Estuary English

Estuary English is a name given to the formulation(s) of English widely spoken in South East England and the East of England; especially along the River Thames and its estuary, which is where the two regions meet. Estuary English is commonly described as a hybrid of Received Pronunciation (RP) and South Eastern Accents, particularly from the London, Kent and Essex area — i.e., the area around the Thames Estuary. The variety first came to public prominence in an article by David Rosewarne in the Times Educational Supplement in October 1984.^[1] Rosewarne argued that it may eventually replace RP as the Standard English pronunciation. Studies have indicated that Estuary English is not a single coherent form of English; rather, the reality behind the construct consists of some (but not all) phonetic features of working-class London speech spreading at various rates socially into middle-class speech and geographically into other accents of south-eastern England.^[2][3]