2. Major accents of English.

About  400 million  people  speak  English  as  their  first  language/mother  tongue. British dialectologists P. Trudgill, J. Hannah,  A. Hughes divide all variants of English into two major groups:

1) the English-based group comprising English-English, Welsh English, Scottish English, Northern Ireland English, Australian English, New Zealand English, and

2) the American-based group with American English and Canadian English.

English-English comprises two major accents: Southern English and Northern English.

Thus, there are five major accents (literary/cultivated) on the British Isles:

1.

2.

3.

4.,

5.

RP/BBC English implicitly enjoys the status of the

American English comprises three major literary/cultivated accents:

1. General American (GenAm, GA)/Network English which is also known Western English,

2. Eastern American,

3. Southern American.

GenAm/Network English implicitly enjoys the status of the national standard of pronunciation in the USA.

In New Zealand the standard of pronunciation is Received Pronunciation.

In Australia three groups of accents are used. They are:

1) Cultivated Australian used by about 10 percent of the population on which RP continues to exert a considerable pressure;

2) Broad Australian (or Uneducated, Popular Australian) which is used by about 30 percent of the speakers and which appears to be most localized, most vividly displaying Cockney influence;

3) General Australian, which is spoken by the majority of educated Australian speakers. It enjoys the status of the Australian pronunciation standard.

The type of educated English pronunciation used in Canada has many similar features with GenAm alongside with specific Canadian traits.

Two major accents which are used as most prestigious pronunciation models for international communication are:

1)

2)

3. Rp/bbc English as the British national standard of pronunciation. Its phonological and phonetic dimensions.

RP was accepted as the national standard of pronunciation in the United Kingdom in the 19-th century.

The term “received” was understood in the sense of “accepted in the best society”. It was the speech of aristocracy and the court, the speech of the London area. Thus, the roots of RP are in London, more particularly it was the pronunciation of the London area and the counties lying around London within 60 miles: Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey. Then it lost its local characteristics and was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as “The Queen’s (or King’s) English”.

Received Pronunciation (RP) is mainly based on the Southern English regional type of pronunciation, but it has developed its own features which have given it a non-regional character. We may definitely state now that RP is a non localized accent within Britain, i.e. it is not associated with any particular city or region. If the 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.

In 1920s RP has been adopted by the news-readers of the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC). For that reason RP often became identified in the public mind with the BBC English.

Since the mid of the 19-th century London English has been taught at public schools. Since that time London English or Southern English was termed as Classroom English or Public School English or Educated Southern English.

This type of accent is recognized as a social standard pronunciation of English often referred to as the “prestige accent”. It is used by the majority of Londoners who have had a university education, and is commonly heard in Oxford and Cambridge.

RP speakers make up a very small percentage of the English population. Many native speakers have accents closely resembling RP, but not identical to it. Educated speech in the whole of Britain approximates to RP.

RP is used in many countries as a teaching norm since it is most commonly described in the books on English phonetics.

The  first  description  and  codification  of  RP  was  made  by   ,  then  by and later by

The most authoritative English pronouncing dictionaries are: “The English Pronouncing Dictionary” by D. Jones (later edited and revised by A. C. Gimson) and “The Longman English Pronunciation Dictionary” by J. Wells. These two dictionaries cover the two prestigious accents of English: RP/BBC English and GenAm.

Now we’ll consider phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English.

The PHONEME INVENTORY of RP consists of 20 vowels (12 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs) and 24 consonants (17 noise consonants and 7 sonorants).

According to the PHONOTACTIC SPECIFICATION of /r/ occurrence, RP is a non-rhotic accent, i.e. /r/ does not occur after a vowel or at the end of the words. /r/ in RP has a limited distribution, being restricted in its occurrence to pre-vocalic positions.

PHONEME LEXICAL DISTRIBUTION. J. C. Wells considers the following recent and current sound changes in RP:

1.

The vowel /I / is becoming less frequent in weak syllables. The traditional RP /I / is yielding ground:

a) to /i/ (/I//→/ /i /)/in final (happy ['hxpi] and prevocalic positions (radiate ['reIdieIt]),

b) to [q] (/I//→ /q/) in pre-consonantal positions in the suffixes -less, -ness, -ily, -ity, -ate, -ed, -es, -et, -ace; e.g., -less /lqs/, hopeless, -ness /nqs/ goodness, -ily /qlI/ angrily, -ity /qtI/ quality, -ate /qt/ deliberate, etc.

/I/ is replaced by [q] (/I/ → [q]) in weak syllables of a number of assorted words: cinema, majesty, relevance, system, family, secrecy, etc, in which / q / has become the dominant variant.

2.

It is the switch from alveolar to glottal articulation of /t/. /t/ is pronounced as [?] in a range of syllable-final environments:

before noise consonants, e.g. football ['fV?bLl], it’s quite good [I?s kwaI? gVd],

before other consonants e.g. atmosphere ['x?mqsfIq], partly ['pR?li].

This is by now very firmly established in casual RP:

Among younger RP-speakers glottal stop can even be heard finally before vowels, e.g. pick it up [pIk I? Ap] or in absolute final position, e.g. Let’s start! [le?s stR?]. The increased use of glottal stops within RP may reasonably be attributed to influence from Cockney.

3.

The ‘dark’ allophone of /l/ loses its alveolar lateral nature and becomes a vowel of the [o] or [V] type (in the pre-consonantal and word-final environments), e.g. milk ['mIok], middle ['mIdo], in labial environments, e.g. myself [maI'seof], tables ['teIboz]. Cockney has much more l-vocalization than does RP.

4.

This tendency is very prevalent in RP. R-sound is inserted when the word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel, e.g. the idea [r] of it, put a comma [r] in, I saw [r] it happen, Asia [r] and Africa, drama [r] and music, etc.

5.

The semivowel /j/ with a preceding alveolar plosive consonant is pronounced as:

[tS ] (t + j → tS) and [dZ ] (d + j → dZ) = the process of affricatization:

actual ['xkCuql], what you want ['wPtSu 'wPnt],

graduate ['grxGueIt], would you mind ['wVGu 'maInd].

[S ] (s + j → S) and [Z ] (z + j → Z ) = the process of assibilation:

issue ['ISH], as you know ['xZ jV 'nqV].

The words actual, mutual, education, educate, gradual, graduate (noun, verb), during, virtue, statue, issue, hosier, etc., have common alternative forms with affricates or sibilants, the latter gaining ground as the dominant form.

6.

Pronunciation preferences are often shown in LPD:

con 'troversy is taking over from initial-stressed 'controversy,

suit, the poll showed, /sHt/ is now preferred over D. Jones’s /sjHt/ by a margin of 72% to 28%, nephew ['nefjH] beats the traditional /'nevjH] by 79% to 21%.

7.

This tendency is very common in casual RP. Triphthongs are sometimes reduced to a long open vowel, e.g. power /pa:/, tower /ta:/, fire /fa:/. 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: /aVq – aq - R/.

8.

This tendency is not very consistent. The most common forms of sure, poor, moor, tour have / L /. Rare words, such as gourd, dour tend to retain / Vq / without a common /L/ variant. Words, in which /Vq/ is preceded by a consonant plus /j/ are resistant to this shift, e.g. pure, curious, fury, furious.

9.

Words like suit, super, suitcase, suitable, supreme, superior, supermarket 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.