The Common Tongue of Twenty-First-Century London | Hacker News Reader

The Common Tongue of Twenty-First-Century London

newyorker.com

30 pointsPetiver12 comments

The Sound of the Multicultural London English dialect (Numbers, Greetings, Words & Sample Text)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FHhHJCPqFU

Ali G In Da House - Best Parts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foS84bEZSO4

None of what the author describes is unique to London, or the 21st century, or kids. It's all a pretty standard way of speaking here and has been for decades.

Hah, yeah, the dropping of prepositions in around verbs has been alive in Yorkshire forever, where it's also common for articles too. And non-speakers often misrepresent the glottal stop which replaces the definite article in Yorkshire as a "t" or "tut" sound, but it's not there. It's not "goin tut pub", it's "goin - pub".

I did enjoy one finer point in the article though. I'm old, closing on 40, but I've only ever known "'llow it", not "allow it". There no "a" in 'llow it, man :D

Yorkshire dialects vary and the stereotypical "broad Yorkshire" accent is fairly rare now and from an older generation, but I've definitely heard people round here say "off dahnt pub". The accent seems to be getting milder over the generations.

She's not talking about as much about the way of speaking literally as about culture change, growing up on a mental divide between two places, longing, and other things related to the differences between New York and London.

This, in particular, is so cool - how can one find provincialism in NYC (something one would intuitively never think of the city):

"But my midlife is my son’s youth, and the move has already shown him that the world is wider than it would have appeared to him had we never strayed from our old neighborhood, in brownstone Brooklyn, with its scrappy basketball courts around the corner; its friendly, progressive middle school and its constantly inflating property prices; its coffee shop where, on the sidewalks outside, dogs slurp at aluminum bowls of water while their owners stand in line waiting for their own carefully crafted refreshments. I have seen teen-agers grow up in New York, and I know how the competitiveness of the city—the urgency and drive and self-importance of it, the characteristics that so thrilled me as an ambitious new arrival in my early twenties—can leave a young person feeling defeated before she has begun. I have seen, alternatively, how New York can make a young person believe that there is no other place in the world significant enough to matter. I want to inoculate my son against such provincialism. I want to nurture his native cosmopolitanism."

You see provincialism all over NYC, but it is usually not from the folks living in brownstones in Brooklyn, but rather the folks who were raised in NY by parents also raised in NY. But, you won't encounter these people in a meaningful sense if you move to NY as an adult white collar professional unless. I'm sure the same thing is true in London.

I'd disagree on that. That attitude of "there's no better place on earth for x,y,z" and not understanding the nuances of cultures abroad is pretty common in NY, from all classes. I'd extend to America in general, without meaning to offend anyone obviously - just a perception that most of the time people here are very ready and eager to take the piece of internationalism that's presented to them at home rather than to go out and see what's actually like.

As someone who grew up far outside of London and then moved here, there's a very distinctive provincialism in Londoner's attitudes as well. People who grew up here struggle to imagine a life outside the city - let alone imagine that it could be as good or better than life in London. I hope my son doesn't end up with that mindset, but I wouldn't be surprised if he does.

Of course, that same locally-exceptionalist attitude is everywhere if you look for it. As well as source of dismissal, it can also be a source of energy and local vibrancy. I'd much rather live somewhere people did like living than didn't (I've done both).

Unless what?

Sorry, I was going to say something along the lines of unless you integrate yourself into your actual neighborhood instead of being a perma-neighborhood shuffler or scenester like most NYC transplants are, but I figured it was getting away from the point, and apparently forgot how to proofread after the deletion :(

Beautiful.

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