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Received Pronunciation (often referred to as RP), the Queen's/King's English or Oxford English[1] is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard for British English.[2] For over a century there has been argument over such issues as the definition of RP, whether it is geographically neutral, how many speakers there are, whether sub-varieties exist, how appropriate a choice it is as a standard and how the accent has changed over time.[3] RP is an accent, so the study of RP is concerned only with matters of pronunciation; other areas relevant to the study of language standards such as vocabulary, grammar and style are not considered.

History[]

The introduction of the term Received Pronunciation is usually credited to the British phonetician Daniel Jones. In the first edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917) he named the accent "Public School Pronunciation" but for the second edition in 1926 he wrote: "In what follows I call it Received Pronunciation, for want of a better term."Template:Sfnp However, the term had been used much earlier by P. S. Du Ponceau in 1818.Template:Sfnp A similar term, received standard, was coined by Henry C. K. Wyld in 1927.Template:Sfnp The early phonetician Alexander John Ellis used both terms interchangeably, but with a much broader definition than Jones's, saying, "There is no such thing as a uniform educated pron. of English, and rp. and rs. is a variable quantity differing from individual to individual, although all its varieties are 'received', understood and mainly unnoticed".Template:Sfnp

According to Fowler's Modern English Usage (1965), "the correct term is 'the Received Pronunciation'. The word 'received' conveys its original meaning of 'accepted' or 'approved', as in 'received wisdom'."[4]

RP has most in common with the dialects of South East Midlands, namely London, Oxford and Cambridge.[5] By the end of the 15th century, "Standard English" was established in the City of London, though it did not begin to resemble RP until the late 19th century.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Alternative names[]

Some linguists have used the term "RP" while expressing reservations about its suitability.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The Cambridge-published English Pronouncing Dictionary (aimed at those learning English as a foreign language) uses the phrase "BBC Pronunciation" on the basis that the name "Received Pronunciation" is "archaic" and that BBC News presenters no longer suggest high social class and privilege to their listeners.Template:Sfnp Other writers have also used the name "BBC Pronunciation".Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

The phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis frequently criticises the name "Received Pronunciation" in his blog: he has called it "invidious",[6] a "ridiculously archaic, parochial and question-begging term"[7] and noted that American scholars find the term "quite curious".[8] He used the term "General British" (to parallel "General American") in his 1970s publication of A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of American and British English[9] and in subsequent publications.[10] The name "General British" is adopted in the latest revision of Gimson's Pronunciation of English.[11] Beverley Collins and Inger Mees use the term "Non-Regional Pronunciation" for what is often otherwise called RP, and reserve the term "Received Pronunciation" for the "upper-class speech of the twentieth century".Template:Sfnp Received Pronunciation has sometimes been called "Oxford English", as it used to be the accent of most members of the University of Oxford.[12] The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association uses the name "Standard Southern British". Page 4 reads:

Template:Quote

In her book Kipling's English History (1974) Marghanita Laski refers to this accent as "gentry". "What the Producer and I tried to do was to have each poem spoken in the dialect that was, so far as we could tell, ringing in Kipling's ears when he wrote it. Sometimes the dialect is most appropriately, Gentry. More often, it isn't."[13]

Sub-varieties[]

Faced with the difficulty of defining a single standard of RP, some researchers have tried to distinguish between sub-varieties:

  • Template:Harvtxt proposed Conservative, General, and Advanced; "Conservative RP" referred to a traditional accent associated with older speakers with certain social backgrounds; General RP was considered neutral regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker; and Advanced RP referred to speech of a younger generation of speakers.Template:Sfnp Later editions (e.g., Gimson 2008) use the terms General, Refined and Regional RP. In the latest revision of Gimson's book, the terms preferred are General British (GB), Conspicuous GB and Regional GB.[11]
  • Template:Harvtxt refers to "mainstream RP" and "U-RP"; he suggests that Gimson's categories of Conservative and Advanced RP referred to the U-RP of the old and young respectively. However, Wells stated, "It is difficult to separate stereotype from reality" with U-RP.Template:Sfnp Writing on his blog in February 2013, Wells wrote, "If only a very small percentage of English people speak RP, as Trudgill et al. claim, then the percentage speaking U-RP is vanishingly small" and "If I were redoing it today, I think I'd drop all mention of 'U-RP'".[14]
  • Upton distinguishes between RP (which he equates with Wells's "mainstream RP"), Traditional RP (after Ramsaran 1990), and an even older version which he identifies with Cruttenden's "Refined RP".[15]
  • An article on the website of the British Library refers to Conservative, Mainstream and Contemporary RP.[16]

