English language in Southern England

Commentators report widespread homogenisation in South East England in the 20th century (Kerswill & Williams 2000; Britain 2002).

Now spread throughout the South East region, Estuary English is the resulting mainstream accent that combines features of both Cockney and a more middle-class RP.

General characteristics of all major London accents include: Features of working- or middle-class Estuary English, spoken in the counties all around London in the 21st century, include: It retains some aspects of Cockney, such as the vocalisation of [ɫ] (dark L) to [o], and yod-coalescence in stressed syllables (for example, duty [dʒʉːʔi]) and replacement of [t] with [ʔ] (the glottal stop) in weak positions, or occasionally with d).

[4] Cockney is the traditional accent of the working classes of the areas immediately surrounding the City of London itself (most famously including the East End).

[6] In country areas and Southampton, the older rhotic accent can still be heard amongst some speakers, for example in the speech of John Arlott, Lord Denning and Reg Presley.

Th-fronting, a feature now widespread in England, was found throughout Essex in the 1950s Survey of English Dialects, which studied speakers born in the late 1800s.

[24] Modern Estuary dialect features were also reported in some traditional varieties, including L-vocalization e.g. old as owd,[12] as well as yod-coalescence in Kent.

A unique dialect existed as recently as the late 19th century in the historic county of Surrey, in western Kent, and in parts of northern Sussex,[25] though it has now almost entirely died out.

It was first documented by Granville W. G. Leveson Gower (1838–1895), of Titsey Place,[citation needed] during the 1870s and first published by him in A Glossary of Surrey Words in 1893.

Following that, and after his own enquiries, he expressed a fear that improved transport and the spread of education would cause such local dialects to disappear and be forgotten despite the fact that, in his words, "Old customs, old beliefs, old prejudices die hard in the soil of England".

[26] Gower described certain standard English words with nonstandard pronunciations in the Surrey dialect: Gowers mentions: Acrost for across; agoo for ago; batcheldor for bachelor; brownchitis (or sometime brown titus) for bronchitis; chimley or chimbley for chimney; crowner for coroner; crowner's quest for coroner's inquest; curosity and curous for curiosity and curious; death for deaf; disgest for digest, and indisgestion for indigestion; gownd for gown; scholard for scholar; nevvy for nephew; non-plush'd for non-plussed; refuge for refuse; quid for cud, " chewing the quid; "sarment for sermon; varmint for vermin; sloop for slope; spartacles for spectacles; spavin for spasms.

Reduplicated plural forms were a grammatical feature of the Sussex dialect, particularly in words ending -st, such as ghostesses in place of the standard English ghosts.