The acquisition of Multicultural London English: Child and adolescent diphthong variation in West London

Abstract

This study investigated Multicultural London English (MLE) diphthongs as produced by children and adolescents in the London borough of Ealing, UK. We conducted an acoustic analysis of the diphthongs face, price and goat in the speech of 24 young people aged 16–24 years and, 14 children aged 5–7 years. The results revealed different production patterns between the children and adolescents for some but not all the diphthong variables. We found that the children’s and adolescents’ diphthongs were similar in the quality of the onset, and similar to the MLE system described in East London, in the London borough of Hackney. However, the children had not acquired monophthongization of the diphthongs, with adolescents producing significantly more monophthongal tokens of price, goat and, to a lesser extent, face. These findings have implications both for the study of multiethnolects and MLE, and for research on children’s acquisition of sociophonetic variation.