Estuary English


Estuary English is an English accent, continuum of accents, or continuum of accent features associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including parts of London, since the late 20th century. In 2000, the phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England, while also acknowledging that it is a social construct rather than a technically well-defined linguistic phenomenon. He describes it as "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent Received Pronunciation, and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent Cockney. There is much debate among linguists as to where Cockney and RP end and where Estuary English begins, or whether Estuary English is even a single cohesive accent.

Name

Cruttenden uses the term London Regional General British in preference to the popular term "Estuary English".
The names listed above may be abbreviated:
  • Estuary English → EE
  • London Regional General British → London RGB
Wells has used different names for an accent closer to Cockney or closer to Received Pronunciation. Cruttenden uses the name Popular London to refer to Cockney pronunciation itself.

Status as accent of English

The boundaries between RP, Estuary English and Cockney are far from clear-cut. Wells cites David Rosewarne as locating EE in the middle of "a continuum that has RP and London speech at either end". Several writers have argued that Estuary English is not a discrete accent distinct from the accents of the London area. The sociolinguist Peter Trudgill has written that the term "Estuary English" is inappropriate because "it suggests that we are talking about a new variety, which we are not; and because it suggests that it is a variety of English confined to the banks of the Thames estuary, which it is not. The label actually refers to the lower middle class accents, as opposed to working class accents, of the Home Counties Modern Dialect area". Roach comments, "In reality there is no such accent and the term should be used with care. The idea originates from the sociolinguistic observation that some people in public life who would previously have been expected to speak with an RP accent now find it acceptable to speak with some characteristics of the London area... such as glottal stops, which would in earlier times have caused comment or disapproval".
state "All of its features can be located on a sociolinguistic and geographical continuum between RP and Cockney, and are spreading not because Estuary English is a coherent and identifiable influence, but because the features represent neither the standard nor the extreme non-standard poles of the continuum". In order to tackle these problems put forward by expert linguists, argues that Estuary English should be viewed as a folk category rather than an expert linguistic category. As such it takes the form of a perceptual prototype category that does not require discrete boundaries in order to function in the eyes of lay observers of language variation and change.
Collins et al. state that "In the 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s, this putative new variety was fiercely debated both in the media and academia, but since then interest in Estuary English has waned and been replaced by discussion of the capital's latest linguistic innovation – Multicultural London English".

Features

Published accounts of EE describe it mainly in terms of differences from contemporary RP and from Cockney. Wells states that "Estuary English is like RP, but unlike Cockney, in being associated with standard grammar and usage". Differences are found at phonemic and allophonic levels.

Features distinguishing EE from RP

Wells identifies a small number of key features that may distinguish EE from RP; these features may be summarized as follows:
Other distinguishing features have been suggested by other studies:
  • Th-fronting
  • Other vowel differences

    /l/-vocalization

It has been widely observed that EE exhibits vocalization of preconsonantal/final /l/, perhaps with various vowel mergers before it. Wells cites the specific case of allophony in GOAT, leading perhaps to a phonemic split. This topic is usually referred to as L-vocalization. There is said to be alternation between the vocalized, dark non-vocalized and clear non-vocalized, depending on the word. These alternations happen in final positions or in a final consonant cluster, e.g. sold. In London, that may even occur before a vowel: girl out. In all phonetic environments, male London speakers were at least twice as likely to vocalize the dark l as female London speakers. According to, the vocalized dark l is sometimes an unoccluded lateral approximant, which differs from the RP only by the lack of the alveolar contact.
/l/-vocalization can lead to loss of distinctions between some vowels and diphthongs. Examples of vowel mergers before historic found in EE are:
  • merges with .
  • merges with .
  • merges with .
  • Other possible mergers include the following:
  • * can merge with . Since merges with, it also participates in this merger.
  • * can merge with both and .
  • * can merge with both and .
  • * can merge with .
  • * can merge with .
  • * can merge with .
found coda pronounced as clear, as in most accents of Irish English, in some speakers: she notes that in her study, "all four Essex speakers have a clear in pull."
/l/-vocalization appears to be spreading into RP. Collins et al say "Traditional RP speakers tend to stigmatize this feature, which is nevertheless one of the most striking changes going on in present-day GB English".

