Is called

- is considered to be correct

- enjoys social prestige

- is statistically relevant

The use of other pronunciation types is applied to certain regions, smaller localities, social, professional, and age groups.

 Accents always mark the geographical origin of the speaker.

Thus pronunciation varieties within a country include:

• a national standard of pronunciation;

• territorial / area accents.

The situation when speakers can use both literary pronunciation and their native local accent in different situations is called diglossia.

Idiolect is individual speech of members of the same speech community.

Different languages have different accents. Languages are spoken differently by people from different geographical areas, different social classes, of different age and different educational backgrounds.

A polyethnic language is the mother language of several nations, e.g. English, German, Spanish, French, etc. In a polyethnic language there can coexist a great variety of pronunciation forms. There can be several types of pronunciation, called national variants.

English is the mother tongue of several nations. There are the following national variants of pronunciation: British English, American English, Australian English, New Zealand English.

The linguistic situation where two national languages function on the same territory is called bilingualism. E.g. in Canada English and French are two state languages.

The linguistic situation with one national language is called monolingualism. E.g. in the UK, the USA.

2. Accent vs. Dialect

Every national variant of English falls into territorial and regional varieties, i.e. dialects.

 The term "accent" is often confused with dialect.

Differences from others in	pronunciation	vocabulary	grammar
DIALECT	+	+	+
ACCENT	+	–	–

DIALECT is a variant of the language that includes differences in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The dialect of educated people within the British Isles is ‘Standard English’.

A dialect includes an accent – a way of pronouncing the language.

. MAJOR ACCENTS OF ENGLISH - КУДРЯ

English is a nationally heterogeneous language. About 400 million people speak English as their first language (L1) / mother tongue (MT).

Variants of English
the British-based group	the American-based group
English-English (Southern English Northern English); Welsh English; Scottish English; Northern Ireland English; Australian English; New Zealand English.	American English; Canadian English.

Type of British English, most familiar as the accent used by most announcers and newsreaders on prestigious national and international BBC broadcasting channels, is identified by the term Received Pronunciation (RP).

RP is the national standard of pronunciation in the UK.

In American English three main types of literary pronunciation are found:

1. General American (GA) / Network English / Western American – from Ohio through Middle West and on to the Pacific coast;

2. Eastern American including Boston and eastern New England and New York City;

3. Southern American – Virginia, North and South Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, etc.

GA is widely used by the US media and has the status of the national standard of pronunciation.

In New Zealand, RP is used as pronunciation model for educated speakers.

In Australia there are three groups of accents:

1. Cultivated Australian used by about 10 % of the population;

2. Broad Australian, used by over 30 % of speakers. It’s also called “an Australian twang”. It has been influenced by Cockney;

3. General Australian, spoken by the majority of educated Australians. It can be treated as Australian pronunciation standard.

In Canada English has many similar features with GA alongside with specific Canadian traits.

New Englishes appeared on the territories of the former British colonies:

• Indian English;

• Hong Kong English; have differences

• Singaporean English;

• West African English, etc.

Due to their importance, prestige, and social advantage in certain geographical areas RP / BBC English and General American / Network English have been extensively researched.

4. SOCIAL SHAPES OF ENGLISH

A speaker may typically have

• a first language (L1);

• a second language (L2);

• a foreign language (FL).

A first language is the speaker’s native language (NL) / mother tongue (MT). Its learning starts in the speaker’s earliest years.

A second language (L2) is any other language that the speaker learns to control (at any time) to a level of near native-like proficiency.

A foreign language (FL) is any language spoken by the speaker less than L2 level.

In English teaching there are:

• ELT – English Language Teaching – teaching to learners of all types;

• TEFL – Teaching English as a Foreign Language – learners are neither native speakers, nor immigrants;

• TESOL – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

A lingua franca is a language used as a means of communication by speakers who do not have a common native language. It is when a foreign language is used for communication in some area, e.g. for trade. The largest world lingua francas in use today are English and Mandarin Chinese.

