LibriVox Forum

I found this interesting tutorial. It's funny, free, and seems like it could be useful. I'm abou' a give it a go.

Learn the Cockney accent with Jason Statham

The video would be helpful for anyone who's not had the chance to be surrounded by the accent. It's over-emphasised, not relaxed enough ... but that's probably necessary if you're going to learn the accent from him. And he does lapse once or twice, but I think it's probably only noticeable to London listeners.

.... but why do they insist on background music!

I once took a friend who lived in Epsom (over ten miles out of central London) who needed to hear a cockney accent for her part in a play, to Petticoat Lane market. That was over thirty years ago; I've no idea how many stall-holders in the market are cockneys these days, though. But it's a fascinating place to visit if you're in London.

Peter

Thanks, Peter. So how does this compare to a Derbyshire/Yorkshire accent?

I'm no linguist ... or should it be philologist? ... and haven't really registered the different voice sounds when I've been to other parts of the country. Lazy. But when I was interested in trying to get local sounds right, I did buy a book-and-CD called "How to do accents", by Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn Rowles, which, with study, would be very useful to anyone who wanted to work on this area of their voice.

Peter