Received Pronunciation

Last updated

Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English. [1] [2] 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. [3] The name itself is controversial. RP is an accent, so the study of RP is concerned only with matters of pronunciation, while other areas relevant to the study of language standards, such as vocabulary, grammar, and style, are not considered.

Contents

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"; for the second edition in 1926 he wrote: "In what follows I call it Received Pronunciation, for want of a better term." [4] However, the term had been used much earlier by P. S. Du Ponceau in 1818 [5] and the Oxford English Dictionary cites quotations back to about 1710. [6] A similar term, received standard, was coined by Henry C. K. Wyld in 1927. [7] 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". [8]

Although a form of Standard English had been established in the City of London by the end of the 15th century, it did not begin to resemble RP until the late 19th century. [9] [10] RP has most in common with the dialects of what has been termed the South East Midlands, in particular the Golden Triangle of universities, namely London, Oxford and Cambridge, and the public schools that fed them, such as Eton, Harrow and Rugby. [11] In 1922, the BBC selected RP as its broadcasting standard, citing its being widely understood globally as a reason. [11]

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'." [12]

Alternative names

Some linguists have used the term "RP" while expressing reservations about its suitability. [13] [14] [15] 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. [16] Other writers have also used the name "BBC Pronunciation". [17] [18] The term 'The Queen's English' has also been used by some writers. [11]

The phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis frequently criticised the name "Received Pronunciation" in his blog: he has called it "invidious", [19] a "ridiculously archaic, parochial and question-begging term" [20] and noted that American scholars find the term "quite curious". [21] He used the term "General British" (to parallel "General American") in his 1970s publication of A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of American and British English [22] and in subsequent publications. [23] The name "General British" is adopted in the latest revision of Gimson's Pronunciation of English. [24] 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". [25] Received Pronunciation has sometimes been called "Oxford English", as it used to be the accent of most members of the University of Oxford. [11] The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association uses the name "Standard Southern British". Page 4 reads:

Standard Southern British (where 'Standard' should not be taken as implying a value judgment of 'correctness') is the modern equivalent of what has been called 'Received Pronunciation' ('RP'). It is an accent of the south east of England which operates as a prestige norm there and (to varying degrees) in other parts of the British Isles and beyond. [26]

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." [27]

Sub-varieties

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

Prevalence and perceptions

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" [33] 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". [34] Nevertheless, in the 19th century some British prime ministers, such as William Ewart Gladstone, still spoke with some regional features. [35]

Opinions differ over the proportion of Britons who speak RP. Trudgill estimated 3% in 1974, [36] but that rough estimate has been questioned by J. Windsor Lewis. [37] Upton notes higher estimates of 5% (Romaine, 2000) and 10% (Wells, 1982) but refers to these as "guesstimates" not based on robust research. [38]

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", [39] and alternative names such as "Standard Southern British" have been used. [40] Despite RP's historic high social prestige in Britain, [41] being seen as the accent of those with power, money, and influence, it may be perceived negatively by some as being associated with undeserved, or accidental, privilege [42] [43] and as a symbol of the southeast's political power in Britain. [43] Based on a 1997 survey, Jane Stuart-Smith wrote, "RP has little status in Glasgow, and is regarded with hostility in some quarters". [44] A 2007 survey found that residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland tend to dislike RP. [45] It is shunned by some with left-wing political views, who may be proud of having accents more typical of the working classes. [46]

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. [47] [48] Nonetheless, surveys from 1969 to 2022 consistently show that RP is perceived as the most prestigious accent of English in the United Kingdom. In 2022, 25% of British adults reported being mocked for their regional accent at work, and 46% in social situations. [2]

Use

Media

In the early days of British broadcasting speakers of English origin almost universally used RP. The first director-general of the BBC, Lord Reith, encouraged the use of a 'BBC accent' because it was a "style or quality of English which would not be laughed at in any part of the country". He distinguished the BBC accent from the 'Oxford accent', to which he was "vehemently opposed". [49] 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. [50] While the BBC did advise its speakers on pronunciation, there was never a formalised official BBC pronunciation standard. [51] A notable departure from the use of pure RP came with the Yorkshire-born newsreader Wilfred Pickles during the Second World War; his accent allowing listeners to more clearly distinguish BBC broadcasts from German propaganda, though Pickles had modified his accent to be closer to RP. [52] [53] Since the Second World War RP has played a much smaller role in broadcast speech. 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. [54]

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, [55] compiled by John C. Wells (using the name "Received Pronunciation"), and Clive Upton's Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, [56] (now republished as The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English). [57]

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. [58] However, the choice of pronunciation model is difficult, and the adoption of RP is in many ways problematic. [59] [60]

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes [61]
Labial Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar
Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Stop p b t d k ɡ
Affricate
Fricative f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
Approximant l r j w

Nasals and liquids (/m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, /l/) may be syllabic in unstressed syllables. [62] The consonant /r/ in RP is generally a postalveolar approximant, [62] which would normally be expressed with the sign [ɹ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the sign /r/ is nonetheless traditionally used for RP in most of the literature on the topic.

Voiceless plosives (/p/, /t/, /k/, /tʃ/) are aspirated at the beginning of a syllable, unless a completely unstressed vowel follows. (For example, the /p/ is aspirated in "impasse", with primary stress on "-passe", but not "compass", where "-pass" has no stress.) Aspiration does not occur when /s/ precedes in the same syllable, as in "spot" or "stop". When a sonorant /l/, /r/, /w/, or /j/ follows, this aspiration is indicated by partial devoicing of the sonorant. [63] /r/ is a fricative when devoiced. [62]

Syllable final /p/, /t/, /tʃ/, and /k/ may be either preceded by a glottal stop (glottal reinforcement) or, in the case of /t/, fully replaced by a glottal stop, especially before a syllabic nasal (bitten[ˈbɪʔn̩]). [63] [64] The glottal stop may be realised as creaky voice; thus, an alternative phonetic transcription of attempt[əˈtʰemʔt] could be [əˈtʰemm̰t]. [62]

As in other varieties of English, voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /ɡ/, /dʒ/) 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:

As a result, some authors prefer to use the terms fortis and lenis [65] in place of voiceless and voiced. However, the latter are traditional and in more frequent usage.

The voiced dental fricative (/ð/) is more often a weak dental plosive; the sequence /nð/ is often realised as [n̪n̪] (a long dental nasal). [66] [67] [68] /l/ has velarised allophone ([ɫ]) in the syllable rhyme. [69] /h/ becomes voiced ([ɦ]) between voiced sounds. [70] [71]

Vowels

Monophthongs of a fairly conservative variety of RP. From Roach (2004, p. 242) RP English monophthongs chart.svg
Monophthongs of a fairly conservative variety of RP. From Roach (2004 , p. 242)
Monophthongs of a modern variety of RP. Adapted from Cruttenden (2014) Modern General British monophthong chart.svg
Monophthongs of a modern variety of RP. Adapted from Cruttenden (2014)
Ranges of the weak vowels in RP and GA. From Wells (2008, p. XXV) Ranges of RP and GA English weak vowels.svg
Ranges of the weak vowels in RP and GA. From Wells (2008 , p. XXV)
Allophones of some RP monophthongs, from Collins & Mees (2003:92, 95, 101). The red ones occur before dark /l/, and the blue one occurs before velars. RP English allophones on a vowel chart.svg
Allophones of some RP monophthongs, from Collins & Mees (2003 :92, 95, 101). The red ones occur before dark /l/, and the blue one occurs before velars.
Monophthongs ("Short")
Front Central Back
unroundedrounded
Close ɪ ʊ
Mid e ə ʌ ɒ
Open æ

Examples of short vowels: /ɪ/ in kit, mirror and rabbit, /ʊ/ in foot and cook, /e/ in dress and merry, /ʌ/ in strut and curry, /æ/ in trap and marry, /ɒ/ in lot and orange, /ə/ in ago and sofa.

Monophthongs ("Long")
Front Central Back
Close ɔː
Mid ɛː ɜː
Open ɑː

Examples of long vowels: /iː/ in fleece, /uː/ in goose, /ɛː/ in bear, /ɜː/ in nurse and furry, /ɔː/ in north, force and thought, /ɑː/ in father and start.

The long mid front vowel /ɛː/ is elsewhere transcribed with the traditional symbols ɛə, eə. The predominant realisation in contemporary RP is monophthongal. [74]

"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 RP 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 /iː/ and /uː/ are slightly diphthongized, and are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs [ɪi] and [ʊu]. [75]

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' [bæʔt] is shorter than the vowel in 'bad' [bæd]. 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. [62] For example, the vowel called "long" /iː/ in 'reach' /riːtʃ/ (which ends with a voiceless consonant) may be shorter than the vowel called "short" /ɪ/ in the word 'ridge' /rɪdʒ/ (which ends with a voiced consonant). Wiik, [76] cited in ( Cruttenden 2014 ), published durations of English vowels with a mean value of 172 ms for short vowels before voiced consonants but a mean value of 165 ms for long vowels preceding voiceless consonants. [77]

In natural speech, the plosives /t/ and /d/ often have no audible release utterance-finally, and voiced consonants are partly or completely devoiced (as in [b̥æd̥]); 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). [78]

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 [i] and [u] occur (e.g. happy[ˈhæpi], throughout[θɹuˈaʊʔt]). [79] The neutralisation is common throughout many English dialects, though the phonetic realisation of e.g. [i] rather than [ɪ] (a phenomenon called happy-tensing) is not as universal.

According to Jane Setter, the typical pronunciation of the short [u] is a weakly rounded near-close near-back rounded vowel [ ʊ̜ ]. [80]

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Diphthongs of RP. From Roach (2004, p. 242) RP English diphthongs chart.svg
Diphthongs of RP. From Roach (2004 , p. 242)
Diphthong Example
Closing
/eɪ/ /beɪ/bay
/aɪ/ /baɪ/buy
/ɔɪ/ /bɔɪ/boy
/əʊ/ /bəʊ/beau
/aʊ//baʊ/bough
Centring
/ɪə/ /bɪə/beer
/ʊə//bʊə/boor

The centring diphthongs are gradually being eliminated in RP. The vowel /ɔə/ (as in door, boar) had largely merged with /ɔː/ by the Second World War, and the vowel /ʊə/ (as in poor, tour) has more recently merged with /ɔː/ as well among most speakers, [81] although the sound /ʊə/ is still found in conservative speakers, and in less common words such as boor. See CUREFORCE merger. More recently /ɛə/ has become a pure long vowel /ɛː/, as explained above. /ɪə/ is increasingly pronounced as a monophthong [ɪː], although without merging with any existing vowels. [82]

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. [83] [84] [85] 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".

RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in tire, /aʊə/ as in tower, /əʊə/ as in lower, /eɪə/ as in layer and /ɔɪə/ as in loyal. There are different possible realisations of these items: in slow, careful speech they may be pronounced as two syllables 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 long vowel. [86] In such a case the difference between /aʊə/, /aɪə/, and /ɑː/ in tower, tire, and tar may be neutralised with all three units realised as [ɑː] or [äː]. This type of smoothing is known as the towertire, towertar and tiretar mergers.

Triphthongs [64]
As two syllablesTriphthongLoss of mid-elementFurther simplified asExample
[aɪ.ə][aɪə][aːə][aː]tire
[ɑʊ.ə][ɑʊə][ɑːə][ɑː]tower
[əʊ.ə][əʊə][əːə][ɜː]lower
[eɪ.ə][eɪə][ɛːə][ɛː]layer
[ɔɪ.ə][ɔɪə][ɔːə][ɔː]loyal

BATH vowel

There are differing opinions as to whether /æ/ in the BATH lexical set can be considered RP. The pronunciations with /ɑː/ are invariably accepted as RP. [87] The English Pronouncing Dictionary does not admit /æ/ in BATH words and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists them with a § marker of non-RP status. [88] John Wells wrote in a blog entry on 16 March 2012 that when growing up in the north of England he used /ɑː/ in "bath" and "glass", and considers this the only acceptable phoneme in RP. [89] Others have argued that /æ/ is too categorical in the north of England to be excluded. Clive Upton believes that /æ/ in these words must be considered within RP and has called the opposing view "south-centric". [90] 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 /æ/ 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]". [91] In a study of speech in West Yorkshire, K. M. Petyt wrote that "the amount of /ɑː/ 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 /ɑː/. [92]

Jack Windsor Lewis has noted that the Oxford Dictionary's position has changed several times on whether to include short /æ/ within its prescribed pronunciation. [93] The BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names uses only /ɑː/, but its author, Graham Pointon, has stated on his blog that he finds both variants to be acceptable in place names. [94]

