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A cash machine operator has introduced Cockney rhyming slang to a number of ATMs in east London. Users can choose between English and Cockney, a form of English spoken by many who live in east London. In Cockney rhyming slang, for example, “sausage and mash” is substituted for “cash.” And your “Huckleberry Finn?” Well that’s your PIN of course. The World’s Laura Lynch ventured into east London to bring you the Morning Glory.
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JEB SHARP: For a little less serenity, we take you to the east end of London. That’s where you’ll find some unusual bank machines about five of them in fact. These ATM’s use Cockney rhyming slang, the language of working class Londoners in the eighteen hundreds. The World’s Laura Lynch decided to take a butcher’s.
LAURA LYNCH: That’s going for a look, from butcher’s hook for those of you unwise in the ways of Cockney. Now I like to think I’ve got a little bit of Cockney blood in me and here’s why. These are the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow Church in east London. Tradition holds if you’re born within hearing of these bells, you’re full blooded Cockney. Well, my dad may just have heard the bells the day of his birth in his parents’ bedroom a few miles away. Never mind he left Britain when he was six so when I heard about Cockney bank machines I had to investigate. Deep in the heart of the east end, I find the cash machine and a real live Cockney to translate. Roy Parker is a dispatcher at a taxi company steps from the machine and he’s eager to lend a hand. I brought my card.
ROY PARKER: Yeah, you put your card in.
LYNCH: And I see we’ve got a limit on the withdrawal so that’s good.
PARKER: Alright now it says select the English or Cockney.
LYNCH: Okay.
PARKER: So say you’re going to use Cockney, right?
LYNCH: Right.
PARKER: So bringing you a bladder of lard, which rhymes with card.
LYNCH: Card, yes.
PARKER: Please enter your Huckleberry Finn. Pin.
LYNCH: Huckleberry Finn is your pin, your pin number.
PARKER: Yeah, yeah.
LYNCH: Now you know what my Huckleberry Finn is.
PARKER: Yeah, now that, Tom Hanks means thanks.
LYNCH: Tom Hanks?
PARKER: Yeah.
LYNCH: Tom Hanks for thanks. Well, that’s got to be modern.
PARKER: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying it’s modern.
LYNCH: Roy is ruddy faced, barrel chested and practically strutting with pride about his heritage and his language, never mind that it evolved as a kind of coded language for crooked street merchants to keep secrets from the police and unwitting customers. Roy laments what time has done to the dialect.
PARKER: The real old feeling of Cockney as such, the real way’s cheerful, always, Hello, me old china plate, how are you? Hello mate, how are you? You know. It’s like you saying hi, how are you? So it was just another kind of language really but it was a language that was understood mainly, only by people from the east end.
LYNCH: And not well understood by me. I am too slow or talking too much and the machine decides I’ve taken way too long.
PARKER: Oh my God.
LYNCH: Uh oh, it just stole my card. Well, we were a little bit silly about that one, weren’t we?
PARKER: Now you’re in a bit of a Barney Rubble now.
LYNCH: And what’s the Barney Rubble?
PARKER: Trouble, that’s modern.
LYNCH: Not much I can do now but luckily Gemma Salsbury steps up to withdraw some cash and she lets me watch and learn.
GEMMA SALSBURY: Lady Godiva.
LYNCH: Oh, these are the names of the dollars, Lady Godiva …
SALSBURY: Fiver …
LYNCH: Fiver Lady Godiva, speckled hen, ten. And so it goes. The company that created the Cockney machines is trying them out for three months but Roy Parker knows his neighborhood knows how it’s changing. He doubts Cockney is going to catch on with today’s crowd.
PARKER: The way people are moving in this world today and people, a hundred miles an hour. All they want to do is get their money out. It takes a Cockney slang, ten people say what’s Cockney slang, what’s that?
LYNCH: As for me, I may have lost my bank card but hey, I’ve gained more than a little Barney Rubble. I’m in touch with my inner Cockney and in Roy Parker, I found a new china plate. For the World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.
SHARP: You can catch up on all the latest in global language on our Weekly World in Word’s Podcast, just visit TheWorld.org/Language to listen or subscribe. This is PRI.
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