A Pidgin is the language developed out of the mixture of several languages (usually in the Third World). It’s a contact language which draws on elements from two or more languages. E.g. Papua New Guinea Pidgin English, Chinese English / Tok Pisin. It has no native speakers. Such languages are linguistically simplified.

They typically have:

• a limited vocabulary;

• a reduced grammatical structure;

• a narrow range of functions compared to the languages from which they derive.

Speakers of common languages have about 30,000 words. Speakers of Neomelanesian use about 1,500 items.

English	Pidgin English
Lots of men have no wives	Plenti man no get woman
Grass Moustache Beard Hair Eyebrow Weed	Gras Mouthgras Gras bilong fes Gras belong hed Gras antop long ai Gras nogut

A Creole is a second stage in the process of pidgin development. It is the first language of the children of Pidgin speakers (when the children of Pidgin speakers use it as their mother tongue). Nowadays about 12 million people use Pidgin languages, up to 17 million people use Creoles. English-based Creoles are used in Jamaica and Sierra Leone.

English is

• the MT for 375-400 mln people (UK, USA, Ireland, Canada, Australia, & New Zealand).

• L2 for 300 million people (India, Singapore, Malawi, etc.)

• taught as a foreign language (EFL) to 1000 million people.

STANDARD ENGLISH

AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION - Курбала

Essential characteristics of the Standard English are as follows:

1. it has no local base;

2. it is spoken in different accents;

3. it is considered as the norm of communication by the country’s leading institutions.

The linguistic problem of the Standard English is internationalism and identity.

Internationalism demands standard in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, and language use.

The identity means individuality. It demands linguistic distinctiveness in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, and language use.

Thus there are two pressures influencing the development of English:

• one promotes a uniform World Standard English;

• the other acts to preserve national identity, promoting a variety of Regional Standard Englishes.

Each country where English is L1: the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand tries to preserve its linguistic distinctiveness, using its own standard of English.

Countries, where English is L2 / FL follow
British English	American English	there is a mixture of influences

. PRONUNCIATION NORM

Pronunciation norm is a set of pronunciation forms and rules of their usage adopted by educated speakers in a social community.

Pronunciation norm is dynamic by nature. It changes in the course of time. Variability (validity) is the quality of pronunciation norm: what is acceptable at a given time might be less common or even obsolete in some 70-80 years.

At a particular time there are certain differences in the phoneme realizations. As a result there are pronunciation variants. They can be found in different accents, between generations and social groups. E.g. stress in ‘adult’

The English pronunciation norm is fixed in pronunciation dictionaries. They reflect the living pronunciation of literate speakers more or less precisely.

As to regional dialects they cannot all be precisely reflected in a desk dictionary. A special dialect dictionary is needed.

Due to technical reasons pronunciation dictionaries do not reflect all the newest tendencies in living pronunciation. However, they help learners to become well-informed about pronunciation peculiarities and recent tendencies, which is highly essential for students and teachers of English.

VARIATION IN PRONUNCIATION

The phonemic system of the language is always in a process of evolution. It is faster than grammar and vocabulary. The route and the rate of phonetic changes are not the same in different languages, e.g. Ukrainian and English.

Throughout the history English phonetic changes were accelerated by the following factors:

1. English rich vocalic system. E.g. 20 English vowels (6 Ukrainian). Very slight changes in the tongue / lip position can greatly influence vowel pronunciation. Diphthongs are less stable than monophthongs. Consonants articulation can be better felt. Figuratively, consonants can be called the skeleton of the sound system, monophthongs are its flesh and diphthongs are its blood;

2. the crucial systemic changes at the earlier periods of English which shook the vowel system to the core (e.g. the Great Vowel Shift, r-vocalization, etc.);

3. the lasting period of a foreign domination in the Middle Ages when the phonological system of English was under the strong influence of an alien phonological system (French);

4. the role of English as an international language, i.e. its contacts with other languages.