Characteristics and status[]

Traditionally, Received Pronunciation has been associated with high social class. It was the "everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons whose men-folk [had] been educated at the great public boarding-schools"Template:Sfnp and which conveyed no information about that speaker's region of origin before attending the school. An 1891 teacher's handbook stated, “It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed”.[17] Nevertheless, in the 19th century some British prime ministers, such as William Ewart Gladston, still spoke with some regional features.[18]

Opinions differ over the proportion of Britons who speak RP. Trudgill estimated 3% in 1974,[19] but that rough estimate has been questioned by J. Windsor Lewis.[20] Upton notes higher estimates of 5% (Romaine, 2000) and 10% (Wells, 1982) but refers to these as "guesstimates" not based on robust research.[21] A recent book, English after RP, discusses "the rise and fall of RP" and describes "phonetic developments between RP and contemporary Standard Southern British (SSB)".[22]

The claim that RP is non-regional is disputed, since it is most commonly found in London and the southeast of England. It is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as "the standard accent of English as spoken in the South of England",Template:Sfnp and alternative names such as “Standard Southern British” have been used.[23] Despite RP's historic high social prestige in Britain,Template:Sfnp being seen as the accent of those with power, money, and influence, it may be perceived negatively by some as being associated with undeserved privilege[24]Template:Sfnp and as a symbol of the southeast's political power in Britain.Template:Sfnp Based on a 1997 survey, Jane Stuart-Smith wrote, "RP has little status in Glasgow, and is regarded with hostility in some quarters".[25] A 2007 survey found that residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland tend to dislike RP.[26] It is shunned by some with left-wing political views, who may be proud of having accents more typical of the working classes.Template:Sfnp Since the Second World War, and increasingly since the 1960s, a wider acceptance of regional English varieties has taken hold in education and public life.Template:Sfnp[27]

Use[]

Media[]

In the early days of British broadcasting, speakers of English origin almost universally used RP. In 1926 the BBC established an Advisory Committee on Spoken English with distinguished experts, including Daniel Jones, to advise on the correct pronunciation and other aspects of broadcast language. The Committee proved unsuccessful and was dissolved after the Second World War.[28] An interesting departure from the use of RP involved the BBC's use of Yorkshire-born Wilfred Pickles as a newsreader during the Second World War to distinguish BBC broadcasts from German propaganda.[29][30] Since the Second World War RP has played a much smaller role in broadcast speech. In fact, as Catherine Sangster points out, "there is not (and never was) an official BBC pronunciation standard".[31] RP remains the accent most often heard in the speech of announcers and newsreaders on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and in some TV channels, but non-RP accents are now more widely encountered.[32]

Dictionaries[]

Most English dictionaries published in Britain (including the Oxford English Dictionary) now give phonetically transcribed RP pronunciations for all words. Pronunciation dictionaries represent a special class of dictionary giving a wide range of possible pronunciations: British pronunciation dictionaries are all based on RP, though not necessarily using that name. Daniel Jones transcribed RP pronunciations of words and names in the English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge University Press continues to publish this title, as of 1997 edited by Peter Roach. Two other pronunciation dictionaries are in common use: the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary,[33] compiled by John C. Wells (using the name "Received Pronunciation"), and Clive Upton's Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English,Template:Sfnp (now republished as The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English).[34]

Language teaching[]

Pronunciation forms an essential component of language learning and teaching; a model accent is necessary for learners to aim at, and to act as a basis for description in textbooks and classroom materials. RP has been the traditional choice for teachers and learners of British English.[35] However, the choice of pronunciation model is difficult, and the adoption of RP is in many ways problematic.[36][37]

Phonology[]

Consonants[]

Consonant phonemesTemplate:Sfnp
Labial Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar
Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Stop Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Affricate Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Fricative Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Approximant Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link

Nasals and liquids (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA) may be syllabic in unstressed syllables.Template:Sfnp The consonant in 'row', 'arrow' in RP is generally a postalveolar approximant,Template:Sfnp which would normally be expressed with the sign Template:IPA in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the sign Template:IPA is nonetheless traditionally used for RP in most of the literature on the topic.

