As English dialects go, cockney is one of the most influential. Long considered the preserve of working-class communities in east London, it has shaped the way people speak across the country, from Reading, Milton Keynes and even Hull all the way to Glasgow.
Even Queen Elizabeth II, throughout her lifetime, began to speak in a way that was, well, a little bit less Queen’s English and a little bit more cockney. Compared to the 1950s, by the 1980s the way she said “goose”, “food” or “moon”, for instance, had changed subtly. Her later pronunciation, with the tongue a little bit further forward in the mouth, was in line with the general patterns of change in southern England.
As is often caricatured, due to patterns of migration and settlement, the way vowels are pronounced in Australia and New Zealand has some notable similarities with cockney. Similarly to cockney, the Australian take on the word “bake” sounds, to many British ears, more like the word “bike”, which has the potential to cause some confusion.
