Кокни через века

Региональный этап Всероссийского фестиваля творческих открытий и инициатив «Леонардо».

Секция «Культурология»

Диалект Кокни через века.

Автор: Павлова Валерия Евгеньевна,

ученица 10 «А» класса

МБОУ «СОШ №10»

Руководитель: Цуганова Асият Азизовна,

учитель английского языка

МБОУ «СОШ №10»

г. Когалым, 2014г.

Оглавление.

Вступление………………………………………………………………………………………1

Основная часть……………………………………………………………………………….2.

1. Глава I……………………………………………………………………………………..

1. Диалект и акцент…………………………………………………………………2
2.  Этимология………………………………………………………………………2
3. Местоположение…………………………………………………………………3
4. Произношение……………………………………………………………………4
5.  Грамматика………………………………………………………………………6
6. Рифмующийся сленг……………………………………………………………7

2. Глава II……………………………………………………………………………………

1. Отношение общества к Кокни…………………………………………………8
2. Кокни в литературе и других СМИ……………………………………………9
3. С XIX до конца XX века………………………………………………………10
4. Мокни…………………………………………………………………………..10
5. XXI век и будущее диалекта…………………………………………………11

3. Глава III……………………...............................................................................................

1. Мнение людей о важности диалектов и акцентов………………………….11

Заключение………………………………………………………………………………..13

Библиография………………………………………………………………………………….

Приложения…………………………………………………………………………………....

Introduction

English is the most used language in the world, one out of every six people in the world speaks English. It is the official language of the United Kingdom, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, partly, Canada and some other countries. Thus, dialects and accents are the essential part of national identification in these countries. For example, if we talk in general, there would be about 20 or so dialects within England. But within each of these regions you could include dozens more.  I think, the importance of dialects and accents cannot be underestimated. As famous British musician Sting said, “in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with your social status”. When you speak English, your pronunciation and vocabulary gives other people information about your nationality, origin and personality. Accents and dialects are a clue to social information. I am always surprised by the number of different English dialects and their informatory importance in English-speaking countries.

I chose ‘Cockney’ dialect for my research because this dialect has one of the most mysterious and complicated history. Besides, people who use this dialect live in the very heart of English language’s homeland – in London, England.

The purpose of our research is complex studying of a Cockney dialect’s history, contribution to English culture and its place among other accents through the analysis of all available literary sources and websites devoted to the topic.

The object of this research: non-native English-speaking people from different countries.

This research is topical because nowadays English is an international language. To make a successful career, one should know this language very well. Therefore, linguists in our days are trying to invent more effective, more interesting ways of learning English language.

• Thus, the first hypothesis in our research is that learning of English dialects and accents can motivate people’s interest in learning English language itself.
• The second hypothesis in our research is that both dialects and accents appear to be invaluable treasury of cultural inheritance.

Our research methods: literature search, watching films, online survey on the website

The main body

1.1 Dialect and accent

A lot of people don’t know the difference between dialect and accent, and, quite frankly, I think that different people use these terms in different ways.  So it is very important to say about the distinction between these words.

There are two ways of understanding the term ‘accent’. One of them is ‘accent’ in a sense of a special emphasis given to particular syllable in a word or word in a sentence.

The other one is the one referring to the way in which people in a particular area, country, or social group pronounce words. What is important is that this term does not bear any kind of subtext and is more or less neutral.

Dialect, unlike accent, is a form of language that differs not only in pronunciation, but also in vocabulary, spelling and grammar. ^[1]

In addition, sometimes this term has rather negative implicit meaning.

In the case of Cockney, this classification is really conspicuous. As it will be examined and proven in the following chapters, Cockney is characterised not only by distinctive pronunciation, but also by grammar and vocabulary, and therefore complies with all the conditions for being a dialect.

1.2 Etimology

One of the strangest attempt to explain its derivation goes back to 17th century. Scholar John Minsheau^[2], who proclaimed himself as a ‘professor of languages’ offered the now-famous etymological reference to the word “cockney”:

A citizen of London, being in the country, and hearing a horse neigh, exclaimed, ‘Lord! how that horse laughs!’. A by-stander telling him that noise was called ‘neighing’; the next morning, when the cock crowed, the citizen to show he had not forgot what was told him, cried out, ‘Do you hear how the Cock Neighs?’^[3]

This story is probably apocryphal, but it has been repeated innumerable times and can be found in both the multivolume American Century Dictionary and the OED. Even 200 years later some people think that Minsheau’s story is a truth.