Voiceless plosives (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA) are aspirated at the beginning of a syllable, unless a completely unstressed vowel follows. (For example, the Template:IPA is aspirated in "impasse", with primary stress on "-passe", but not "compass", where "-pass" has no stress.) Aspiration does not occur when Template:IPA precedes in the same syllable, as in "spot" or "stop". When a sonorant Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, or Template:IPA follows, this aspiration is indicated by partial devoicing of the sonorant.Template:Sfnp Template:IPA is a fricative when devoiced.Template:Sfnp

Syllable final Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA may be either preceded by a glottal stop (glottal reinforcement) or, in the case of Template:IPA, fully replaced by a glottal stop, especially before a syllabic nasal (bitten Template:IPA).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The glottal stop may be realised as creaky voice; thus, an alternative phonetic transcription of attempt Template:IPA could be Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp

As in other varieties of English, voiced plosives (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA) are partly or even fully devoiced at utterance boundaries or adjacent to voiceless consonants. The voicing distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds is reinforced by a number of other differences, with the result that the two of consonants can clearly be distinguished even in the presence of devoicing of voiced sounds:

  1. Aspiration of voiceless consonants syllable-initially.
  2. Glottal reinforcement of /p, t, k, tʃ/ syllable-finally.
  3. Shortening of vowels before voiceless consonants.

As a result, some authors prefer to use the terms "fortis" and "lenis" in place of "voiceless" and "voiced". However, the latter are traditional and in more frequent usage.

The voiced dental fricative (Template:IPA) is more often a weak dental plosive; the sequence Template:IPA is often realised as Template:IPA (a long dental nasal).Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Template:IPA has velarised allophone (Template:IPA) in the syllable rhyme.Template:Sfnp Template:IPA becomes voiced (Template:IPA) between voiced sounds.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Vowels[]

File:RP English monophthongs chart.svg

Monophthongs of a fairly conservative variety of RP. From Template:Harvtxt

File:Ranges of RP and GA English weak vowels.svg

Ranges of the weak vowels in RP and GA. From Template:Harvtxt

File:RP English allophones on a vowel chart.svg

Allophones of some RP monophthongs, from Template:Harvcoltxt. The red ones occur before dark Template:IPA,[38] and the blue one occurs before velars.[39]

Monophthongs ("Short")
Front Central Back
Close Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Mid Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Open Template:IPA link Template:IPA link

Examples of short vowels: Template:IPA in kit, mirror and rabbit, Template:IPA in foot and cook, Template:IPA in dress and merry, Template:IPA in strut and curry, Template:IPA in trap and marry, Template:IPA in lot and orange, Template:IPA in ago and sofa.

Monophthongs ("Long")
Front Central Back
Close Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link (Template:Audio)
Mid Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Open Template:IPA link

Examples of long vowels: Template:IPA in fleece, Template:IPA in goose, Template:IPA in bear, Template:IPA in nurse and furry, Template:IPA in north, force and thought, Template:IPA in father and start.

The long mid front vowel Template:IPAblink is transcribed with the traditional symbol Template:Angbr IPA in this article. The predominant realisation in contemporary RP is monophthongal.Template:Sfnp

"Long" and "short" vowels[]

Many conventional descriptions of the RP vowel system group the non-diphthongal vowels into the categories "long" and "short". This should not be taken to mean that English has minimal pairs in which the only difference is vowel length. "Long" and "short" are convenient cover terms for a number of phonetic features. The long-short pairings shown above include also differences in vowel quality.

The vowels called "long" high vowels in RP Template:IPA and Template:IPA are slightly diphthongized, and are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs Template:IPA and Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp

Vowels may be phonologically long or short (i.e. belong to the long or the short group of vowel phonemes) but their length is influenced by their context: in particular, they are shortened if a voiceless (fortis) consonant follows in the syllable, so that, for example, the vowel in 'bat' Template:IPA is shorter than the vowel in 'bad' Template:IPA. The process is known as pre-fortis clipping. Thus phonologically short vowels in one context can be phonetically longer than phonologically long vowels in another context.Template:Sfnp For example, the vowel called "long" Template:IPA in 'reach' Template:IPA (which ends with a voiceless consonant) may be shorter than the vowel called "short" Template:IPA in the word 'ridge' Template:IPA (which ends with a voiced consonant), although it should be noted these are two different vowels, not long and short versions of the same vowel (the vowel Template:IPA in 'reach' is not the same vowel as Template:IPA in "ridge." Wiik,Template:Sfnp cited in Cruttenden (2014), published durations of English vowels with a mean value of 17.2 csec. for short vowels before voiced consonants but a mean value of 16.5 csec for long vowels preceding voiceless consonants.[40]

