11.1 Estuary English (ee)
Till the last quarter of the 20th century nobody in GB contested a statement that RP was the only standard accent. But in the early 1980-s, however, a new pronunciation variety in the South if England seemed to appear. It was named “Estuary English” (EE) – «английский в дельте Темзы» (because it comes from the area around the Thames estuary).[1] But it has also spread to other areas and is becoming the most influential accent all over Britain. There is even an opinion that it is going to take the place of RP as a standard accent. EE is widely spoken at school and used in radio and TV reporting in London, Canterbury, Windsor, Oxford and Cambridge. Even the young members of the British Royal family are more and more often heard speaking Estuary English.
The status of EE has not yet been defined. It stands somewhere between RP and Cockney[2]. According to J. Maidment, Professor of London University, the following correlation between RP, EE and Cockney may be established:
---------------- Cockney ------------- --- ------------------- RP ------------
colloquial formal colloquial formal
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---------- EE -----------
The most striking features of EE are as follows (you can see that many of them are similar to changes occurring in advanced RP):
A. On the segmental level:
1) the extensive use of the glottal stop: e.g. seatbelt, network, statement;
2) /ł/ is realized in /w/ in rapid EE speech: e.g. Paul’s, pause, paws → /pɔ:z/;
3) /ı/ becomes longer in word final position: e.g. very funny /'veri 'fʌni/;
4) yod (/j/) is dropped before /u:/: e.g. assume /ə'su:m/, illuminate /ı'lu:mıneıt/;
5) /tj/, /dj/ → /t∫/, /dƷ/: e. g. It’s due on Tuesday /ıts 'dƷu: ɔn 't∫u:zdai/;
6) avoiding the syllabic consonants: e.g. button /'bʌtən/, middle /'mıdəl/;
7) /h/-elision: e.g. ‘and and ‘eart (hand and heart);
8) /t/ → /f/: e.g. I fink (I think)
on the suprasegmental level
1) Nasality;
2) slower tempo;
3) narrower pitch range;
4) using falling-rising tune in alternative questions tags;
5) predominant use of level heads in all sentence types;
6) stressing form-words (prepositions, auxiliaries):
e.g. Get off 'at the station. The phone 'was ringing.
7) later, than in RP, placement of stress in polysyllabic words:
'temporarily (RP) – tempo'rarily (EE)
С. in vocabulary:
1) “Cheers!” denotes either “Good-bye” or “thanks”;
2) “basically” often introduces an utterance or serves as a temporizer;
3) “excuse me” is used both for apology or attracting attention;
4) “lay” instead of “lie”:
e.g. The victim was found laying on the floor.
D. in grammar
(which is rather close to standard):
1) there’s – is an invariable form:
e.g. There’s three reasons this decision has been taken.
There’s lots of people, who …
(Cockney: The windows is all open.)
2) as → like: e.g. Do like I do.
3) Extensive use of tags in questions:
e.g. I said I was going, didn’t I?
4) using ‘never’ to denote some one-time action:
e.g. I never went there.
5) dropping of -ly in adverbs:
e.g. You’re turning too slow.
6) using the 3rd person singular for any person and number:
e.g. I gets out of the car.
We was walking.
One should say that the reaction to EE has not been entirely positive. Though it has become more popular, it is considered less prestigious. This accent is sometimes associated with the “Essex girl” or “Essex man”, who are the butts of many jokes (“Essex girl” – a derogatory stereotype of a female from the county of Essex – loud, crass and very sexually available; “Essex man” – dishonest, badly educated, right-wing politically and agressive). Non-native English teachers and learners do not rate EE very highly either: RP is appreciated most, then come General American, Australian and Estuary Englishes (RP → GA → AuE → EE …).
It will be interesting to see the direction of phonetic change in future. Which accent holds stronger positions? Will RP change so much as to absorb EE, or will EE be able to replace RP as the standard form of Br E? P. Trudgill, for one, doubts the possibility of EE to win as 1) it is a marked regional accent, and 2) sociolinguistic situation in GB is not likely to provide the status for this accent (there are no public schools or colleges where EE is specially taught.
The problem for us, EFL learners, is very topical: what accent is to be acquired? There is no agreement among phoneticians concerning this question. English is indisputably the most widely spread language on earth, as it is practically spoken on all continents, either as mother tongue or first language or as a second language by hundreds of millions of people. English is the official language of many countries in the world and is the most popular language in international conferences, meetings, etc, being the main language used by UN organizations and having become since World War II a kind of lingua franca of contemporary world – the main means of communication between non-native speakers.
Users of English as a lingua franca even outnumbered native speakers. This implies that it will be enough for an EFL learner to be able to imitate the standard (literary) accent if they want to be understood by any speaker of English. But as for perceptive skills, they must be developed in a much greater scope so that the communicator would be able to understand countless accents of both native and non-native speakers.
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RP is used by the most educated layers of population in Great Britain. “Received” was understood as “accepted in the best society” (the word received conveys its original meaning of approved). It used to be spoken in the London area by aristocracy and was considered “a posh accent”. Now it has lost its local characteristics and is considered a regionless accent within Britain, which, however, reveals the speaker’s social and educational background. According to P. Trudgill, any pronunciation peculiarity may be considered standard if it is not marked by some kind of regional colouring and is found in the speech of educated people; no matter what their social status and background are (the number of people having such speech characteristics is irrelevant: thus, only 3-5% of Britain’s population speak with RP-accent!). For most people it functions as an ideal target rather than an actual means of communication.
RP was codified by D. Jones and fixed in the Pronouncing Dictionary in 1917. Though almost nobody speaks it today, it is used as a basis for teaching a correct and beautiful accent. RP is “a Platonic ideal of good pronunciation, aspired by the speech-conscious native speakers, but never quite achieved” (J.C. Wells).
However, from the 1970s onwards, attitudes towards Received Pronunciation have been slowly changing. Most British scholars admit that the standard pronunciation of the country is not homogeneous. According to Prof. Gimson, 3 forms of RP are found nowadays:
Conservative General (Mainstream) Advanced (Contemporary)
spoken by older used by the BBC speakers used by the young people
generation, in certain and middle-aged people of exclusive social groups,
professions (the most popular) upper class, certain
and social groups professional circles
It is the advanced RP-form, that reflects the latest tendencies in pronunciation changes.
P.T. Trudgill also reveals Near-RP (“modified RP”) – a Southern accent spoken by teachers of English and university professors.
According to H. Giles’ survey, RP used to be associated with competent people of high social rank, but lacking some “humanly” characteristics (friendliness, sincerity etc.) that made them unpleasant to deal with. That is why nowadays there is a strong tendency to RP democratization and even young BBC announcers more and more often use “modern” sound combinations, which symbolizes the change of attitude to RP.
It has already been stated that national pronunciation standards are not fixed. They are subject to innovations and undergo constant changes that are due to various internal and external factors. The general tendency toward the simplification of languages over time may be traced. In phonetics it means the economy of the articulatory effort, which sometimes gives rise to homophones, which, in their turn, may lead to words confusion. These changes in the standard may affect both segmental phonemes and the prosodic system of the language and are mostly observed in the speech of the younger generation.
There is a strong tendency towards reducing the number of vowels and their shortening, “simplification” of consonant clusters, replacing /θ/ and /ð/ by /s/ and /z/ respectively, moderation of falls and rises in the intonation contours, gradual shifting from stress-based to syllable-based rhythmicality.
The most noticeable changes in RP are as follows: