Lecture 8 the principle types of english pronunciation. The teaching norm. Rp and ga

RP as the teaching norm (standard English pronunciation).

Dialects as distinct forms of a language:

a) The main aspects determining the difference of dialects (grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation);

b) orthoepic standard.

3. The principal types of English pronunciation.

4. The main types of cultivated speech in the United States (the Eastern type, the Southern type, the Western type – GA).

5. The principal differences between RP and GA.

The English language is the mother tongue of several countries, such as Great Britain, the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand.

The English language is also used by the greater part of the population of Canada and the Republic of South Africa.

The variants of the English language spoken in these countries have very much in common, but they differ from Standard English in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

The variants of a national language should not be confused with its regional types. In the British Isles the regional types of the English language are the following:

1) the Southern English, 2) the Northern English and 3) the Standard Scottish.

In the United States of America the regional types of the American variant of the English language are the following: 1) the Eastern type, 2) the Southern type and 3) the General American type (Western, Midwestern, Central Western).

The objective criteria for choosing this or that type of pronunciation as the teaching norm are different, but it is accepted that in the British Isles and in the former British colonies the teaching norm is Received Pronunciation, or RP. It is also called Standard.

English Pronunciation and Public school Pronunciation. In the USA and Latin American countries the teaching norm is General American pronunciation, or GA.

RP is the teaching norm at schools and higher learning establishments in the former USSR countries because of 1) the degree of understandability of RP in English -speaking countries, 2) the extent of RP investigation, 3) the number of textbooks and audio-visual aids, 4) the fact that RP is compared with the pronunciation of the Russian language and is described in a number of textbooks.

Now let us consider what has been said in detail.

A(ny) national language has two material forms: 1) written, i.e. the literary language, and 2) spoken, i.e. the speech of the nation.

The written form of a national language is usually a generally accepted standard and is the same throughout the country.

But spoken language is not so uniform, it may vary from locality to locality. Such distinct forms of a language are called dialects.

These dialects may differ from one another in the following respects: 1) in grammar, 2) in vocabulary, and 3) in pronunciation.

Different types of pronunciation of one and the same language may differ from one another in all the components of its phonetic system.

The inventory of their phonemes may be slightly different, i.e. they may have phonemes not found in other dialects. For instance, the Scottish variant of English has the velar fricative voiceless phoneme similar to the Russian [x], non-existent in RP and most other types of English pronunciation: of [lɒx] (loch – озеро) – [lɒk] (lock – замок). The same sound [æ] also occurs in some minor local dialects in Great Britain, e.g. the word enough is pronounced [əˈnjux] instead of [ı'nʌf] or [ə'nʌf] occurring in RP and most other types of English pronunciation.

The distribution of those similar sounds which exist in all or several types of pronunciation, may also differ.

A dialectal variation in the position of word accent may be illustrated by the word industry (ˈindustry, in'dustry).

Dialectical differences in intonation have not yet been sufficiently investigated.

Thanks to economic, political and social factors one of the local dialects becomes the literary language of the country, and the pronunciation of the dialect begins to be regarded as uncultured, illiterate, substandard.

But within the standard pronunciation of a language there may be variants, too considered equally "correct" or acceptable.

Thus within Russian Standard Pronunciation (RSP) two orthoepic variants are distinguishable: Moscow Pronunciation and St. Petersburg Pronunciation Examples: щука ([ш^ь:yкъ – щ^ьч^ьукъ]).

A variant of standard pronunciation is used by educated native speakers of the language because it is this type of pronunciation which they learn, mainly at schools and colleges.

A language which is the mother tongue of more than one notion, also has national variants, or types, of pronunciation. One of such languages is English. As a result of the colonial expansion of British Empire, the English language spread from the British Isles to all the continents of the earth, and the colonies and dominions in the erstwhile British Empire gained their independence and attained nationhood, English became the national language of several countries – the USA, Australia, New Zealand, – while in Canada and the Republic of South Africa it is the mother tongue of the greater part of the population (the languages of the remaining part being French in Canada and Africaans with aboriginal vernaculars in the Republic of South Africa).

All the national types of English pronunciation have many features in common because they are of common origin. At the same time, they have a number of differences due to the new conditions of their development after separation from British English and to the degree of their connection with British English after that separation.

As has been mentioned at the beginning of the lecture, there may be distinguished the following types of cultivated English – large regional types, as distinct from local dialects. In the British Isles there are three such types: 1) Southern English Pronunciation, 2) Northern English Pronunciation, 3) Standard Scottish Pronunciation.