In natural speech, the plosives Template:IPA and Template:IPA often have no audible release utterance-finally, and voiced consonants are partly or completely devoiced (as in Template:IPA); thus the perceptual distinction between pairs of words such as 'bad' and 'bat', or 'seed' and 'seat' rests mostly on vowel length (though the presence or absence of glottal reinforcement provides an additional cue).[41]

Unstressed vowels are both shorter and more centralised than stressed ones. In unstressed syllables occurring before vowels and in final position, contrasts between long and short high vowels are neutralised and short Template:IPA and Template:IPA occur (e.g. happy Template:IPA, throughout Template:IPA).Template:Sfnp The neutralisation is common throughout many English dialects, though the phonetic realisation of e.g. Template:IPA rather than Template:IPA (a phenomenon called happy-tensing) is not as universal.

Unstressed vowels vary in quality:

  • Template:IPA (as in Template:Sc2) ranges from close front Template:IPAblink to close-mid retracted front Template:IPAblink;[42]
  • Template:IPA (as in Template:Sc2) ranges from close advanced back Template:IPAblink to close-mid retracted central Template:IPAblink;[42] according to the phonetician Jane Setter, the typical pronunciation of this vowel is a weakly rounded, mid-centralized close back unrounded vowel, transcribed in the IPA as Template:IPAblink or simply Template:IPAblink;[43]
  • Template:IPA (as in Template:Sc2) ranges from close-mid central Template:IPAblink to open-mid central Template:IPAblink.[42]

Diphthongs and triphthongs[]

File:RP English diphthongs chart.svg

Diphthongs of RP. From Template:Harvtxt

Diphthong Example
Closing
Template:IPA (Template:Audio) Template:IPA bay
Template:IPA (Template:Audio) Template:IPA buy
Template:IPA (Template:Audio) Template:IPA boy
Template:IPA (Template:Audio) Template:IPA beau
Template:IPA Template:IPA bough
Centring
Template:IPA Template:IPA beer
Template:IPA Template:IPA boor
Template:IPA Template:IPA bear
(formerly Template:IPA) Template:IPA boar

The centring diphthongs are gradually being eliminated in RP. The vowel Template:IPA (as in "door", "boar") had largely merged with Template:IPA by the Second World War, and the vowel Template:IPA (as in "poor", "tour") has more recently merged with Template:IPA as well among most speakers,Template:Sfnp although the sound Template:IPA is still found in conservative speakers. See poor–pour merger. The remaining centring glide Template:IPA is increasingly pronounced as a monophthong Template:IPA, although without merging with any existing vowels.Template:Sfnp

The diphthong /əʊ/ is pronounced by some RP speakers in a noticeably different way when it occurs before /l/, if that consonant is syllable-final and not followed by a vowel (the context in which /l/ is pronounced as a "dark l"). The realization of /əʊ/ in this case begins with a more back, rounded and sometimes more open vowel quality; it may be transcribed as [ɔʊ] or [ɒʊ]. It is likely that the backness of the diphthong onset is the result of allophonic variation caused by the raising of the back of the tongue for the /l/. If the speaker has "l-vocalization" the /l/ is realized as a back rounded vowel, which again is likely to cause backing and rounding in a preceding vowel as coarticulation effects. This phenomenon has been discussed in several blogs by John C. Wells.[44][45][46] In the recording included in this article the phrase 'fold his cloak' contains examples of the /əʊ/ diphthong in the two different contexts. The onset of the pre-/l/ diphthong in 'fold' is slightly more back and rounded than that in 'cloak', though the allophonic transcription does not at present indicate this.

RP also possesses the triphthongs Template:IPA as in tire, Template:IPA as in tower, Template:IPA as in lower, Template:IPA as in layer and Template:IPA as in loyal. There are different possible realisations of these items: in slow, careful speech they may be pronounced as a two-syllable triphthong with three distinct vowel qualities in succession, or as a monosyllabic triphthong. In more casual speech the middle vowel may be considerably reduced, by a process known as smoothing, and in an extreme form of this process the triphthong may even be reduced to a single vowel, though this is rare, and almost never found in the case of Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp In such a case the difference between Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA in tower, tire, and tar may be neutralised with all three units realised as Template:IPA or Template:IPA. This type of smoothing is known as the towertire, towertar and tiretar mergers.