Shakespeare, Minsheu’s contemporary, knew the word cockney and used it twice in his plays. When King Lear, stung by his daughters’ ingratitude, exclaims: “O me! My heart, my rising heart! But down!” the Fool retorts: “Cry to it, Nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put’em i’th’paste alive; she knapp’d’em o’th’coxcombs with a stick, and cried ‘Down, wantons, down!’ ‘Twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.” Cockney seems to have another meaning, probably it means “idiot” here.

In the 19th century, the origin of few words was actively discussed in both professional and lay circles.

Two reputable etymologies of cockney competed for a long time. One explained it with reference to the land of Cockaigne - the Land of a Plenty - a fabulous country in medieval story, where all the streets were paved with gold and all the houses made of cake; so London appeared to the rude country-folk a city overflowing with food and riches - therefore they called the townspeople Cockneys.

The other version connected cockney with Medieval Latin coquina “kitchen”. The “kitchen” etymology reconstructed the following intermediate stages: from coquina to coquinator “cook” to a term of contempt, and finally, to cockney. French coquin “rogue, scoundrel” and acoquiner “seduce; deprave” appeared to provide an additional link^[4].

Anyway, the issue remains partly open. Perhaps, cockney does go back to an Old French participle, as was suggested above, but some phonetic difficulties weaken this hypothesis, so it seems improbable. Dictionary says “origin unknown”, different online sources give different explanations, add their own, or give both derivations supplied with question marks.

1.3 Region

The region in which ‘Cockneys’ are supposed to live is not clearly defined too. According to the most common view, in order to be a true Cockney, one must have been born within the hearing distance of the Bow Bells - the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church (Application 1).

This church is definitely ancient: there are written records of Bow Bells being rung every evening at 9pm which date back to 1470.

The first church of St Mary-le-Bow was destroyed by the Great Fire of London, in 1666. Then it was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.

Unfortunately, the bells were destroyed by a German bomb during the Blitz on 10 May 1941. Before they were replaced in 1961, there was a period when no Cockney could be literally born within the hearing distance of Bow-bell.

As it is said in Samuel Rowland's ‘The letting of humours blood in the head-vaine’ (1600), the sound of the bells of St Mary's is credited with having persuaded Dick Whittington to turn back from Highgate and stay in London to become Lord Mayor. This legend says that he was about to leave the city for seeking his fortune, but on his way out of the city he hears the Bow Bells of London ringing, and believes they are sending him a message.^[5]

So, according to the legend of Dick Whittington, the bells could once be heard from the Highgate (5 miles from St Mary-le-Bow). There was a scientific study in 2005 to see how far the Bow Bells could be heard nowadays, and it was estimated that the bells could be heard six miles to the east, five miles to the north, three miles to the south, and four miles to the west. Of course, it depends on wind direction and atmospheric conditions. Nevertheless, people who have been born in such  neighbourhoods of East London as Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Stepney, Wapping, Limehouse, Poplar, Millwall, Hackney, Shoreditch, Bow, Mile End, East Ham, Stratford, West Ham and Plaistow are considered as Cockney by the ‘within earshot’ definition. ‘The Borough’ to the south of Waterloo, London and Tower Bridge were also considered Cockney earlier, but now Bermondsey is the only Cockney area south of the River Thames (Application 2).

Migration of Cockneys in 18th, 19th and 20th century has also led to partial migration of the dialect. For example, post-war migration to Essex out of London (to the Basildon, Harlow, West Horndon) brought a strong Cockney influence on local speech.

