Where can one learn Estuary English?

Answer 1

Dear Shauna,

Estuary English is a trendier and younger version of cockney, the traditional accent of working-class Londoners. The best way to pick it up is to talk to any young English person from around the London region and the Thames Estuary, specifically in the county of Essex, which is infamous for it - "Essex girls" in the UK are the equivalent of "valley girls" in the US. Other English youngsters may attempt it too, but their own regional accents could stand in the way. The problem is that Estuary English is largely an artificial creation propagated by the media, so everyone wants to try and speak it just to sound cool.

Alternatively, you could try to tune onto the BBC channel on TV and catch "EastEnders" - a preposterous soap opera set in working-class London. The accent in there is really meant to be cockney but the truth is that if it really were, not everyone in the UK would be able to understand it, so what the characters actually speak in EastEnders is slightly corrupted Estuary English.

A few ground rules of Estuary: everything should sound whiny and slurred. Your T's should not be pronounced unless they are the first letter of the word (it's "ba'ery", not "battery"). Your TH's should be massively mangled, becoming F's or V's depending on the occasion ("fanks very much", "you don't need to bovver about vat"). Your final consonants should also become sloppy and ill-defined. As an example, "hello" in Estuary is basically said "all right, mate", which is actually pronounced "oo-why, my". Basically if you end up sounding like a drunk who just got a big shot of novocain at his local dentist's, you've probably got it right.

Finally, the cardinal rule of Estuary is to remember to put "innit" (originally, "isn't it") at the end of virtually every single sentence, even if it is not actually meant to be a question. For instance:

"The dog chundered all over the car seats again, innit"

Hope this helped,

Answer 2

Never heard of Estuary English and im an English teacher.
It could be there however an estuary is the mouth of a river, the place a river enters the sea, usually pictured as being muddy and dirty.
Estuary English sounds like a derogatory term for bad english.

But who knows!?

Answer 3

sounds like a lass from the deep south they have a tendency to speak with a really extreme pitched nasal whine . ultimate English for readability and perfection is that spoken in Inverness .

Answer 4

esturine english in essex

Answer 5

do you mean the theme's estury? well go there and you'll pick it up.

Answer 6

http://www.englishforums.com/