TriphthongsTemplate:Sfnp
As two syllables Triphthong Loss of mid-element Further simplified as Example
Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA tire
Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA tower
Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA lower
Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA layer
Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA Template:IPA loyal

BATH vowel[]

Template:See also There are differing opinions as to whether Template:IPA in the BATH lexical set can be considered RP. The pronunciations with Template:IPA are invariably accepted as RP.Template:Sfnp The English Pronouncing Dictionary does not admit Template:IPA in BATH words and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists them with a § marker of non-RP status.[47] John Wells wrote in a blog entry on 16 March 2012 that when growing up in the north of England he used Template:IPA in "bath" and "glass", and considers this the only acceptable phoneme in RP.[48] Others have argued that Template:IPA is too categorical in the north of England to be excluded. Clive Upton believes that Template:IPA in these words must be considered within RP and has called the opposing view "south-centric".Template:Sfnp Upton's Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English gives both variants for BATH words. A. F. Gupta's survey of mostly middle-class students found that Template:IPA was used by almost everyone who was from clearly north of the isogloss for BATH words. She wrote, "There is no justification for the claims by Wells and Mugglestone that this is a sociolinguistic variable in the north, though it is a sociolinguistic variable on the areas on the border [the isogloss between north and south]".Template:Sfnp In a study of speech in West Yorkshire, K. M. Petyt wrote that "the amount of Template:IPA usage is too low to correlate meaningfully with the usual factors", having found only two speakers (both having attended boarding schools in the south) who consistently used Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp

Jack Windsor Lewis has noted that the Oxford Dictionary's position has changed several times on whether to include short Template:IPA within its prescribed pronunciation.[49] The BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names uses only Template:IPA, but its author, Graham Pointon, has stated on his blog that he finds both variants to be acceptable in place names.[50]

Some research has concluded that many people in the North of England have a dislike of the Template:IPA vowel in BATH words. A. F. Gupta wrote, "Many of the northerners were noticeably hostile to Template:IPA, describing it as 'comical', 'snobbish', 'pompous' or even 'for morons'."Template:Sfnp On the subject, K. M. Petyt wrote that several respondents "positively said that they did not prefer the long-vowel form or that they really detested it or even that it was incorrect".Template:Sfnp Mark Newbrook has assigned this phenomenon the name "conscious rejection", and has cited the Template:Sc2 vowel as "the main instance of conscious rejection of RP" in his research in West Wirral.Template:Sfnp

French words[]

John Wells has argued that, as educated British speakers often attempt to pronounce French names in a French way, there is a case for including Template:IPA (as in bon), and Template:IPA and Template:IPA (as in vingt-et-un), as marginal members of the RP vowel system.Template:Sfnp He also argues against including other French vowels on the grounds that very few British speakers succeed in distinguishing the vowels in bon and banc, or in rue and roue.Template:Sfnp

Alternative notation[]

Not all reference sources use the same system of transcription. In particular:

  • Template:IPA as in trap is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in dress is also written Template:IPA.[51]Template:Sfnp
  • Template:IPA as in cup is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in foot is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in nurse is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in price is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in mouse is also written Template:IPA[51]
  • Template:IPA as in square is also written Template:IPA, and is also sometimes treated as a long monophthong Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in face is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in near is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA before Template:IPA in a closed syllable as in goal is also written Template:IPA.[51]
  • Template:IPA as in goose is also written Template:IPA.[51]

Most of these variants are used in the transcription devised by Clive Upton for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) and now used in many other Oxford University Press dictionaries.

The linguist Geoff Lindsey has argued that the system of transcription for RP has become outdated and has proposed a new system as a replacement.[52][53]

Historical variation[]

Like all accents, RP has changed with time. For example, sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was usual for speakers of RP to pronounce the Template:IPA sound, as in land, with a vowel close to Template:IPA, so that land would sound similar to a present-day pronunciation of lend. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even Queen Elizabeth II has changed her pronunciation over the past 50 years, no longer using an Template:IPA-like vowel in words like land.[54] The change in RP may be observed in the home of "BBC English". The BBC accent of the 1950s is distinctly different from today's: a news report from the 1950s is recognisable as such, and a mock-1950s BBC voice is used for comic effect in programmes wishing to satirise 1950s social attitudes such as the Harry Enfield Show and its "Mr. Cholmondeley-Warner" sketches.[55]

File:RP vowel movement.png

A comparison of the formant values of Template:IPA for older (black) and younger (light blue) RP speakers. From Template:Harvtxt