1.4 Pronunciation

• As many British accents, Cockney is non-rhotic. A final -er is pronounced [ə] or [ɐ]. Thus, the last syllable of words such as letter is pronounced [ɐ] in Cockney.
• Broad /ɑː/ is used in words such as demand, command, path, bath, after, castle, answer, France, chance, dance, example, pass, glass, grass, ask, task, basket, rather, broadcast, forecast. This feature originated in London in the 16th century.
• T-glottalization - use of the glottal stop as an allophone of /t/ in various positions, including after a stressed syllable. For example, ‘bottle’ is pronounced as ‘bo’l’ Glottal stops also occur, though less frequently, for [k] and [p], and for mid-word consonants. For example, Richard Whiteing, famous English author and journalist, spelt "Hyde Park" as “Hy′ Par′. Therefore, "lie" and light can be homophones. "Graham" can be said as “Gra'am’’.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney - cite_note-Wright_1980_136-137-28 
• Cockney /p, t, k/ are often aspirated in intervocalic and final environments, e.g., talker  [‘tɒk:ʰɐ], utter [ˈatˢɐ], rocker [ˈɹɒkʰɐ], up [apʰ], out [ˈæə̯tˢ],rock [ɹɒkʰ].
• Th-fronting:  /θ/ can become [f]; [fɪnk] "think", [mɛfs] "maths".

/ð/ can become [v];  [dæɪ] "they", [brɒvə] "brother".

• Yod-coalescence in words such as tube [ˈtʃʰʉːb], rеduce [ɹɪˈdʒʉːs] 
• H-dropping.
• Vocalisation of L; [mɪowɔː] for ‘Millwall’, /o:mæust/ for ‘almost’. Vocalized /l/ is influenced by surrounding vowels and it may be realized as [u], [ʊ], [o] or [ɤ]

• Sometimes vocalised /l/ is entirely absorbed by an  /ɔː/ (e.g. salt -sort, fault-fought-fort, pause-Paul's, Morden-Malden, water-Walter, full-fool become homophones)
• Awful can be regarded as containing two occurrences of the same vowel, /ˈɔːfɔː/. The difference between musical and music-hall, in an H-dropping broad Cockney, is thus nothing more than a matter of stress and syllable boundaries. The typical pronunciation of railway is [ˈɹæʊwæɪ]. Well and whirl become homophonous as [wɛʊ].

• /æ/ may be [ɛ] or [ɛɪ], with the latter occurring before voiced consonants, particularly before /d/: [bɛk] "back", [bɛːɪd] "bad"
• /ɛ/ may be [eə], [eɪ], or [ɛɪ] before certain voiced consonants, particularly before /d/: [beɪd] “bed”
• /ɒ/ may be a somewhat less open [ɔ]:  [kʰɔʔ] “cot”
• /ɜː/ is on occasion somewhat fronted and/or lightly rounded, giving Cockney variants such as [ɜ̟ː], [œ̈ː].
• /ɔː/ → [oː] or a closing diphthong of the type [oʊ~ɔo] when in non-final position, with the latter variants being more common in broad Cockney [soʊs] “sauce”-“source”, [loʊd] "lord",[ˈwoʊʔə] "water"
• /ɔː/ → [ɔː] or a centring diphthong of the type [ɔə~ɔwə] when in final position, with the latter variants being more common in broad Cockney; thus [sɔə] "saw"-"sore"-"soar", [lɔə] "law"-“lore”, [wɔə] “war”-“wore”. The diphthong is retained before inflectional endings, so that board and pause can contrast with bored [bɔəd] and paws [pʰɔəz]
• Cockney has been occasionally described as replacing /ɹ/ with /w/. For example, thwee (or fwee) instead of three, fwasty instead of frosty. Peter Wright, a Survey of English Dialects fieldworker, concluded that this was not a universal feature of Cockneys but that it was more common to hear this in the London area than anywhere else in Britain. 
• An unstressed final -ow may be pronounced [ə]. Sometimes this can be lowered to [ɐ]. This is common to most traditional, Southern English dialects.

So, the principal changing center around the use of a small group of consonants: h, t, d, v and w. Historically, Cockney is a dialect of the less educated region in London. Consequently, there's a certain amount of articulatory simplifications concerned with broadening vowels - this happens because one needs less muscular tension to pronounce broad than narrow vowels, it is much easier.

• An interchange of [v] and [w] was quite common before the turn of the century. ‘Wine’ and ‘vinegar’ could be ‘vine’ and ‘winegar’. 
• Today the [h] is consistently dropped, but formerly it was almost as consistently added, so that there was an interchange similar to that of the [v] and [w] above. Inheritance could become hin'eritance; just as Helen Adamson might be changed to ‘Elen Hadamson.
• Likewise, there was an earlier switching of the plosive consonants [t] and [d].^[6]

A knowledge of these changes will explain some of the pronunciation features and dialect writing which the student of Cockney is sure to come across.