The Southern type of English Pronunciation is also known as Standard English Pronunciation, Received English Pronunciation (RP), and Public School Pronunciation.

Each term has its justification as it describes one of the aspects of this type of English pronunciation.

The term Southern English is indicative only of its birthplace and does not mean that it is confined nowadays only to the south of England.

For reasons of politics, commerce and the presence of the court the pronunciation of the south-east of England and more particularly, that of London region began to acquire in the sixteenth century an exceptional social prestige in England. In time it lost some of the local characteristics of London speech. It became finally fixed, as the speech of the educated, through the stabilizing influence of the public schools of the nineteenth century – the select and expensive boarding schools for the children of the rich, such as Eton and Harrow. Hence the name Public School Pronunciation.

Such public schools existed in all parts of the country and prepared their pupils for the universities, this type of universities began to be recognized as characteristic not so much of a region as a social stratum. With the spread of education, the situation arose in which those dialect-speaking schoolchildren and university students who were eager for social advancement felt obliged to modify their accent in the direction of the social standard and acquire this type of pronunciation. Hence the term Received Pronunciation (RP) introduced by D. Jones. Pronunciation was, therefore, a marker of position in society.

In present day England great prestige is still attached to this implicitly accepted social standard of pronunciation. It has become still widely known as accepted through the advent of radio and television. The British Broadcasting Corporation chose this type of pronunciation for its announcers mainly because it is the type which is most widely understood and which excites least prejudice of a regional kind. [Thus, RP is often identified in the public mind with "BBC English". This special position occupied by RP, basically educated Southern British English, has led to its being the form of pronunciation most commonly described in books on phonetics of English and traditionally taught to foreigners].

It is for these reasons that RP is accepted as the teaching norm in most countries where English is taught as a foreign language, including all the schools and colleges in the former USSR countries.

Northern English is the speech of those born and brought up in the region between Birmingham and the border of Scotland.

This type of pronunciation is not to be sharply separated from the South English type since it contains some features of the latter, modified by the local speech habits. But it has certain distinctive feature, such as the use of vowels other than in RP in the same words.

The most marked differences in the distribution of vowels are as follows:

[a] for RP [æ] in words like bad [bad], man [man];

[æ] for [ɑ:] in the words like glass [glæs], ask [æsk], dance [dæns], i.e. in which the letter a is followed by a word-final consonant or by two consonants other than r. The word father is pronounced as an exception, with [ɑ:];

[u] for [ʌ] in words like cup [kup], love [lʌv], much [mutʃ];

[e] or [ɜ:] for [ei] in words like may [me, mɜ:], take [tek, tɜ:k].

Northern English as a whole represents the earlier type of London English that was the standard speech in the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This early type was carried to America. That is why there are many features in common between American and Northern English accent.

Standard English of Scotland is considerably modified by Southern British, but some of its features go back independently to the Northumbrian dialect of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. The Scottish variant of English differs from RP both in the inventory of phonemes and in the distribution of the phonemes common to both types. The most important differences are as follows:

Rolled, or thrilled [r] (of the Russian type is used instead of the constrictive RP [r] in all positions (i.e. also after a vowel before silence and between a vowel and consonant, as in more [mor], born [born]).

Dark [l] is used in all positions as in look [luk].

3. The non-existent in RP back-lingual (velar) fricative phoneme similar to the Russian [x] is used in words like loch [lɒx] – озеро, caught [kɒxt].

4. The medio-lingual (palatal) [ç] (Germ. "Ich-Laut") is used in words like light [liçt].

5. The cluster [hw] is used in words with the initial digraph wh, as in which [hwitj].

6. [a] is used instead of [æ] in words like bad [bat], man [man].

7. [æ] is used instead of [ɑ:] in words like glass [glæs], ask [æsk], dance [dæns], after [æftə], path [pæθ].

8. Monophthongs followed by [r] are pronounced instead of the central diphthongs, e.g. here [hir], beard [bird], there, their [ðɜ:r], bear, bare [bɜ:r], pure [pjur], sure [ʃu:r], poor [pu:r].

Scottish intonation also differs considerably from RP intonation, but it has been investigated very little.

Of all the three types of standard English pronunciation in the British Isles, RP is the least regional in character and is used by educated people more than any other single type.

