ABSTRACT
BESIDES a characteristic pronunciation, a dialect should have a characteristic vocabulary. Cockney certainly has a characteristic pronunciation, but it differs from the county dialects in its vocabulary. Country dialect words are for the most part words of country life, names of trees, flowers, and beasts, technical terms of farming and country crafts or old words that have dropped out of normal speech. Most of these words are old; they have endured with the things themselves. They have therefore that respectability that comes from antiquity and accordingly have been the subject of careful study. Cockney is less fortunate. Its characteristic vocabulary is slang. The population of a large town has few things peculiar to itself. In a country district a certain kind of cart may be peculiar to the district and its name will be a dialect word that will be treasured by scholars. But the name of a London cart will not be thought worthy of special notice. If it be used by literary men it will come to be regarded as a standard English word; if it be a popular name it will be dubbed “ slang” . In the latter case the only people who will honour it will be those philological amateurs whose love of the language is not hampered by academic or social conventions.
