There is nothing that qualifies a true Londoner more than their dialect, and the most distinctive of all is Cockney.
Unfortunately one cannot become a Cockney just as that, as you must have been born within earshot of Saint Mary-le-Bow Church’s Bells, in the East End of London – or be really good at copying others’ ways of speaking.
It has been traditionally associated to working-class Londoners, but its origins go back to when Pirates and Merchants were trying to smuggle their goods into the city. How did they manage to do it? By then, it was known as Cockney Rhyming Slang, and its greatest peculiarity is that speakers used to take an expression, which rhymed with a word, and then they used that expression instead of the word. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s one of the most original dialects in the world.
And now, here we have some examples; these refer to parts of the body, can you guess which is the word they relate to???:
