Standard pronunciation in Great Britain

РЕФЕРАТ на тему: «Standard pronunciation in Great Britain» CONTENTS I. Introduction II. English based pronunciation standards III. RP/BBC English as the British national standard of pronunciation • 1 The socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English • 2 The phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English IV. Differences in pronunciation between

British and American English V. Conclusions VI. I decided to write my project in theoretical phonetics of English on the subject “Standard pronunciation in Great Britain” because all the sounds in all languages are always in process of change. During those times when people from different regions communicated with each other not often, it was

natural that the speech of all communities did not develop in one direction or at the same rate. Moreover, different parts of the country were subjected to different extreme influences, which were the reasons for different phonetic structures of the language. Especially, for the last five centuries, in Great Britain has existed the notion that one kind of pronunciation of

English is preferable socially to others. One regional accent began to acquire social prestige. For reasons of politics, commerce and the presence of the Court, it was the pronunciation of the south-east of England and more particularly to that of the London Region, that this prestige was attached. This pronunciation is called

Received Pronunciation which is regarded as a model for correct pronunciation, particularly for educated formal speech. It is to be noticed that the role of RP in the English-speaking world has changed very considerably in the last century. Over 300 million people now speak English as their first language and of this number native RP speakers form only a minute proportion. George Bernard

Shaw said that the United States and United Kingdom are “two countries divided by a common language”. Many scientists, such as D. Jones, J.C. Wells, J. Gimson, S. Johnson, S. Jeffries, J. Maidment considered RP/BBC to be an important issue to pay their attention to. The object of this research is RP as a norm of pronunciation of

British English and its accents and dialects. The subject of the research is devoted to the peculiarities of the development of RP from D. Jones to Wells. The practical value of the research consists in providing different approaches to the problem of RP in Modern English. The material which was used to supply this research with examples is the following: George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (film “My fair lady”),

Linton Kwesi Johnson’s poem "Sonny's Lettah" and the BBC news. English based pronunciation standards Standard English — the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever

English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms. Local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects:

Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects. The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape-recorder, etc. Data collected in this way show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations

which vary from region to region. Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of

Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema. The dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete in standard English are still kept in dialects, e. g. to and 'envy'

English Pronunciation Standards and Accents) comprise English English, Welsh English, Scottish English and Northern Ireland English (the corresponding abbreviations are EE, WE, ScE, NIE). ENGLISH ENGLISH Roughly speaking the non-RP accents of England may be grouped like this: 1.

Southern accents. 1) Southern accents (Greater London, Cockney, Surray, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire); 2) East Anglia accents (Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire; 3) South-West accents (Gloucestershire, Avon, Somerset,

Wiltshire). 2. Northern and Midland accents. 1) Northern accents (Northumberland, Durham, Cleveland); 2) Yorkshire accents; 3) North-West accents (Lancashire, Cheshire); 4) West Midland (Birmingham, Wolverhampton). RP (Received Pronunciation) It has long been believed that RP is a social marker, a prestige accent of an Englishman.

In the nineteenth century "received" was understood in the sense of "accepted in the best society". The speech of aristocracy and the court phonetically was that of the London area. Then it lost its local characteristics and was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as "King's 'English". It was also the accent taught at public schools. With the spread of education cultured people not belonging to the upper classes were eager to modify

their accent in the direction of social standards. We may definitely state now that RP is a genuinely regionless accent within Britain; i.e. if speakers have it you cannot tell which area of Britain they come from; which is not the case for any other type of British accents. It is fair to mention, however, that only 3 – 5 per cent of the population of

