LINGUISTS have identified Britain’s first multi-ethnic dialect — a variant of English that includes words and sounds from cockney, Jamaican creole, Bengali and other languages.

The dialect is becoming the standard way for teenagers of different ethnic groups to communicate across the racial divide. While it may be baffling to teachers and parents, researchers believe it will spread outside its urban heartlands and become a firm part of everyday English over the next 20 years.

Professor Paul Kerswill, a sociolinguist at Lancaster University who led the study, said: “Inner-city Londoners are using a new kind of English as their everyday speech, their completely internalised way of speaking, parallel to a local dialect like cockney or geordie.

“In one group we had students from white Anglo backgrounds along with those with Arab, South American, Ghanaian and Portuguese backgrounds and all spoke with the same dialect.”

Kerswill said there was some evidence similar ways of speaking were emerging in multicultural cities such as Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester.

“We think some of the features of this multi-ethnic kind of speech will become more mainstream through force of numbers with migration, and because it is fashionable and cool,” he said. “In central London a home-grown variety of English is appearing now among people who want to mark themselves out culturally and socially. Their speech is something that’s entirely new.”

The spread of the dialect is being encouraged by a wave of successful London rap stars such as Lady Sovereign and Dizzee Rascal. A recent hit single by MIA, a Sri Lankan-born rapper who was raised on a council estate in Hounslow, west London, has the following lyrics: “London calling, speak the slang now/ Boys say wha gwan (what’s going on), girls say wh’what (what what) slam, galang (hot) galang galang.”

The slang spreads as the music is broadcast on national radio stations. G Money, a DJ at 1Xtra, the BBC youth radio station, said: “Music is responsible for its spread, especially with stations like 1Xtra playing it on a national basis instead of the local pirate stations.

“I was in Watford (Hertfordshire) the other day, which you don’t see as the hippest place, but the kids on the street corner were no different from the kids that hang around in London. They all dress the same and speak the same — isn’t that a beautiful thing?” Kerswill’s team first identified the dialect at an inner-city college in Hackney, east London, during a three-year research programme into teenage English. The £275,000 study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, involved analysing the conversation of 32 teenagers aged 16 to 18. Half were from white British backgrounds and half from immigrant families.

The team, which included four linguistic experts from Lancaster and from Queen Mary College, University of London, found all the students used the same multi-ethnic dialect, regardless of their background.

The accent was peppered with different influences. The word “face”, for example, was pronounced as the longer “feeece”, which researchers believe is West Indian in origin. When saying “pound” the students reverted to the traditional cockney pronunciation of “paaand”, while instead of “right” they used “raait”, a pronunciation which bears more resemblance to Yorkshire or Lancashire accents than any immigrant varieties.

The vocabulary included words originating from the Indian subcontinent such as “nang”, meaning good, and “creps” for trainers, a word which probably comes from Jamaica, as does “crib” for home and “ends” meaning area. Traditional cockney words such as “manor”, also meaning home, were still in use.

The multi-ethnic dialect is replacing traditional cockney in the East End of London, which is now more likely to be heard in Essex towns such as Basildon and Harlow, where many East Enders relocated.

Some concerns have, however, emerged over the use of the dialect. At Lilian Baylis school in south London, the patois has been banned from the classroom as part of a government pilot project to improve results. Pupils are taught such dialects are only acceptable in certain circumstances, not including essays or debates.

“The language in the formal world of work is standard English. Where children drop into anything that isn’t standard they are picked up on it,” said Gary Phillips, the head teacher. He added, however: “We’re not trying to devalue patois, we’re trying to teach the kids that there is a time and a place for it.”

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