Cor blimey, guv'nor... in translation

Categories: language, words

Date: 25 August 2009 19:56:54

Just in case any of my non-UK readers did not understand the Cockney rhyming slang in my previous post, there follows an annotated version below.

Me old china [My old china plate = mate] was just telling the trouble and strife [= wife] that now you can go dahn [down] the ole rattle and tank [= bank] to get a speckled hen [ten (pound note)] – or any amount of sausage and mash [= cash] as it ‘appens – no Lady Godivas [= fivers (five pound notes) though – if you just enter your Huckleberry Finn [= PIN] in the machine.  Might go dahn for a butcher’s [butcher's hook = look]  meself alligator [= later].
This was to note the fact that a bank has equipped its ATMs in east London with spoken instructions in Cockney.  They may have opened the floodgates for requests for ATMs in all sorts of other languages, east London being the traditional initial first stop over the centuries for immigrants - Jews from Russia and Poland, Hugenots from France, and more recently Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Interestingly, most of the immigrants move on within a few generations but the Cockneys remain.  I wonder why?