England speak RP. British phoneticians (Ch.Barber, A.C.Gimson, A.Hughes and P.Trudgill) estimate that nowadays RP is not homogeneous. A.C.Gimson suggests that it is convenient to distinguish three main types within it: "the conservative RP forms, used by the older generation, and, traditionally, by certain profession or social groups; the general RP forms, most commonly in use and typified by the pronunciation adopted

by the BBC, and the advanced RP forms, mainly used by young people of exclusive social groups — mostly of the upper classes, but also for prestige value, in certain professional circles". This last type of RP reflects the tendencies typical of changes in pronunciation. It is the most "effected and exaggerated variety" of the accent. Some of its features may be results of temporary fashion, some are adopted as a norm and described

in the latest textbooks. Therefore, it is very important for a teacher and learner of English to distinguish between the two. RP speakers make up a very small percentage of the English population. Many native speakers, especially teachers of English and professors of colleges and universities (particularly from the South and South-East of England) have accents closely resembling

RP but not identical to it. P.Trudgill and J.Hannah call it Near-RP south­ern. So various types of standard English pronunciation may be summarized as follows: Conservative RP; General RP; Advanced RP; Near-RP southern. RP/BBC English as the British national standard of pronunciation 1 The socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English Gimson claims that the historical origins of

RP go back to the 16th-17th century recommendations that the speech model should be that provided by the educated pronunciation of the court and the capital. Thus, the roots of RP in London, more particularly the pronunciation of the London region and the Home countries lying around London within 60 miles: Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey. By the 18th century a prestigious pronunciation model was characterized

as the speech " received by the polite circles of society ". By the 19th century London English had increasingly acquired social prestige losing be of its local characteristics. It was finally fixed as the pronunciation of the ruling class. According to Leither, in the mid 19th century there was an increase in education, in particular, there occurred the rise of public schools (since 1864 Public

School Act). These schools became important agencies in the transmission of Southern English as the form with highest prestige. Since that time London English or Southern English was termed as Classroom English, Public School English or Educated English. That was a forceful normalization movement towards the establishment of

Educated Southern English as the standard accent. The major reasons for this were: 1) The need for a clearly defined and recognized norm for public and other purposes; 2) The desire to provide adequate descriptions for teaching English both as the mother tongue and a foreign language. Professor Daniel Jones described this variety as a hoped-for standard pronunciation in the first editions

of his books "The Pronunciation of English" and "Outline of English Phonetics". By 1930, however, any intention of setting up a standard of Spoken English was disclaimed by many phoneticians. The term "Standard Pronunciation" was replaced by "Received Pronunciation", which had been introduced for

Southern Educated English by phonetician Ida Ward who defined it as pronunciation which " had lost all easily noticeable local differences". According to Wells the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) adopted RP for the use by its news-readers since 1920s. The country's population, for more than half a century, had been exposed through broadcasting to RP. Until the early 70s of the last century it was the only

accent demanded in the BBC's announcers. For that reason RP often became identified in the public mind with BBC English. Only over the last 30 years, both the BBC and other British national radio and TV channels have been increasingly tolerant of the accent of their broadcasters. 2 The phonological and phonetic dimensions of

RP/BBC English Now we will outline main segmental features of RP/BBC English. As for its phoneme inventory, Gimson states, that this accent has 20 vowels and 24 consonants. The system of vowels embraces 12 pure vowels or monophthongs: i:, i, ж, Λ, a:, o, o:, υ, u:, з:, ә and 8 diphthongs: ei, ai, oi, әυ, aυ, iә, eә, υә. The system of

RP consonants consists of the following two wide categories of sounds: 1) those typically associated with a noise component: p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, θ, р, s, z, ʃ,з, h, tʃ,dз; 2) those without a noise component which may share many phonetic characteristics with vowels - 7 sonorants : m, n, ŋ, 1, r, j, w. Measurements of text frequency of occurrence of RP vowels and consonants display the following picture:

According to the phonotactic specification of /r/ occurrence, RP is a non-rhotic or r-less accent, i.e. /r/ does not occur after a vowel or at the end of the words. It may be claimed that /r/ in RP has a limited distribution, being restricted in its occurrence to pre-vocalic positions. Prof. J C. Wells in his article "Cockneyfication of RP" discusses several of recent and current sound changes in