1.5 Grammar

Cockney often disobeys the basic rules of Standard English:

• Cockney speakers tend to use double negative and “ain’t” as a negative contraction of verbs such as “isn’t” and “haven’t” (“There is nothing like that” in Cockney – “There ain’t nuffink like that”).
• Another feature are the question tags. They are widely used in non-traditional forms, such as ‘inneye’ for ‘isn’t he’, ‘innit’ for ‘isn’t it’, or ‘dinnee’ for ‘didn’t he’ (“Cake goes well with tea, innit?”).
• Plus, Cockney speakers tend to generalize the third person by adding the ending “-s” in every person in singular: you says, I says.
• The prepositions ‘to’ and ‘at’ are omitted when talking about places (“I’m going down the shop”, while it should be said “I am going down to the shop.”)

• Personal pronouns, when used independently, are used in nominative rather that in accusative, so that Cockney speakers say “It’s me”, but also “It’s him” or “It’s them”.
• Use of ‘me’ instead of ‘my’, for example, “At's me book you got 'ere”.

1.6 Rhyming slang

The most exciting thing about Cockney dialect is the rhyming slang. How does it work? You just take a pair of two words, where the second word rhymes with the word you keep in mind. For example, ‘cat & mouse’ for the word ‘house’ or ‘bread & honey’ for ‘money’. Moreover, you can just use the first word of the connected pair (you don’t say ‘cat mouse’ but just ‘cat’, you don’t say ‘bread & honey’ but just ‘bread’). So, you see, this so-called abbreviation makes a sentence much harder to understand!

But there is always an exception that proves the rule. For example, ‘north & south’ meaning ‘mouth’ cannot be abbreviated this way.

Sometimes there may be more than one way to say the very same thing (e.g.

‘rain’ could be referred to as ‘pleasure & pain’ or ‘Andy Cain’) in Cockney rhyming slang. Besides, there may be one expression indicating several ideas, according to the context

(e.g. ‘Jeckyll & Hyde’ could mean ‘pride’ or ‘snide’).

The names of famous musicians, actors, characters, scientists, sportsmen are often used in Cockney rhyming slang. For example, ‘Edward Heath’ for ‘teeth’, ‘Dick Van Dyke’ for ‘bike’, ‘Daniel Boon’ for ‘spoon’, ‘David Bowie’ for ‘blowy’, ‘U2’ for ‘flu’, ‘George Michael’ for ‘cycle’, ‘Axl Rose’ for ‘nose’, etc.

Names of places are used too (e.g. ‘Hampstead Heath’ for ‘teeth’).

Some of the Cockney expressions are very well recognized because they have been in use for years. They have become so well-known that they are sometimes used even in Standard English speech. ‘Pork pies’ for ‘lies’ is a great example of popular cockney phrases, often mentioned in English TV series, TV shows, or films.

Even though films are created for entertainment and they cannot be absolutely truthful, we decided to take a little research watching the films with cockney-characters. We made notes about the most repeating and frequent phrases noticed in films. In order to make a research, we watched: Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels; Quadrophenia; The Football Factory; Snatch; My Fair Lady. Then we found meaning of noticed phrases in online cockney-dictionary^[7] and made a list of them. (Appendix 3) 

2.1 Social Perception of Cockney

Cockney is not only a regional dialect, but class dialect as well, which is usually associated with the working-class Londoners. Maybe, it is one of the reasons why it is considered to be less exalted and prestigious than other dialects. As English linguist Matthews writes, “Of all the non-standard forms of English, Cockney is the most generally despised and downtrodden”. Matthews himself was born and raised in the East End of London, within the sound of Bow Bells. As he describes his own life, his education caused suppression of the Cockney features in his speech: “Cockney, we had been taught by teachers and society, was vulgar, something to discard in favour of Standard Speech”

Why is it happening? John Walker explains it in his Pronouncing Dictionary (1791): while other dialects and accent were in the provinces and even the most educated and wealthy people there spoke with the dialect, Cockneys lived next door to the London high-society, educated people, whose speech was the Standard Speech. Therefore the difference was much more noticeable.^[8]

The most noticeable “mistakes” of Cockney are its distinctive “incorrect” grammar and pronunciation. It is also believed that Cockney Rhyming Slang used to be the language of the underground and thieves, as it is very convenient to hide confidential information with this slang.

