[Facts] Re: Lovelie pronunciation
in reply to a message by ClaudiaS
The point of the song, the musical and the GB Shaw play on which it was based is that the London (Cockney) dialect (like the Midlands, Yorkshire, Dorset etc, etc dialects) was socially unacceptable and for Eliza to be admitted to high society, her pronunciation had to change. It was and is very much a known pronunciation! In today's world, it isn't the barrier to success that it would have been a hundred years ago, but it's still there all right and has been for centuries.