Cockney is one of the UK’s most widely known and imitated accents. It’s also a dialect, a group of people, and a tough nut for most actors to crack. As noted in Acting Magazine, Cockney remains “a difficult one for many actors to master due to its distinctive use of rhyming slang, vowel shifts, and dropped consonants.”
Dick Van Dyke went wrong enough in Mary Poppins (1964) to have since apologised for delivering “the most atrocious Cockney accent in the history of cinema.”
Want to sound more Michael Caine than Dick Van Dyke? Our fundamentals on how to do a Cockney accent explain why it sounds as it does and coaches you to develop a natural Cockney accent of your own.
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Traditional wisdom holds that only those born within earshot of Bow Bells – the bells of Cheapside’s Church of St. Mary-le-Bow – are true Cockneys, but it’s more generally the accent of working-class people in London’s East End.
The definition tends to become even broader for actors. “Some directors (especially outside the UK) want working-class or uneducated English characters to sound Cockney regardless of location,” says accent coach David Alan Stern. “Some directors of UK Shakespeare productions like using Cockney accents for artisan or clown characters.”
As an actor, you may think of the Cockney accent as coming from a particular social class or era rather than focusing on a specific Cockney accent location.
The key to understanding any accent is isolating the specific sounds that make it distinctive. Cockney has plenty, so here’s a breakdown of its trademark pronunciation peculiarities.
Changing “th” to an F, V, or D
Standard British English pronounces the “th” sound with the tongue between the teeth, but the Cockney accent replaces it with an F, V, or D.
- “With” becomes “wiv”
- “Think” becomes “fink”
- “This” becomes “dis”
Dropping the H
H sounds at the start of words are often dropped entirely.
- “Hospital” becomes “ospital”
- “Help” becomes “elp”
Dropping the G
Although Cockney drops H at the start of words, the G tends to get cut from the “ing” suffix.
- “Laughing” becomes “laughin’”
- “Parking” becomes “parkin’”
Weakening vowels
Linguists call this the simplification of diphthongs. Words ending with “ou” or “ow” instead end with the schwa [ə] sound.
- “You” becomes “yuh”
- “Pillow” becomes “pilluh”
Switching L for W
L sounds at the end of a word or syllable sound more like a W. Thomas G. Waites and Jennifer Mueller describe it (perhaps a little disrespectfully) as “sounding almost like a small child who’s still working on pronouncing words correctly.”
- “All right” becomes “owright”
- “Pal” becomes “pol”
Glottal stop
Cockney accents typically replace T sounds in the middle of words with a glottal stop. These occur when you briefly pause and release airflow while speaking – it’s the “uh” sound you make when saying “uh-oh.”
- “British” becomes “Bri-ish”
- “Butter” becomes “bu-er”
- And “bottle of water” becomes the ubiquitous “bo’oh’o'wa’er” meme.
1. Learn the grammar
Embracing an accent’s grammatical quirks can instantly make you sound more natural and give your speech the right flow. Here are a few grammatical tics characteristic of Cockney:
- Using “me” instead of “my,” such as “me mate’s car” rather than “my mate’s car.”
- Saying “ain’t” rather than “is not,” “are not,” or “have not,” such as “I ain’t got the time” rather than “I haven’t got the time.”
- Dropping the “ly” from adverbs, such as “trains are running normal” rather than “trains are running normally.”
- Swapping “done” and “seen” for “did” and “saw,” such as “I done it today and seen that yesterday” rather than “I did it today and saw that yesterday.”
2. Change your oral posture
To sound like a Cockney native, you’ll need to hold and move your jaw, tongue, lips, and mouth as they do.
“You want to bring your lips really far forward for the oral posture,” says voice and speech coach Andrea Caban. “And you want to almost imagine that there’s a light bulb in your mouth, so there’s a lot of space in the back of your mouth and the front of your mouth is closed [and you] bring your lip corners forward.”
3. Immerse yourself in reality TV and archival footage
“I always encourage people to find authentic speakers, not actors in television shows or movies, because they aren’t always the best representation of the accent,” says dialect coach and speech teacher Sammi Grant. “I go to YouTube and search the region of the accent I want to learn … and I listen to interviews.”
Reality TV shows featuring individuals with natural Cockney accents are a good place to start. Think along the lines of The Only Way Is Essex (2010-present).
Archival footage is particularly valuable when auditioning for period pieces, since modern times have seen strong Cockney accents start to fade. You’ll find many Cockney accent examples on YouTube, but here are a few to kick off with.
4. Hear acting greats bring Cockney accents to the screen
Adopting an accent means walking the line between clarity and authenticity. It doesn’t matter how natural your accent is if the audience can’t understand you.
Actors know that. “Cockney is my natural dialect,” Caine once told The New York Times. “This isn’t it. This is just a general London accent. If I spoke Cockney, you wouldn’t understand what the hell I was talking about.” He was probably referring to Cockney rhyming slang — whole phrases that are playfully substituted by users of the dialect. Notorious examples include “apples and pears,” meaning “stairs,” and “bees and honey,” meaning “money.”
Although authentic, unrehearsed speech can help give you an ear for Cockney, pay equal attention to famous performances using the accent and note how they achieve that balance.
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