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Variants of English pronunciation

English is a global language spoken by approximately 1,500 million people. This has been caused by a number of geographical, historical, and socio-cultural factors: the British colonization, the impact of American power in political life and in business, esp. in computer software and entertainment industries. As a result of this spread over the world English is not uniform, there are many “Englishes” while the written forms have a lot more in common.

Geographically native English accents are divided into British-oriented (the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) and North- America-oriented (the USA and Canada).

Most of the countries have their national pronunciation standards, regional standards and local dialects.

National Standards:

• RP (Received Pronunciation), or BBC English, Public School pronunciation, King’s English, in the UK;

• GA (General American), or American Network English, in the USA;

• Gen Can (General Canadian) in Canada;

• Gen Aus (General Australian) in Australia.

National pronunciation standards are associated with radio and TV newsreaders and presenters of serious channels (Channel 3 and 4 on BBC, CBS and NBC on American Network). These are also professional groups and public figures whose speech is symbolic of certain types of accents.

Regional Standards are smaller geographical divisions, which are the accents of educated people in a certain area:

• Southern, Northern, Scottish and Northern Irish on the British Isles (the Welsh educated accent is confused either with the Scottish or the Southern type);

• Northern, Northern Midland, Southern Midland, Southern, Western in the USA.

Regional standards show a certain degree of regional deviation from the standard. In the UK people in the South-East of the country are closest to RP since this area was the origin of the national standard.

In the USA it is people from the North, North Midland and the West who show the least differences from GA, since the origin of the American standard is the Great Lakes area, i.e. the North. Newsreaders for American radio and TV are selected from people who are from the North, North Midland and the West or they are trained to sound as if they are. American national news agencies and radio stations are located in the North-East, while the entertainment industry is stationed in the West (in Hollywood).

British regional features:

Northern /u/ in such words as cut, much, love; Scottish /a/ in words like bad, bath; /hw/ in words beginning with wh: which, where, etc.; /х’/ in words like light; trilled /r/; Irish: /r/ in all positions, clear /l/.

American regional features:

Southern /r/ is vocalized after a vowel, as in river (Americans say that the second /r/ is gone with the wind); Southern drawl: a specific way of pronouncing vowels when monophthongs are diphthongized while diphthongs are monophthongized, i.e. their nuclei are prolonged and their glides are dropped, e.g. side[sa:d], tide [ta:d]; [ɪ] in men, ten.

Local accents are used by less educated people. They can be either urban (characteristic of a city, like Liverpool or N.Y.) or rural (spoken in the countryside, like South Wales).

Received Pronunciation

The status of RP has changed. British phoneticians agree that RP is still an accepted social standars associated with the speech of BBC announcers. But over the last 20 years both the BBC and other national radio and TV channels have been increasingly tolerant of broadcasters’ accents. Nevertheless in their choice of newsreaders the national TV and radio channels still use predominantly RP speakers. However RP is an accent of such a small minority that there may be more foreign speakers of RP than native speakers of that accent of English (Crystal 1997). RP is a social prestige accent spoken by 3 – 5% of the population.

RP is classified into General RP, Refined RP and Regional RP. Refined RP is an upper-class accent, mainly associated with upper-class families and with professions which have been traditionally recruited from such families, e.g. officers in the navy. The number of speakers is declining: this type of speech is often regarded as affected. Some of the particular features of Refined RP:

/ǝu/ is pronounced as /eu/;

a very open final /ǝ/ and /ɪ/: better, city;

/ǝ:/ is very open in all positions;

/æ/ is often diphthongized - /æǝ/: understand.

Regional RP reflects regional variation, it describes the type of speech which is basically RP except for the presence of a few regional characteristics, e.g. the use of [a/æ] instead of [a:] before voiceless fricatives: after, bath, past, which is a sign of the northern accent within England.

General American

The proportion of GA speakers in the USA is higher than that of RP speakers in the UK – 33% of the population.

Vowels

There are 20 vowels in RP and 15 – 16 vowels in GA. GA lacks diphthongs ending in /ǝ/, all vowels before r within a syllable are likely to become “r-coloured” to some extent: here [hir], hair [her], pure [pjur].

The vowel [o] is replaced by [a:]: lock, dog, stop, sometimes by [o:]: long, orange, sorry.

[æ] is closer than in RP. The sentence “Merry Mary married” sounds as if all the accented vowels are identical.

[æ] is used instead of [a:] when followed by a consonant other than [r]: dance, ask, pass, aunt.

[ǝu] is more rounded in GA, the nucleus is a back mid-open vowel: (in RP it is a central mid-open vowel): go [gou], home [houm].

The nucleus of the diphthong [au] is more advanced.

The vowel [o:] is more open.

The vowels [ǝ] and [ǝ:] have a retroflex quality (while they are pronounced the tip of the tongue is curled back).

[u:] is more fronted than in RP.

A common characteristic of GA is the so-called “American twang” – the nasalizing of a vowel before a nasal consonant (candy, manner, fine). The vowels [æ] and [au] are nasalized in any position. Some American phoneticians treat nasality as a defect of American speech.

There is no strict division of American vowels into short and long.

Consonants

One of the most characteristic features of GA pronunciation is the articulation of the /r/ phoneme. It is pronounced with the tip of the tongue curled further back than in RP (a retroflex position). It is more sonorous and is accompanied by lip-rounding before vowels.

Unlike the RP /r/ it is pronounced in any position. Nearly ¾ of the whole American population pronounce /r/ in all positions (the Southern, the Eastern and Afro-American types of English in the USA are r-less).

The American /t/ in the intervocalic position (better, party, writer) is pronounced with the tip of the tongue making one tap against the teeth-ridge. Acoustically it resembles a weak [d] or [r].

When [t] follows [n] it is nearly omitted: twenty [tweni], plenty [pleni].

[t] is replaced by a glottal stop before [m, n, l, r, j, w]: that man, that 'one, little.

Most Americans use the dark [l] in all positions.

The sound [j] is commonly weakened or omitted: news [nu:z], Tuesday ['tu:zdei], assume [ǝ'su:m].

[tj], [dj] are often assimilated into [ʧ] and [dʒ] before [u:]: tune [ʧu:n], due [dʒu:], education [edʒu'keiʃn].

The phoneme /ʃ/ is vocalized in final unstressed syllables ending in

-ion, -ia: Asia [eiʒǝ], version [vǝ:ʒn], Persia [pǝ:ʒǝ].

[ʍ] or [hw] is used in words spelt with “wh”: what, which, etc. Most Americans make a clear distinction between where – ware, which – witch, weather – whether.

Apart from systemic differences there are lexical items which are pronounced differently:

ate [eit], tomato [tǝ'meɪtou], either, neither [i:], schedule ['skedʒul], vase [veɪz], leisure [li:ʒǝr], shone [ʃoun], vitamin ['vaɪtǝmɪn], clerk [klǝ:rk], lieutenant [lu'tenǝnt], nephew ['nefju], civilization [sɪvɪlǝ'zeɪʃn], specialization [speʃǝlǝ'zeɪʃn], simultaneous [saɪmǝl'teɪnjǝs], anti- [æntaɪ];

apparatus, data, status can be pronounced with either [æ] or [eɪ] in General American, but only with [eɪ] in RP;

hostile [hastl], missile [mɪsl], reptile [reptl].