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Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been argument over such questions 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. The name itself is controversial. 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.
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including ⟨R⟩, ⟨r⟩ in the Latin script and ⟨Р⟩, ⟨p⟩ in the Cyrillic script. They are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by upper- or lower-case variants of Roman ⟨R⟩, ⟨r⟩: ⟨r⟩, ⟨ɾ⟩, ⟨ɹ⟩, ⟨ɻ⟩, ⟨ʀ⟩, ⟨ʁ⟩, ⟨ɽ⟩, and ⟨ɺ⟩. Transcriptions for vocalic or semivocalic realisations of underlying rhotics include the ⟨ə̯⟩ and ⟨ɐ̯⟩.
The phonology of the open back vowels of the English language has undergone changes both overall and with regional variations, through Old and Middle English to the present. The sounds heard in modern English were significantly influenced by the Great Vowel Shift, as well as more recent developments in some dialects such as the cot–caught merger.
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
The close and mid-height front vowels of English have undergone a variety of changes over time and often vary by dialect.
There are a variety of pronunciations in modern English and in historical forms of the language for words spelled with the letter ⟨a⟩. Most of these go back to the low vowel of earlier Middle English, which later developed both long and short forms. The sound of the long vowel was altered in the Great Vowel Shift, but later a new long A developed which was not subject to the shift. These processes have produced the main four pronunciations of ⟨a⟩ in present-day English: those found in the words trap, face, father and square. Separate developments have produced additional pronunciations in words like wash, talk and comma.
This chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent English language pronunciations.
In English, many vowel shifts affect only vowels followed by in rhotic dialects, or vowels that were historically followed by that has been elided in non-rhotic dialects. Most of them involve the merging of vowel distinctions and so fewer vowel phonemes occur before than in other positions of a word.
Most dialects of modern English have two close back vowels: the near-close near-back rounded vowel found in words like foot, and the close back rounded vowel found in words like goose. The STRUT vowel, which historically was back, is often central as well. This article discusses the history of these vowels in various dialects of English, focusing in particular on phonemic splits and mergers involving these sounds.
Australian English (AuE) is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally homogeneous language varieties in the world. Australian English is notable for vowel length contrasts which are absent from most English dialects.
In the history of English phonology, there have been many diachronic sound changes affecting vowels, especially involving phonemic splits and mergers.
This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of the English language which concern consonants.
English diphthongs have undergone many changes since the Old and Middle English periods. The sound changes discussed here involved at least one phoneme which historically was a diphthong.
One aspect of the differences between American and British English is that of specific word pronunciations, as described in American and British English pronunciation differences. However, there are also differences in some of the basic pronunciation patterns between the standard dialects of each country. The standard varieties for each are in fact generalizations: for the U.S., a loosely defined spectrum of unmarked varieties called General American and, for Britain, a collection of prestigious varieties most common in southeastern England, ranging from upper- to middle-class Received Pronunciation accents, which together here are abbreviated "RP". However, other regional accents in each country also show differences, for which see regional accents of English speakers.
The Cardiff accent, also known as Cardiff English, is the regional accent of English, and a variety of Welsh English, as spoken in and around the city of Cardiff, and is somewhat distinctive in Wales, compared with other Welsh accents. Its pitch is described as somewhat lower than that of Received Pronunciation, whereas its intonation is closer to dialects of England rather than Wales.
Barbadian English or BajanEnglish is a dialect of the English language as used by Barbadians (Bajans) and by Barbadian diasporas. It should not be confused with Bajan Creole, which is an English-based creole language.
This article covers the phonological system of New Zealand English. While New Zealanders speak differently depending on their level of cultivation, this article covers the accent as it is spoken by educated speakers, unless otherwise noted. The IPA transcription is one designed by Bauer et al. (2007) specifically to faithfully represent a New Zealand accent, which this article follows in most aspects.
Rhoticity in the English language is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant in certain contexts by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic accents, the historical English sound is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic accents, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments: when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, but a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound and pronounces them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/.
This article covers the phonological system of South African English (SAE) as spoken primarily by White South Africans. While there is some variation among speakers, SAE typically has a number of features in common with English as it is spoken in southern England, such as non-rhoticity and the TRAP–BATH split.
Abercraf English is a dialect of Welsh English, primarily spoken in the village of Abercraf, located in the far south of the traditional county of Brecknockshire, currently administered as part of the unitary authority of Powys.
References
- 1 2 Wells (1982), p. xviii.
- 1 2 Mesthrie, Rajend (2000). "Regional Dialectology". Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press, p. 50.
- ↑ Armstrong, Nigel (2001). Social and stylistic variation in spoken French: a comparative approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 100ff. ISBN 90-272-1839-0.
- ↑ Raymond Hickey (29 August 2011). The Dialects of Irish: Study of a Changing Landscape. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-023830-3.
- ↑ Robert McColl Millar (2007). Northern and insular Scots. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2316-7.
- ↑ Wells (1982).
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 117.
- 1 2 Wells (1982), p. 118.
- 1 2 3 Wells (1982), p. 123.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 165.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 122.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 136.
- ↑ Wells (1982), pp. 120–1.
- ↑ Wells (1982), pp. 257–8, 294, 299.
- ↑ Cruttenden (2014), pp. 84, 349–50.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 499.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 498.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 124.
- ↑ Wells (1982), p. 500.
- 1 2 "John Wells's phonetic blog: lexical sets". 2010-02-02. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
- ↑ Hickey, Raymond (2004). A sound atlas of Irish English. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 54–55. ISBN 3-11-018298-X.
- ↑ Stoddart, Upton and Widowson in Urban Voices, Arnold, London, 1999, page 76
- ↑ Tollfree in Urban Voices, Arnold, London, 1999, page 165
- ↑ "John Wells's phonetic blog: the evidence of the vows". 2011-05-03. Retrieved 2014-02-17.
- ↑ Schneider et al. (2004), pp. 42–3, 53–4, 101–2, 137, 187, 236, 263–4, 273, 285, 290, 294, 303–4, 340, 359, 369, 395, 410, 460, 504–5, 515, 518, 585, 761–2, 849, 880, 893, 928, 945, 947, 956, 968, 987, 993, 1006, 1024, 1038, 1050.