RP. He considers in turn: 1) the decline of weak /I/, 2) glottalling, A lot of bright examples of glottalling we can find in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” ( film “My Fair Lady”): e.g. So cheer up, Captain; and buy a flower off a poor girl. / e.g. What’s that? That ain’t proper writing. /e.g. Buy a flower, kind gentleman. / 3) 1-vocalization,

4) intrusive /r/, 5) yod coalescence, e.g. Then what did you take my words for? / e.g. Now you know, don’t you? I’m come to have lessons, I am. / e.g. Would you mind if I take a seat? / 6) assorted lexical changes. V. Parashchuk claims that there is a tendency towards the so-called smoothing (tightening, reduction) of the sequences / aiə /, /aυә/ ("thripthongs"), the medial element

of which may be elided. They are sometimes reduced to a long open vowel, e.g. power /pa:/, tower /ta:/, fire /fa:/, our /a:/. Though the full forms have been retained in the latest edition of the LPD as the main variants, their reduced counterparts are very common in casual RP: /aυә - aә - a:/. There is a tendency, though not a very consistent one, to make the diphthong /υә/ a positional allophone of /o:/ .

It is increasingly replaced by /o:/ , e.g. the most common form of sure has /o:/ with a similar drift being true for poor, mour, tour and their derivatives. Rare words, such as gourd, dour tend to retain /υә/without a common /o:/ variant. Words in which /υә/ is preceded by a consonant plus /j/ are relatively resistant to this shift, e.g. pure, curious, fury, furious. There is a yod-dropping tendency after /s/ in the

words like suit, super and their derivatives, e.g. suitcase, suitable, supreme, superior, supermarket - these have the dominant form without /j/. In words, where /j/ occurs after the consonants other than /s/, it still remains the dominant form in RP, e.g. enthusiasm, news, student. Differences in pronunciation between British and American English According to Edward Finegan, written forms of

American and British English as found in newspapers and textbooks vary little in their essential features, with only occasional noticeable differences in comparable media (comparing American newspapers to British newspapers, for example). This kind of formal English, particularly written English, is often called 'standard English An unofficial standard for spoken

American English has also developed, as a result of mass media and geographic and social mobility. It is typically referred to as 'standard spoken American English' (SSAE) or 'General American English' (GenAm or GAE), and broadly describes the English typically heard from network newscasters, commonly referred to as non-regional diction, although local newscasters tend toward more parochial forms of speech.

Despite this unofficial standard, regional variations of American English have not only persisted but have actually intensified, according to linguist William Labov. Crystal claims that regional dialects in the United States typically reflect the elements of the language of the main immigrant groups in any particular region of the country, especially in terms of pronunciation and vernacular vocabulary.

Scholars have mapped at least four major regional variations of spoken American English: Northern, Southern, Midland, and Western. The spoken forms of British English vary considerably, reflecting a long history of dialect development amid isolated populations. Dialects and accents vary not only between the countries in the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and

Wales, but also within these individual countries. British and American English are the reference norms for English as spoken, written, and taught in the rest of the world. For instance, the English-speaking members of the Commonwealth often closely follow British English forms while many new

American English forms quickly become familiar outside of the United States. Although the dialects of English used in the former British Empire are often, to various extents, based on British English, most of the countries concerned have developed their own unique dialects, particularly with respect to pronunciation, idioms, and vocabulary; chief among them are

Canadian English and Australian English, which rank third and fourth in number of native speakers. The English language was first introduced to the Americas by British colonization, beginning in the early 17th century. Similarly, the language spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and colonization elsewhere and the spread of the former

British Empire, which, by 1921, held sway over a population of about 470–570 million people: approximately a quarter of the world's population at that time. Over the past 400 years, the form of the language used in the Americas—especially in the United States—and that used in the British Isles have diverged in many ways, leading to the dialects now commonly referred to as American English and British English. Differences between the two include pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary

(lexis), spelling, punctuation, idioms, formatting of dates and numbers, and so on, although the differences in written and most spoken grammar structure tend to be much more minor than those of other aspects of the language in terms of mutual intelligibility. A small number of words have completely different meanings between the two dialects or are even unknown or not used in one of the dialects. One particular contribution towards formalizing these differences

came from Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary (published 1828) with the intention of showing that people in the United States spoke a different dialect from Britain. This divergence between American English and British English once caused George Bernard Shaw to say that the United States and United Kingdom are "two countries divided by a common language"; a similar

comment is ascribed to Winston Churchill. Likewise, Oscar Wilde wrote, "We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language" (The Canterville Ghost, 1888). Henry Sweet predicted in 1877 that within a century, American English, Australian English and British English would be mutually unintelligible.

There are enough differences to cause occasional misunderstandings or at times embarrassment – for example, some words that are quite innocent in one dialect may be considered vulgar in the other. We can observe some differences in pronunciation in the past forms of such words as: AmE learnt /lәnt/ – BrE learned /lз:nd/, AmE spoilt – BrE spoiled, AmE spellt – BrE spelled,

AmE dreamed – BrE dreamt, AmE smelt – BrE smelled, spill, In BrE, both irregular and regular forms are current, but for some words (such as smelt and leapt) there is a strong tendency towards the irregular forms, especially by users of Received Pronunciation. In AmE, the irregular forms are never or rarely used (except for burnt and leapt). The t endings may be encountered frequently in older

American texts. There are some examples of differences between British and American pronunciation: 1. RP orange / ‘ɒrɪndʒ/ - AmE /’ɑrəndʒ/. 2. RP origin /’ɒrədʒ&# 618;n/ - AmE /’ɑrədʒ&# 618;n/. 3. RP Florida /’flɒrɨdə/ -

AmE /’flɑrədə/. 4. RP horrible /’hɒrɨbl/ - AmE /’hɑrəbl/. 5. RP quarrel /’kwɒrəl/ - AmE /’kwɑrəl/. 6. RP warren /’ wɒrən/ - AmE /’ wɑrən/. 7. RP borrow /’ bɒrəʊ - AmE /’ bɑroʊ/. 8. RP tomorrow /tə’mɒrə& #650;/ -

AmE /tə’mɑroʊ/. 9. RP sorry /’sɒri/ - AmE /’sɑri/. 10. RP sorrow/’sɒrəʊ / - AmE /’sɑroʊ/. Conclusion According to Leither, in the 18th century there was a forceful normalization movement towards the establishment of Educated English. In teaching as well as in politics and commerce, it was obligatory to have an adequate

description for English. A lot of scientists, such as Professor D. Jones, J.C. Wells, A.C.Gimson, S. Johnson, S. Jefrries, D. Rosewarne and others considered this problem to be worthy to discuss. Having prepared this term paper we can make following conclusions: 1. Professor Sally Johnson divides English English into

Southern English dialect, Midlands English dialect and Northern English dialect. 2. There existed different approaches to the problem of RP in Middle English and exists in Modern English. As the result of it RP/BBC English has become the British national standard of pronunciation. 3. Professor J.C. Wells in his research discussed sound changes in

RP. They are: 1. The decline of weak /l/; 2. Glottalling; 3. L-vocalization; 4. Intrusive /r/ ; 5. Yod-coalescence; 6. Assorted lexical changes. 4. Sound changes given above can be met in different accents and dialects in British English, Estuary English and Black British. List of references 1. Аракин В.Д. “История английского языка”,

М. – 1985 2. Арнольд И. В. “Лексикология современного английского языка”, М. – Высшая школа, 1986. 3. Encyclopedia Britannica CD 2000 Deluxe Edition 4. Gimson, A.C. Jones and Standards of English Pronunciation// English Studies. – Vol.58 №2. – 1997. – P.152 – 157. 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_an d_British_English_differences 6. http://en.

wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Eng lish 7. www.bbc.co.uk/history 8. www.planet-britain.com