Some research has concluded that many people in the North of England have a dislike of the /ɑː/ vowel in BATH words. A. F. Gupta wrote, "Many of the northerners were noticeably hostile to /ɡrɑːs/, describing it as 'comical', 'snobbish', 'pompous' or even 'for morons'." [91] 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". [95] Mark Newbrook has assigned this phenomenon the name "conscious rejection", and has cited the BATH vowel as "the main instance of conscious rejection of RP" in his research in West Wirral. [96]

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 /ɒ̃/ (as in bon), and /æ̃/ and /ɜ̃:/ (as in vingt-et-un), as marginal members of the RP vowel system. [97] He also argues against including other French vowels on the grounds that not many British speakers succeed in distinguishing the vowels in bon and banc, or in rue and roue. [97] However, the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary draws a distinction between /ɒ̃/ (there rendered as /ɔ̃ː/) and the unrounded /ɑ̃ː/ of banc for a total of four nasal vowels. [98]

Alternative notation

Not all reference sources use the same system of transcription. Clive Upton devised a modified system for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993), changing five symbols from the traditional Gimson system, and this is now used in many other Oxford University Press dictionaries; the differences are shown in the table below.

Upton's reform
Example wordTraditional symbolUpton's reform symbol
dress/e//ɛ/
trap/æ//a/
nurse/ɜː//əː/
square/eə//ɛː/
price/aɪ//ʌɪ/

Linguist Geoff Lindsey has argued that the system of transcription for RP has become outdated and has proposed a new system (which he calls Standard Southern British English, or SSB) as a replacement. [99] [100]

Lindsey's system is as follows—differences between it and standard transcription are depicted with the usual transcription in brackets.

Lindsey's monophthongs and diphthongs
ShortLong (triggering r-liaison)+j diphthong+w diphthong
/a/ (æ)/ɑː//ɑj/ (aɪ)/aw/ (aʊ)
/ɛ/ (e)/ɛː//ɛj/ (eɪ)
/ɪ//ɪː/ (ɪə)/ɪj/ (iː)
/ɔ/ (ɒ)/oː/ (ɔː)/oj/ (ɔɪ)
/ɵ/ (ʊ)/ɵː/ (ʊə)/ʉw/ (uː)
/ə//əː/ (ɜː)/əw/ (əʊ)
/ʌ/

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 /æ/ sound, as in land, with a vowel close to [ɛ], 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 shifted her pronunciation over the course of her reign, ceasing to use an [ɛ]-like vowel in words like land. [101] 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. Cholmondley-Warner" sketches. [102] [ citation needed ]

A comparison of the formant values of /i: ae a: o: U u:/
for older (black) and younger (light blue) RP speakers. From de Jong et al. (2007, p. 1814) RP vowel movement.png
A comparison of the formant values of /iːæɑːɔːʊuː/ for older (black) and younger (light blue) RP speakers. From de Jong et al. (2007 , p. 1814)

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. [103]

Vowels and diphthongs

KeywordOlder RPTraditional

RP

Modern

RP

commAə
lettER
TRAPæa
BATHɑ̟ː
PALM
START
LOTɒɔ
CLOTHɔːo̞ː
THOUGHTo̞ː
NORTH
FORCE(ɔə~)ɔː
STRUTʌ̈ɐɐ~ʌ̈~ɑ̈
FOOTʊɵ
GOOSEʊu̟ʊ̈ʉ~ɪ̈ɨ
CUREʊəo̞ː
DRESSɛ
KITɪɪ̞
happYɪi
FLEECEɪi
NEARɪəɪə~ɪː
NURSEəː~ɜː
FACEe̞ɪɛɪ
SQUAREɛəɛə~ɛː
GOATö̞ʊəʊəʉ
PRICEäɪɑ̟ɪ
MOUTHäʊɑ̟ʊ
CHOICEɔɪɔ̝ɪ

Consonants

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.

Comparison with other varieties of English

Spoken specimen

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 female speaker 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

ðəˈnɔːθˈwɪndənðəˈsʌndɪˈspjuːtɪŋˈwɪtʃwəzðəˈstrɒŋɡə,wenəˈtrævl̩əˌkeɪməˌlɒŋˈræptɪnəˈwɔːmˈkləʊk.ðeɪəˈɡriːdðətðəˈwʌnhuˈfɜːstsəkˈsiːdɪdɪnˈmeɪkɪŋðəˈtrævləˌteɪkhɪzˈkləʊkɒfʃʊdbikənˌsɪdədˈstrɒŋɡəðənðiˈʌðə.ˈðenðəˌnