Cor Blimey Quiz !!

It's almost a derivative of Cockney without a lot of the rhyming slang. Although some has been so ingrained in the culture that it's used a lot in Essex. You don't really need to be careful about it.

What is more common to both Cockney and 'Essex' is the accent which is a mix of both and, nowadays, sometimes called Estuary English.

A lot of original Cockneys moved out of the East End and into Essex with the expansion of the economy after WWII and the influx of immigrants (much needed at the time) that moved into the East End.

The East End has been the place for immigrants to come to for centuries. The Huguenots came in the late 17th C (religious persecution), the Irish in the mid 19thC (the Famine), a Jewish influx in the early 19thC (collapse of Poland) and again in the late 19thC (legalised discrimination in Russia followed by atrocities) and in the early 20thC (Russian Revolution) and again during mid 20thC ( The Holocaust), also there was immigration from the colonies (mainly black) in the mid 20thC followed some years later by the Indian immigration when the effects of Partition in India started to take hold.

The East End was the obvious place because it was where all the ships docked and there was plenty of work needed around there - especially casual labour. Although a lot of the accommodation was squalid it was better than nothing - and cheap!

The Cockney accent derived from a mixture of all these languages and accents.

It wasn't quite that simple but I've tried to give a good précis of what happened.

 

@Jack Sparrow 'ere y'ar!!!



The film was very good but the stage show was even better. It didn't have the range that a film can have but it had a fantastic atmosphere.

I was at the original dress rehearsal in 1958 and saw the show again whenever there was a change of any of the main performers. I was fortunate to have a free pass to any performance as long as there were any empty seats. This was because we loaned the theatre an oil painting of George Bernard Shaw to be displayed in the foyer for the run of the show. It was there for years!

 

@Jack Sparrow I think that all the different performers have done a good job of it although I haven't seen any of the modern versions. I can't remember how many times I saw it during its five and a half year original run but it was just as good even when I knew all the words.

They produced it much more true to the original play 'Pygmalion' by GBS than a lot of other plays have been. Shaw's spelling of the word was 'garn' (Act I - and in Act II) but your spelling seems better because it shows the drawn out pronunciation.

The earliest example of Higgins writing down her speech is:-
"Cheer ap, Keptin; n' baw ya flahr orf a pore gel." So fairly easy to understand.