Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 October 26

= October 26 =

Use of a before a vowel
A few Internet sites say that some young people in London always use a as the indefinite article, regardless of whether the following word begins with a vowel sound. Does Wikipedia talk about this anywhere?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:52, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * "The law is a ass"? --Trovatore (talk) 00:54, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Two relevant previous threads. Deor (talk) 02:04, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * , a "few internet sites"? Links? Mathglot (talk) 00:50, 27 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The relevant Wikipedia article is Multicultural London English. As far as I can see, this trait is NOT mentioned, but a quick Google brought up A Corpus-Based Sociolinguistic Study of Indefinite Article Forms in London English, which seems to be a reliable source. It says: "It is clearly the Bangladeshi boys who use a as the indefinite article form before vowels the most". Google would only let me see it once before bringing up a firewall, so I didn't get a page number. Alansplodge (talk) 14:45, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * P10. (Open it in an incognito/private browser window.) Bazza (talk) 15:03, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks Bazza. In the meantime, I found another reference (a little less intelligible to the layman) at Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English; see "5.3 Simplification of indefinite and definite article allomorphy" (pp. 28-19). Alansplodge (talk) 15:15, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Anyone seen any social media videos of kids speaking this way? I have never heard it, but I left London 5 years ago.--Lgriot (talk) 12:22, 29 October 2019 (UTC)


 * It's not just Brits: "The corn is as high / As a elephant's eye..." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:48, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Indeed, this trait has a long history: as Trovatore alluded to with his Dickens quote above (from Oliver Twist), it used to be characteristic of working class registers in Georgian and Victorian London (and probably elsewhere in the UK and other English-speaking regions). However, having been largely eliminated in the UK through universal education, it has seemingly re-emerged amongst modern London's 'yoof', which is the phenomenon the OP is specifically enquiring about. Whether this is a resurgence of something that never entirely disappeared, or a spontaneous new appearance in a multicultural context, is an interesting question.
 * I am reminded of the old cockney trope (with which I grew up) of ending declarative sentences with a confirmatory question: "Well, I went dahn the pub, din' I?, and the beer was orf, wannit?, so the landlord sez to me, din' 'e?, it's them draymen, innit?, they keeps holdin' back the casks, dun'ey?" In modern London 'street' English, these varied grammatically appropriate phrases have all been elided to the solitary "Innit?" used in all cases, which seems (to a casual observer such as myself) to have first become established amongst second generation immigrants in the 1970s. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.41.118 (talk) 17:23, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * See tag question, n'est-ce pas? --76.69.116.4 (talk) 01:47, 30 October 2019 (UTC)