Fortunately, the interest in regional dialects rose lately. People are not only much more tolerable towards other varieties than their own; they also take interest in them. Today, Cockney is perceived much more tolerably, probably because of the fact that it is more and more often heard in mass-media and has quite a lot of famous speakers. Also, everyone can find a web page on any accent or dialect with the description of grammar and vocabulary features and with a guide or tutorial for how to speak it. In today’s world, dialects need all the help they can get to stay alive, because dialects demonstrate the evolution of speech patterns and show that people, who live in the same geographic location or belong in the same culture, share these same patterns. Dialects say lot about our identity, it is an important part of the people’s cultural history.

2.2 Representation of Cockney in literature and other media

Cockney characters occurred in writings much earlier than the linguists started to take interest in it. We can even find Cockney character in Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Julius Caesar’.

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, three authors and their works are most significant. Charles Dickens created a Cockney character named Samuel Weller in his Pickwick Papers. The most noticeable Cockney feature in this novel is confusion of [w] and [v]. And along with Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray also created a Cockney character – Jeames Yellowplush – in The Yellowplush Papers.

Another important work is  ‘Real Life in London’  by Pierce Egan published in November 1821. It is a sort of guidebook to London scenes and London characters; this study does not tell much about Cockney grammar or pronunciation, but it provides us with real examples of slang. Besides, it gives us interesting images of Londoner’s life in the early 19th century.^[9]

By the way, in 1909, Australian author Henry Lawson wrote notable poem called ‘The Cockney soul’ (Application 4).

Undoubtedly, the most famous Cockney character of literature is Eliza Doolittle from G. B. Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’. Her language reflected her humble origin, thus reinforcing the negative attitude to it. And Eliza, the poor Cockney flower girl, became the symbol of a whole category of people from the lower strata of society.

The representation of Cockney characters on TV shows is probably strongest in the BBC series EastEnders, which has been broadcasted since 1980s until today. This TV series gave huge popularity to the Cockneys.

British comedy series and shows like ‘Mind Your Language’ and ‘Only Fools and Horses’ also feature characters which use Cockney rhyming slang extensively. There was even invented ‘The Cockney alphabet’ (Application 5). The humour comes from forming unexpected words and phrases from the names of the various letters of the alphabet.

Musicians such as The Streets, and Chas & Dave use rhyming slang in their songs. The UK punk-bands of the late 70s glorified their working-class heritage, too (Sham 69, for example). Nowadays, rhyming slang is often used in popular films  like  ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ or ‘Green Street Hooligans’.

2.3 From the 19th to the End of the 20th Century

 The evolution of Cockney dialect during this period is a result of many factors that range from social and cultural movements and major historical events.

During the Victorian era, the establishment of Standard Pronunciation or the 'Queen’s English' caused an agiotage in the world of language and creation of dictionaries. In that time, many people believed that Cockneys were criminals, because of their ‘secret language’, comparing them to the London thieves who also had jargon. Disrespect fell hard upon not just the Cockney slang, but their accents, status in society and the culture, as Cockney was the dialect of working class.  Withal, the class system began to be less suffocating in society during the early ages of the twentieth century. More benefits and routes became open to the working class^[10].

Second World War also provided some changes. As the army needed all of the available men in Britain to go to war, there was a multitude of dialects and accents together in one unit of Englishmen. There was a merging of both the ‘north and south’, and the ‘country and city’ during this period of history. This has led to a large understanding and acceptance of the many dialects and slang words used by different regions across England.

 The image and behaviour of the Cockney, their distinct accent and rhyming slang began to spread far out of London with the help of television and feature films. Famous television dramas have made the stereotype of the Cockney internationally recognized. In the last fifty years there have been many famous portrayals of the stereotypical Cockney and the imitation of their equally famous accent on TV – the most noticeable one is Eliza Doolittle by Audrey Hepburn.

2.4 Mockney

Looking for the information on the internet, I came across some strange term – “Mockney”. As it turns out, Mockney ("mock" and "cockney") - is an imitation of Cockney or working class London speech, or a person with such an accent. A stereotypical Mockney speaker comes from an upper-middle or middle class background. The first published use of the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1989. It is an affectation sometimes adopted for aesthetic or theatric purposes, other times just to sound “cool” or give the false impression that the speaker rose from humble beginnings and became prominent through some innate talent rather than the education, contacts and other advantages a privileged background tends to bring.  Notable persons described as Mockney include Guy Ritchie, Lily Allen, Damon Albarn etc.

