“Hello! The trouble is just running up the apples for the dog, so we can have a Ruby. Is that alright with you, my old china? What do you mean you don't understand? Use your loaf!”
No, this isn’t just meaningless babble. In fact – according to popular myth, at least – it is how much of London speaks. Those sentences are classic examples of Cockney rhyming slang, the lingo whereby many words – such as ‘stairs’ – are replaced with two, of which the second rhymes with the real word – such as, ‘apples and pears’. And to make matters even more confusing, the rhyming word is often dropped, leaving only the enigmatic ‘apples’ behind.
Thus to translate the full Cockney sentence from above into proper English*: “The wife is running up the stairs for the phone, so we can have a curry. Is that alright with you, mate? What do you mean, you don’t understand? Use your head!” And if you’ve watched the classic films ‘My Fair Lady’ or ‘Mary Poppins’, you’ll know that the whole opening paragraph should have been spoken in the most appallingly common accent, dropping as many ‘h’s (“’ave a Ruby”) and ‘g’s (“runnin’ up the apples”) as possible
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