Free variants of pronunciation are permissible variants in the phoneme realization. They occur when a new shade in pronunciation appears. It gives a choice to the speakers. E.g. in the present-day RP in the word home the diphthong is pronounced /əU/ by the younger generation and something like /ou/ by the older people.

All pronunciation variants are considered to be literary “correct” from the point of view of educated usage. These variants are usually given in a certain order. The main pronunciation variant is widely used and comes first. In the course of time this order may be changed.

EFL learners are recommended to memorize the first, more widely used, main variant for the active use. At the same time they should remember other permissible alternative variants of a given word, if there are any.

MAJOR ACCENTS IN THE UK Литвин

Outline

1. RP as the British national standard of pronunciation:

   1. Socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English;

   2. Phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English;

2. Cockney as an example of a broad accent of English.

3. Chief differences between RP and regional accents of British English.

1. RP AS THE BRITISH NATIONAL STANDARD

OF PRONUNCIATION

1. Socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English.

In 16^th-17^th century it was recommended to follow the speech model of educated pronunciation in the court and the capital. Thus, the roots of RP are in London (London region and the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey).

By the 18th century a prestigious pronunciation model had been characterized as the speech "received by the polite circles of society".

By the 19th c. London English had acquired social prestige and had lost some of its local characteristics. It was finally fixed as the pronunciation of the ruling class.

In the mid 19th c. there was a rise in education. Teachers needed a certain model to teach their pupils. London English / Southern English was chosen for this purpose. It was then termed as Classroom English, Public School English / Educated English.

At the beginning of the 20th c. Southern Educated English was spoken by rather a small group of people who had had public school education (Oxford, Cambridge).

The need for a recognized norm for public and other purposes (descriptions for teaching) launched the movement to establish Educated Southern English as the STANDARD ACCENT.

In 1930 the term "Standard Pronunciation" was replaced by "Received Pronunciation".

The British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) adopted RP for the use by its news-readers since 1920s. Until the early 70s of the 20^th c. it was the only accent demanded in the BBC's announcements. That is why RP often became identified with BBC English.

Only over the last 40 years, both the BBC and other British national radio and TV channels have been increasingly tolerant of the accent of their broadcasters.

Before World War 2, RP was characteristic of upper-class speech throughout the country.

The second half of the 20th century witnessed the radical changes in RP's social base:

1. the advent of radio & TV has led to a greater number of speakers, in various layers of society, using RP;

2. the social structure of the British society has lost much of its earlier rigidity;

3. access to higher education has led to a relaxation of view on prestige in pronunciation.

Today RP/BBC English does not constitute a single variety.

Three main types of RP are distinguished:

1) General RP; 2) Refined RP; 3) Regional RP.

There’s also recognized adoptive RP, spoken by those who acquire the accent after childhood.

General / mainstream RP reflects the pronunciation of middle class educated speakers.

Refined RP is an accent associated with upper-class families (the number of its speakers is declining).

Regional RP is basically RP with the presence of a few regional characteristics which go unnoticed even by other speakers of RP.

1.2. Phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English.

The PHONEME INVENTORY of this accent consists of

– 20 vowels;

– 24 consonants.

In the system of vowels there are:

• 10 monophthongs: /I/, /e/, /æ/, /ə/, /3:/, //, /α:/, /þ/, /o:/, /U/;

• 2 diphthongoids: /i:/, /u:/;

• 8 diphthongs: /eI/, /aI/, /oI/, /əU/, /aU/, /Iə/, /εə/, /Uə/.

The system of RP consonants consists of:

1) those typically associated with a noise component (17):

/p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, //, /ჳ/, /s/, /z/, /h/, /t/, /dჳ/;

2) sonorants – those without a noise component (7):

/m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /1/, /r/, /j/, /w/.

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 to pre-vocalic positions.