A few illustrative examples of changes in RP during the 20th century and early 21st are given below. A more comprehensive list (using the name 'General British' in place of 'RP') is given in Gimson's Pronunciation of English.[56]

Vowels and diphthongs[]

  • Words such as Template:Sc2, gone, off, often, salt were pronounced with Template:IPA instead of Template:IPA, so that often and orphan were homophones (see lotcloth split). The Queen still uses the older pronunciations,[57] but it is now rare to hear this on the BBC.
  • There used to be a distinction between horse and hoarse with an extra diphthong Template:IPA appearing in words like hoarse, Template:Sc2, and pour.Template:Sfnp The symbols used by Wright are slightly different: the sound in fall, law, saw is transcribed as Template:IPA and that in more, soar, etc. as Template:IPA. Daniel Jones gives an account of the /ɔə/ diphthong, but notes "many speakers of Received English (sic), myself among them, do not use the diphthong at all, but replace it always by /ɔː/".[58]
  • The vowel in words such as tour, moor, sure used to be Template:IPA, but this has merged with Template:IPA for many contemporary speakers. The effect of these two mergers (horse-hoarse and 'moor - 'more') is to bring about a number of three-way mergers of items which were hitherto distinct, such as poor, paw and pore (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA) all becoming Template:IPA.
  • The Template:Sc2 vowel and the starting point of the FACE diphthong has become lowered from mid Template:IPA to open-mid Template:IPA.[59]
  • Before the Second World War, the vowel of cup was a back vowel close to cardinal Template:IPA but has since shifted forward to a central position so that Template:IPA is more accurate; phonemic transcription of this vowel as /ʌ/ is still common largely for historical reasons.Template:Sfnp
  • There has been a change in the pronunciation of the unstressed final vowel of 'happy' as a result of a process known as happY-tensing: an older pronunciation of 'happy' would have had the vowel /ɪ/ whereas a more modern pronunciation has a vowel nearer to /iː/.Template:Sfnp In pronunciation handbooks and dictionaries it is now common to use the symbol /i/ to cover both possibilities.
  • In a number of words where contemporary RP has an unstressed syllable with schwa Template:IPA, older pronunciations had Template:IPA, for instance, the final vowel in the following: kindness, witness, toilet, fortunate.[60]
  • The Template:IPA phoneme (as in fair, care, there) was realized as a centring diphthong Template:IPA in the past, whereas many present-day speakers of RP pronounce it as a long monophthong Template:IPAblink.[60]
  • A change in the symbolization of the GOAT diphthong reflects a change in the pronunciation of the starting point: older accounts of this diphthong describe it as starting with a tongue position not far from cardinal [o], moving towards [u].[61] This was often symbolized as /ou/ or /oʊ/. In modern RP the starting point is unrounded and central, and is symbolized /əʊ/.[62]
  • In a study of a group of speakers born between 1981 and 1993, it was observed that the vowel Template:IPA had shifted upward, approaching Template:IPAblink in quality.Template:Sfnp
  • The vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA have undergone fronting and reduction in the amount of lip-roundingTemplate:Sfnp (phonetically, these can be transcribed Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink, respectively).
  • As noted above, Template:IPA has become more open, near to cardinal Template:IPAblink.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp[62]

Consonants[]

  • For speakers of Received Pronunciation in the late 19th century, it was common for the consonant combination Template:Angbr (as in which, whistle, whether) to be realised as a voiceless labio-velar fricative Template:IPA (also transcribed Template:IPA), as can still be heard in the 21st century in the speech of many speakers in Ireland, Scotland and parts of the USA. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the Template:IPA phoneme has ceased to be a feature of RP, except in an exaggeratedly precise style of speaking.[63]
  • There has been considerable growth in glottalization in RP, most commonly in the form of glottal reinforcement. This has been noted by writers on RP since quite early in the 20th century.[64] Ward notes pronunciations such as [nju:ʔtrəl] for neutral and [reʔkləs] for reckless. Glottalization of /tʃ/ is widespread in present-day RP when at the end of a stressed syllable, as in butcher [bʊʔtʃə].[65]
  • The realization of /r/ as a tap or flap [ɾ] has largely disappeared from RP, though it can be heard in films and broadcasts from the first half of the 20th century. The word very was frequently pronounced [veɾɪ]. The same sound, however, is sometimes pronounced as an allophone of /t/ when it occurs intervocalically after a stressed syllable - the "flapped /t/" that is familiar in American English. Phonetically, this sounds more like /d/, and the pronunciation is sometimes known as /t/-voicing.[66]

Word-specific changes[]

A number of cases can be identified where changes in the pronunciation of individual words, or small groups of words, have taken place.

