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The Cockney Alphabet is a recital of the English alphabet intended to parody the way the alphabet is taught to small working class children. The ostensible humour comes from forming unexpected words and phrases from the names of the various letters of the alphabet, mocking the way people from East London speak.
"Rub-a-dub-dub" or sometimes just "rub-a-dub" is Cockney rhyming slang for "pub". [ 6 ] [ 7 ] "Rub-A-Dub-Dub" is the title of a 1953 country music song by Hank Thompson , a 1984 animated television series by Peter Lang and Alan Rogers, [ 8 ] and a 2023 novel by Robert Wringham .
Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower-middle-class roots. The term Cockney is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, [1] [2] [3] or, traditionally, born within earshot of Bow Bells.
A London alley contemporary with the song - Boundary Street 1890. The song is full of working class cockney rhyming slang and idiomatic phrasing.. The song tells the story of Bill and his wife who, with a lodger, live down an alleyway off the street (which were usually passages lined with crowded tenements), near the Old Kent Road, one of the poorest districts in London.
/ɪː/ and /eː/ correspond to the centering diphthongs /ɪə/ and /eə/ in traditional RP. In cockney, they contrast with /ɪ/ and /e/ mainly by the length, rather than the presence of a centering glide. The same can be said about /ɔː/ vs /ɔ/ and /æː/ vs. /æ/. /æː/ has an alternative realization [æw], shown on the chart.
As part of their act in 1929, they originated the Cockney Alphabet, a humorous alphabet that replaces the letters of the alphabet with supposed "Cockney" phonetics, such as "A for ‘Orses" (Hay for Horses) and ending with "Z for Effect" (Said for Effect). They recorded the routine, as "A Surrealist Alphabet", in 1936. [2] [7]
The phrase originated as Cockney rhyming slang where "cobblers" refers to cobbler's awls which rhymes with "balls" (), as in the exclamation "Balls!"for "Nonsense!". [1] [2] The use of the rhyme allows a taboo word, in this case the vulgar exclamation "balls!", to be avoided. [3]
However, one further explanation links the lyrics of the popular nursery rhyme to the East London colloquial dialect of the 1800’s, known as “Cockney Rhyming Slang”. [30] In this dialect “weasel” relates to “weasel and stoat”, or coat, and “pop” relates the “pop shop” or pawnbrokers shop.