In the United States there may be distinguished (as has been mentioned) three main types of cultivated speech: 1) the Eastern type, 2) the Southern type, 3) the General American type (Western).

The Eastern type is spoken along the east coast of New England and largely in New York City. [This type of American pronunciation bears a close resemblance to the southern English type], which is explained by the fact that the states of New England were in closer contact with Britain during the colonization of America and reflected the changes which had taken place in the pronunciation of London English by the end of the eighteenth century.

There are, however, some slight differences between the Eastern American type and RP. One of these is the use of a more advanced allophone of the [ɑ:] phoneme than in RP: a vowel sound intermediate between [æ] and [ɑ:] and similar to the nucleus of the RP diphthong [au], e.g. [a:sk] (ask), [da:ns] (dance), [la:f] (laugh).

The Southern type of American pronunciation is used in the south and south-east of the United States. Its most striking distinctive feature is the so-called Southern drawl, which is a specific way of pronouncing vowels consisting in the diphthongization and even triphthonogization of some simple vowels and monophthongization of some diphthongs at the expense of prolonging ("drawing")their nuclei and dropping the glides. Thus that may be pronounced [ðæiət], this – [ðijəs], cute – [kjuət], yes – [jeiəs], fine – [fɑ:n], high – [hɑ:].

Southern American pronunciation has some features in common with RP: the dropping of [r] after [ɜ:] and [ə], the use of clear [l] before a vowel, and some others.

The most widespread type of educated American speech is however, neither the Eastern, nor the Southern type, It is the type variously named Western, Midwestern, Central Western or General American (GA). It is not only the most widespread type, but also, like RP in Great Britain the least regional in character.

The closer resemblance between GA and modern Northern British pronunciation should not be interpreted as indicating that American English is a dialect of that (or any other) type of British English. The close resemblance between the two types of English pronunciation rather points to the fact that both of them are parallel developments from, or descendants of, earlier standard London English.

Since RP and GA are the most widely used types of pronunciation, the learners of English should know the principal differences between them.

Within the vocalic system articulatory differences are the following:

[u]

It is almost the same in GA and RP but in GA it has less lip rounding.

[ɔ:]

In the pronunciation of this vowel the lips are less rounded in GA than in RP. It is transcribed in GA by the symbols [oh] or [oH]:

GA	RP
tall [tohl, to'Hl]	[tɔ:l]
caught [koht, ko'Ht]	[kɔ:t]

[i:]

It does not differ greatly in RP and GA.

Its transcription symbols are [ij] and [iy]. In GA [ij] may occur in place of the final RP [I]:

GA	RP
bee [bij]	[bi:]
see [sij]	[si:]

It is a little more open in GA than in RP.

[c]

In GA it is a lower vowel. It is lower than the first element of the diphthong [ɛə].

In GA this vowel resembles [æ]:

GA [ɛ]	RP [e]
red [rɛd]	[red]
pen [pɛn]	[pen]

[æ]

This vowel is front and longer in GA than in RP.

Its distribution is different from RP [ɑ:]:

GA [æ]	RP [ɑ:]
ask [æsk]	[ɑ:sk]

[ɜ:]

In GA it is pronounced as a retroflexed vowel [ə]. The transcription symbol of its retroflexion is [hr]:

GA [əhrm]	RP [əm]
term [təhrm]	[tɜ:m]
third [θəhrd]	[θɜ:d]
turn [təhrn]	[tɜ:n]

[ə]

It is almost the same in GA and RP.

bus [bəs]

bus [bʌs]

Most American descriptivists consider that in GA [ʌ] is pronounced as [ə]. Others state that it is closer than RP [ʌ]. They use the same symbol.

[u:]

In GA this vowel is considered to be not only a diphthongoid, but also a combination of [u] + [w]:

GA	RP
too [tuw]	[tu:]
boot [buwt]	[bu:t]

[ɒ]

This vowel is pronounced in GA without any lip rounding: [ǎ]. It is similar to RP [ɑ:], but is short and checked:

GA	RP
box [bǎks]	[bɒks]
stop [stǎp]	[stɒp]

However, in words log, long, strong [ɒ] is labialised as in RP.

[i]

Some phoneticians consider this high central vowel to be similar to the Russian [ы]. They point out that it occurs in the unstressed syllables of such words as believe, candid. Others do not include it in the inventory of the GA vowel phonemes.

Long vowels and diphthongs in GA are stated to consist of two elements: a monophthong and a glide. The latter are represented as follows.