers that hang low on the waist
  Skets — derogatory term for loose girls
  Bitch — girlfriend
  Nang — good (as in “rah, das 'nuff nang!”)
  Sick — good
  Hype — hype things up, increase status
  Jamming — hanging around
  Begging — talking rubbish
  Chat — talk back, contradict
  Bare — very, a lot
  Nuff — really, very
  Innit? — sentence-closer, seeking agreement