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1st 6 weeks 1st Semester

Above: Queen Victoria

Victorian Style Dress

Above: What does "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" rhyme with? Well, the word "slang". Cockney rhymes with many mental images associated with words. For example, your  mouth is your "north and south". Makes sense seeing as if you have an upper (northern) and lower lip (southern), right? As for the English term "wife", the cockney expression is "trouble and strife", which rhymes with the word "wife". I'll let you be the judge of why the Cockney people came up with that expression....

Monday March 3rd- Friday March 7th

END OF 1st 6 WEEKS

See you next week in the afternoon due to CAHSEE testing

Due THIS lab day:  Reading from Prentice Hall book regarding Victorian history. Your response to Hardy's story is also due, be sure it is brought to class with you in PRINTED format. 

In-Class: Test on the Victorian age.  We will then read a section of George Bernard Shaw's famous play, "Pygmalion". This is a drama, later turned into a screenplay musical, that depicts the major differences in accents between England's upper class and lower class.  We will also look at what the Cockney language is, who speaks it, and how it works.

After reading some of the play, we will watch a short section of the modern version, known as "My Fair Lady". 

Assignments: What can be learned about the importance of one's accent in Britain? Research what exactly a cockney accent is, then after answering the above questions, on a SEPARATE page, (or reverse side), write down five words you have found in Cockney, and include their translations. TYPE a full page response, then include the translations on a separate piece of paper. 

EXTRA CREDIT: (10 points) Write a complete paragraph (example below) using 10 Cockney words that you must read out loud to the class. The paragraph should make sense, in terms of what you're actually saying, despite the fact that the words will be in Cockney and virtually indecipherable to a majority of the class. As a general hint, make up a mini-story, replacing your words with Cockney from one of the sites listed below. 

Links: Benning's Victorian Age

         Why Britain chose to use imperialism to dominate countries.

         Imperialism Resources

         Information on George Bernard Shaw

         All About the Cockney Accent

         The Cockney Dictionary

         Another Cockney dictionary site (with updated Cockney)

         The Cockney Rejects (a band from London's East End) 

Background Information:  The Victorian Era was a time of booming economy; small towns were rapidly growing into cities, and with increased technologies and inventions, factories were uprooting everywhere. One of the dark sides of this mass industrialization, however, were the poor working conditions for those in the factories. 

Queen Victoria, herself was known as a very prim and proper woman, yet many Britons seemed to like her as queen. After her husband died in 1861, (also her first cousin, yeuch!), she went into a long period of mourning.  Issues during her reign were trade policy and electoral reform. Corn taxes, one of the major food sources, were considered too high, and to make things worse, the great potato famine broke out in 1845 in Ireland. This famine wiped out over one million Irish people. The potato famine, incidentally, was when all of Ireland's potatoes were infected with disease; with potatoes being the primary diet in Ireland, many people starved to death. 

Imperialism was another broadening concept during this era. Many people during this time left England to seek impoverished nations where they could take their goods and return them to England for cheap. This caused many disasters in other countries, notably Africa, India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The English would take such resources varying from tea to gold to sugar. It was also during this time that Britain established itself as a major world power.