Wagwan? Street slang to be Britain’s main dialect

Influence of Multicultural London English will be pronounced over the next 100 years, say linguists

MULTICULTURAL London English could become Britain’s dominant dialect within 100 years, academics have said, as inner-city slang goes mainstream.

The dialect, known for terms such as “peng” and using “man” as a pronoun, emerged among the children of immigrants in the capital, but now wields considerable influence over the development of British English.

Academics said social media platforms and grime music were helping to spread Multicultural London English (MLE) across the UK.

Prof Matt Gardner, a lecturer in linguistics at Oxford University, said: “Language always changes. We don’t speak in the same way people did in the time of Shakespeare or Chaucer.

“London, being the economic and cultural centre, drives these changes. What we will likely see is this multiethnolect spread geographically close to London, in the south east, but also in other major cities and then outwards from those cultural centres.”

This could lead to slang terms such as the greeting “wagwan” (what’s going on?), “peng” (good/attractive), “ends” (neighbourhood) and “bare” (very/a lot) becoming common nationwide, along with the use of “man” instead of “I” and “you” or “he”. This could also mean that dropping aitches becomes a thing of the past, as MLE speakers pronounce the consonant, unlike the Cockney speakers they have largely replaced in working-class areas of London.

Academics have noted that MLE is already being adopted in other cities, as part of linguistic evolution that could see the emergence of a widespread “Multicultural British English”.

Paul Kerswill, emeritus professor of sociolinguistics at York, said: “Slang and dialects inevitably feed into the mainstream, and become mainstream. We will see Multicultural London English become mainstream in the years ahead.”

Dr Rob Drummond, a linguist, has researched the growth of the MLE in Manchester, as grime artists popularise the dialect, which modern technology has allowed to spread. He said: “Pre-social media, new slang and ways of speaking were spread through faceto-face contact. Now there are far more ways for people to communicate with each other and to share language.”

MLE initially spread among young people in communities whose parents did not speak English as their first language, or spoke patois, with the influence of Jamaican linguistic features on the dialect leading it to be nicknamed “Jafaican” (fake Jamaican).

While this began as a phenomenon in working-class areas of London, experts have said that as the dialect spreads it will interact with local accents and produce regional variations of MLE.

Linguists have said that although Britons may not be saying “peng” in 100 years, as the popularity of slang terms shifts rapidly, the grammar and pronunciation of MLE could become the norm. This might include the dropping of prepositions, such as: “I went shop,” rather than: “I went to the shop.”