/t/-glottalization

The term glottalization has several different meanings: the most important are glottal reinforcement, where a glottal closure accompanies an oral closure, and glottal replacement, where a glottal closure is substituted for an oral consonant.
Although glottalization of /t/ has been singled out for attention in discussion of EE features, pre-glottalization of /p/, /k/ and /tʃ/ is also widespread in RP, particularly when another consonant follows. Examples are "popcorn" , "electric" , "butcher" .
Wells proposes that in transcribing EE, the glottal stop symbol could be used in contexts where the consonant in question is preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant or the end of a word: examples are "bit" , "football" , "belt" , "Cheltenham" , "bent" , "Bentley" .
Pre-glottalization of /t/ therefore appears to be present both in RP and in EE.
Glottal replacement of /t/ may be found when /t/ occurs before another consonant. Examples from RP where /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop are: "that table" , "Scotland" , "witness" . The most extreme case of glottal replacement is when a glottal stop takes the place of /t/ between vowels. Examples are "not on" , "bottle" . Wells says "glottalling word-internally before a vowel is well-known as a "rough" pronunciation variant: thus EE water ˈwɔːtə, but Cockney ˈwɔʊʔə". However, in work published twenty years later, Cruttenden remarks that such glottal replacement "was until recently stigmatized as non-GB but all except are now acceptable in London RGB". He continues "Use of for /t/ word-medially intervocalically, as in water, still remains stigmatized in GB".

Diphthong shift

EE is said to exhibit diphthong shift, particularly of the FACE, PRICE, MOUTH and GOAT vowels.
  • may be realised in a couple of different ways. According to, it is any of the following:,, or. The last two are more often used by females. She also notes a fully rounded diphthong , as well as two rare monophthongal realizations, namely and.
  • , can be realised as,, or, with and being predominant. it can also be realised as, or.
  • can be realised as,,,, or.
  • can be realised as,,, or. denotes a front onset, not a central one.
  • Board may be pronounced differently from bored. appears before consonants, and appears at a morpheme boundary. However, states that both and may have the same monophthongal quality.

    Yod-coalescence

is found in EE: the use of the affricates and instead of the clusters and in words like dune and Tuesday results in the words sounding like June and choose day, respectively. Although at the time when most studies of EE were carried out, yod-coalescence was not common in RP, it has now become so widely accepted that RP-based pronunciation dictionaries include it. Thus the latest edition of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary gives /dʒuːn/ and /tʃuːz.deɪ/ as the preferred pronunciations; the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation give /djuːn/ and /tjuːzdeɪ/ as their first preference, but give /dʒuːn/ and /tʃuːz.deɪ/ as second preference. It cannot be said that the presence of yod-coalescence distinguishes EE from RP.

''th''-fronting

It has been suggested that th-fronting is "currently making its way" into Estuary English, for example those from the Isle of Thanet often refer to Thanet as "Plannit Fannit". However, this feature was also present in the traditional dialect of Essex before the spread of Estuary English.

Other vowel differences

  • can be realised as, or, with the first two variants predominating. Before the dark l, it is sometimes a center diphthong.
  • can be realised in many different ways, such as monophthongs,,,,, and diphthongs,, and. Front pronunciations are more often encountered in female speakers. Before dark /l/, it is always back.
  • /ʊ/ can be realised as , , or , as in RP. Only the last variant appears before a dark l.
  • , according to, can be pronounced in two different ways: diphthongal in closed syllables and or in open syllables and monophthongal. According to, it is either or before consonants, and either or at a morpheme boundary.
  • can be realised as,,, or, with being predominant. The first two variants occur mostly before. The last two variants are more often used by females.
  • can be realised as,,, or.