  • The word Mass (referring to the religious ritual) was often pronounced /mɑːs/ in older versions of RP, but the word is now almost always /mæs/.Template:Citation needed
  • A few words spelt with initial <h> used to be pronounced without the /h/ phoneme that is heard in present-day RP. Examples are hotel and historic: the older pronunciation required 'an' rather than 'a' as a preceding indefinite article, thus 'an hotel' /ən əʊtel/, 'an historic day' /ən ɪstɒrɪk deɪ/.Template:Citation needed

Comparison with other varieties of English[]

  • Like most other varieties of English outside Northern England, RP has undergone the footstrut split (pairs nut/put differ).Template:Sfnp
  • RP is a non-rhotic accent, so Template:IPA does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel (pairs such as caught/court and formally/formerly are homophones, save that formerly may be said with a hint of /r/ to help to differentiate it, particularly where stressed for reasons of emphasising past status e.g. "He was FORMERLY in charge here.").Template:Sfnp
  • Unlike most North American accents of English, RP has not undergone the Marymarrymerry, nearermirror, or hurryfurry mergers: all these words are distinct from each other.Template:Sfnp
  • Unlike many North American accents, RP has not undergone the fatherbother or cotcaught mergers.
  • RP does not have yod-dropping after Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA, but most speakers of RP variably or consistently yod-drop after Template:IPA and Template:IPAnew, tune, dune, resume and enthusiasm are pronounced Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA rather than Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA. This contrasts with many East Anglian and East Midland varieties of English language in England and with many forms of American English, including General American. Hence also pursuit is commonly heard with Template:IPA and revolutionary less so but more commonly than evolution. For a subset of these, a yod has been lost over time: for example, in all of the words beginning suit, however the yod is sometimes deliberately reinserted in historical or stressed contexts such as "a suit in chancery" or "suitable for an aristocrat".
  • The flapped variant of Template:IPA and Template:IPA (as in much of the West Country, Ulster, most North American varieties including General American, Australian English, and the Cape Coloured dialect of South Africa) is not used very often.
  • RP has undergone winewhine merger (so the sequence Template:IPA is not present except among those who have acquired this distinction as the result of speech training).Template:Sfnp The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, based in London, still teaches these two sounds for international breadth as distinct phonemes. They are also distinct from one another in most of Scotland and Ireland, in the northeast of England, and in the southeastern United States.Template:Sfnp
  • Unlike some other varieties of English language in England, there is no h-dropping in words like head or horse.Template:Sfnp In hurried phrases such as "as hard as he could" h-dropping commonly applies to the word he.
  • Unlike most Southern Hemisphere English accents, RP has not undergone the weak-vowel merger, meaning that pairs such as Lenin/Lennon are distinct.Template:Sfnp
  • In traditional RP Template:IPA is an allophone of Template:IPA (it is used intervocalically, after Template:IPA, Template:IPA and sometimes even after Template:IPA, Template:IPA).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Spoken specimen[]

Template:Listen

The Journal of the International Phonetic Association regularly publishes "Illustrations of the IPA" which present an outline of the phonetics of a particular language or accent. It is usual to base the description on a recording of the traditional story of the North Wind and the Sun. There is an IPA illustration of British English (Received Pronunciation).

The speaker (female) is described as having been born in 1953, and educated at Oxford University. To accompany the recording there are three transcriptions: orthographic, phonemic and allophonic.

Phonemic

Template:IPA

Allophonic

Template:IPA

Orthographic

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveller take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveller fold his cloak around him, and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shone out warmly, and immediately the traveller took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.Template:Sfnp

Notable speakers[]

The following people have been described as RP speakers:

  • David Attenborough, broadcaster and naturalist[67]
  • The British Royal Family[68][69]
  • David Cameron, former Prime Minister of the UK (2010–2016)[70]
  • Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, aristocrat and writer[71]
  • Judi Dench, actress[72]
  • Joanna Lumley, actress, TV documentary presenter, campaigner and former model[73]
  • Rupert Everett, actor[74]
  • Lady Antonia Fraser, author and historian[71]
  • Christopher Hitchens, late author and journalist[75]
  • Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK (2019–present)[74]
  • Vanessa Kirby, actress[72]
  • Helen Mirren, actress[76]
  • Carey Mulligan, actress[72]
  • Jeremy Paxman, broadcaster and TV presenter[71]
  • Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons[77]
  • Brian Sewell, art critic[78]
  • Ed Stourton, broadcaster and journalist[79]
  • Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the UK (1979–1990)[80]
  • Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury (2002–2012)[68]
  • Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury (2013–present)[68]

