Features

Estuary English shares the following features with Cockney pronunciation:

• Use of intrusive R. In a dialect with intrusive R, an epenthetic [ɹ] is added after a word that ends in a non-high vowel or glide if the next word begins with a vowel, regardless of whether the first word historically ended with /ɹ/ or not. For example, intrusive R would appear in Asia[ɹ] and Africa or the idea[ɹ] of it: Asia and idea did not historically end in /ɹ/, but the [ɹ] is inserted epenthetically to prevent a hiatus. Intrusive R also occurs within words before certain suffixes, such as draw[ɹ]ing or withdraw[ɹ]al. This is now so common in England that by 1997 the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, but he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation,^[1] as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents.

• A broad A (ɑː) in words such as bath, grass, laugh, etc. This is often seen as the litmus test of a South-East accent, but it has only spread to rural areas of the south-east in the last forty years.

• T-glottalisation, i.e., using some glottal stops: that is, "t" is sounded as a glottal occlusion instead of being fully pronounced when it occurs before a consonant or at the end of words, as in "eight" or "McCartney" and it can also occur between vowels, as in Cockney or southern dialects e.g. "water" (pronounced as [wɔːʔə]).^[4]

• Yod-coalescence, i.e., the use of the affricates /ʤ/ and /ʧ/ instead of the clusters /dj/ and /tj/ in words like "dune" and "tune".

• Diphthong shifts, e.g., the diphthong in words like "I" becomes [ɑɪ], the diphthong in words like "brown" becomes [æʊ], and the diphthong in words like "face" becomes [ɛɪ], [ɐɪ], [ʌɪ], or [æɪ].

• L-vocalisation, i.e., the use of [o] where RP uses [ɫ] in the final positions or in a final consonant cluster.

• Use of confrontational question tags. For example, "We're going later, aren't we?", "I said that, didn't I?"

But the following characteristics of Cockney pronunciation are generally not considered to be present in Estuary English

• Th-fronting, i.e., replacement of [θ, ð] with [f, v] (e.g. [fɪŋk] for think)

• H-dropping, i.e., Dropping [h] in stressed words (e.g. [æʔ] for hat)

• Double negation. However, Estuary English may use "never" in case where "not" would be the Standard. For example, "he did not" [in reference to a single occasion] might become "he never did".

• Replacement of an /r/ with a /w/ is not found in Estuary, and is also very much in decline amongst Cockney speakers.

In particular, it has been suggested that th-fronting is "currently making its way" into Estuary English, e.g. those from Isle of Thanet often refer to Thanet as "Plannit Fannit" (Planet Thanet).