Different accents within London

[Vibovit]

Recently I came across a short interview with some celebrity in newspaper, and she mentioned she preferred southern London 'because of the accent'.

I took it as a joke... Still, it made me wonder - I know about cockney, but are they (or perhaps more precisely: did they traditionally use to be) any differences between southern and northern London as for the accent?

[Tdol]

There's also Estuary English, which has some features of Cockney, like the glottal stop, but doesn't take such a cavalier view of grammar. Tony Blair, for instance, will often drop the letter 't' when speaking in the UK, though when abroad he tends to speaka more traditional RP.
I presume that what she means is that she is away from Cockney accents- there are wealthy parts of London to the south of Chelsea where accents will tend to be closer to RP. Cockney is more associated with the east and north.

[BobK]

Originally Posted by Vibovit

Recently I came across a short interview with some celebrity in newspaper, and she mentioned she preferred southern London 'because of the accent'.

I took it as a joke... Still, it made me wonder - I know about cockney, but are they (or perhaps more precisely: did they traditionally use to be) any differences between southern and northern London as for the accent?

See Shaw's Pygmalion. The central character in that (based, I believe, on a real philologist) could place a Londoner within a street or two by hearing them say a few words: there are many many distinctions, not just N vs S.

b

ps - Here's a reference for that philologist: Alexander Melville Bell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Tdol]

Mind you, would he still be able to do it? I think that microdialects are probably less noticeable than before.