See also[]

  • Accent/Dialect
  • Accents (psychology)
  • English language in the United Kingdom
  • English language spelling reform
  • General American
  • Mid-Atlantic accent
  • Linguistic prescription
  • Prestige (sociolinguistics)
  • U and non-U English

Notes and references[]

  1. bl.uk
  2. Template:Cite book
  3. Template:Cite book
  4. Template:Cite web
  5. Template:Cite web
  6. Template:Cite web
  7. Template:Cite web
  8. Template:Cite web
  9. Template:Cite book
  10. Template:Cite web
  11. 11.0 11.1 Template:Cite book
  12. Template:Cite web
  13. Laski, M., comp. (1974) Kipling's English History. London: BBC; pp. 7, 12 &c.
  14. exotic spices, John Wells's phonetic blog, 28 February 2013
  15. Template:Cite book
  16. Template:Cite web
  17. Template:Cite book
  18. Gladstone's speech was the subject of a book The Best English. A claim for the superiority of Received Standard English, together with notes on Mr. Gladstone's pronunciation, H.C. Kennedy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1934.
  19. Template:Cite web
  20. Template:Cite web
  21. Template:Cite book
  22. Template:Cite book
  23. Template:Cite book
  24. Template:Cite web
  25. Template:Cite book
  26. Template:Cite news
  27. Template:Cite book
  28. Schwyter, J.R. 'Dictating to the Mob: The History of the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English', 2016, Oxford University Press, URL https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198736738.001.0001/acprof-9780198736738
  29. Discussed in Template:Harvtxt, but even then Pickles modified his speech towards RP when reading the news.
  30. Zoe Thornton, The Pickles Experiment – a Yorkshire man reading the news, Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 2012, pp. 4–19.
  31. Sangster, Catherine, 'The BBC, its Pronunciation Unit and 'BBC English' in Roach, P., Setter, J. and Esling, J. (eds) Daniel Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary, 4th Edition, Cambridge University Press, pp. xxviii-xxix
  32. Template:Cite book
  33. Template:Cite book
  34. Template:Cite book
  35. Template:Cite web
  36. Template:Cite book
  37. Template:Cite book
  38. Template:Harvcoltxt
  39. Template:Harvcoltxt
  40. Template:Cite book
  41. Template:Cite book
  42. 42.0 42.1 42.2 Template:Harvcoltxt
  43. Template:Cite web
  44. Template:Cite web
  45. Template:Cite web
  46. Template:Cite web
  47. Template:Cite news
  48. Template:Cite web
  49. Point 18 in Template:Cite web
  50. Template:Cite web
  51. 51.00 51.01 51.02 51.03 51.04 51.05 51.06 51.07 51.08 51.09 51.10 51.11 Template:Cite web
  52. Template:Cite web
  53. Template:Cite web
  54. Template:Cite web
  55. Template:Cite web
  56. Template:Cite book
  57. The Queen's speech to President Sarkozy, "often" pronounced at 4:44.
  58. Template:Cite book
  59. Template:Cite web
  60. 60.0 60.1 Robinson, Jonnie (24 April 2019). "Received Pronunciation". The British Library. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  61. Template:Cite book
  62. 62.0 62.1 Template:Cite web
  63. Template:Cite book
  64. Template:Cite book
  65. Template:Cite book
  66. Template:Cite book
  67. Template:Cite web
  68. 68.0 68.1 68.2 Template:Cite web
  69. Template:Cite web
  70. Template:Cite web
  71. 71.0 71.1 71.2 Template:Cite news
  72. 72.0 72.1 72.2 Template:Cite web
  73. Template:Cite news
  74. 74.0 74.1 Template:Cite web
  75. Template:Cite web
  76. Klaus J. Kohler (2017) "Communicative Functions and Linguistic Forms in Speech Interaction", published by CUP (page 268)
  77. Template:Cite news
  78. Template:Cite news
  79. Template:Cite news
  80. Template:Cite news

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External links[]

Sources of regular comment on RP

Audio files