I think, the existence of this phenomenon is the best proof of special place that Cockney dialect has among all other British dialects.

2.5 The 21st century and the future of Cockney dialect

In these latter days Cockney rhyming slang is becoming a part of modern day youth culture. Many words and phrases have been taken from rhyming slang and integrated so well into the English language that their origins have been mostly forgotten; this is because of the global acceptance of the Cockney into common culture. Nowadays a new multicultural dialect, shaped by second and third generation London immigrants, including Bangladeshis, West Africans and Afro-Caribbeans is appearing.

On the one hand, it has positive effect on societies’ reaction to the Cockney cultural and historical heritage. On the other hand, some people think that it makes Cockney dialect lose its identity.

But English linguists are not so pessimistic about the future of the Cockney dialect. Professor David Crystal, one of the world’s leading language specialists, said that traditional Cockney is not disappearing, but shifting to other neighbourhoods, boroughs, towns. Moreover, new kinds of mixed accents are developing: "Walk down Brick Lane and you will hear all sorts of interesting voices and dialects. Undoubtedly, some of the old-style cockney might be dying out as some rural dialects are dying out. But all accents change." ^[11]

It is the best proof of the opinion that dialect is like living, constantly developing creature.

3.1 People’s opinion about the importance of dialects & accents.

In order to understand modern people’s attitude towards dialects, we decided to make an internet-survey among the users of site Interpals.net (this site is made for language exchange). So we sent questionnaires (Application 6) to the 24 english-speaking people living in different countries of the world, including Germany, Indonesia, Romania, Spain, Mexico, Ukraine, Poland.

Our first question was ‘Have you ever been in a situation, when you found out that learning of Standard English language isn’t enough?’. 19 people out of 24 said that they have.

Then we asked people about their opinion on teaching accents and dialects during the English language course. 15 respondents’ opinion was that dialects and accents should be taught on English lessons.

As it turned out, 23 out of 24 respondents are interested in learning more about dialects and accents.

‘Does the way people speak identify their social status and personality?’  67% (16 persons) answered that it doesn’t.

The last question sounded like ‘Have you ever heard about Cockney accent?’ Only 29% (7 persons) of our respondents said that they have. (Application 7)

Finally, we asked people if they have some associations with the word ‘cockney’.  18 persons said that they have no associations with this word, other answers were ‘hockey’, ‘something luxurious, fancy’, ‘London & middle class’, ‘lower social strata’, ‘some funny rhyming phrases’.

(Actually, some of our respondents answered in a long, full-detailed manner, so you can find their answers in Application 8)

According to the results of our survey, we can discover that:

• Nowadays, people are not only tolerable towards different dialects and accents; they also take genuine interest in them.
• But, all in all, people don’t have interest in one particular dialect or accent. Basically, their preferences are just built on films they’ve watched or people they’ve met.
• When we asked people about their associations for word ‘cockney’, most of our respondents didn’t have any associations at all, and some of them had only chaotic or higgledy-piggledy associations like ‘hockey’. Thus, Cockney dialect is not really famous among non-native English speakers around the world.
• The majority of our respondents consider dialects and accents as the important and very interesting part of English language. So, I think, it confirms our hypothesis that learning of English dialects and accents can motivate people’s interest in learning English language.

Conclusion

The size of the British Isles often leads people to assume that the language spoke in its countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland is somewhat homogeneous and first time visitors are often surprised to find that they have difficulty in understanding the accents and dialects of certain region. Even within country of England alone there is great diversity of dialect both regionally and socially. English accents ate clues to where people were born and were they grew up, so for the majority of English people their accent is very important. 

I think, almost every person studying English would be interested about the existence of such dialects as Cockney. And I’m sure that learning more about English dialects will make the process of language learning much more interesting, enthralling and fascinating, because dialects give us a possibility to understand other people’s thoughts, aims and aspirations.

Informational content that we found in order to make this research and internet-survey gives me a possibility to say that both our hypothesis were correct. Firstly, learning of English dialects and accents can motivate people’s interest in learning English language itself.

Secondly, both dialects and accents appear to be invaluable treasury of cultural inheritance.