Multicultural London English


Multicultural London English is a sociolect of English that emerged in the late twentieth century. It is spoken authentically by mainly young working class people in London. According to research conducted at Lancaster University and Queen Mary University of London in 2010, "In much of the East End of London the Cockney dialect... will have disappeared within another generation.... it will be gone within 30 years.... It has been 'transplanted' to... towns."
As the label suggests, speakers of MLE come from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and live in diverse inner-city neighbourhoods such as Brent, Lambeth and Hackney. As a result, it can be regarded as a multiethnolect. One study was unable "to isolate distinct ethnic styles" in their data on phonetics and quotatives in Hackney and commented that the "differences between ethnicities, where they exist, are quantitative in nature". In fact, they find that it is diversity of friendship groups that is most important; the more ethnically diverse an adolescent's friendship networks are, the more likely it is that they will speak MLE.
In the press, MLE is sometimes referred to as "Jafaican", conveying the idea of "fake Jamaican", because of popular belief that it stems from immigrants of Jamaican and Caribbean descent. However, research suggests that the roots of MLE are more varied: two Economic and Social Research Council funded research projects found that MLE has most likely developed as a result of language contact and group second language acquisition. Specifically, it can contain elements from "learners' varieties of English, Englishes from the Indian subcontinent and Africa, Caribbean creoles and Englishes along with their indigenised London versions, local London and south-eastern vernacular varieties of English, local and international youth slang, as well as more levelled and standard-like varieties from various sources."

Grammar

Standard EnglishNon-standard system 1Non-standard system 2
I was, I wasn'tI was, I weren'tI was, I wasn't
You were, you weren'tYou was, you weren'tYou was, you wasn't
He/she/it was, he/she/it wasn'tHe/she/it was, he/she/it weren'tHe/she/it was, he/she/it wasn't
We were, we weren'tWe was, we weren'tWe was, we wasn't

While older speakers in London today display a vowel and consonant system that matches previously dominant accents such as Cockney, young speakers often display different qualities. The qualities are on the whole not the levelled ones noted in recent studies of teenage speakers in South East England outside London: Milton Keynes, Reading, Luton, Essex, Slough and Ashford. From principles of levelling, it would be expected that younger speakers would show precisely the levelled qualities, with further developments reflecting the innovatory status of London as well as the passage of time. However, evidence, such as Cheshire et al. and Cheshire et al., contradicts that expectation.

Vowels

Examples of vocabulary common in Multicultural London English include:

Adjectives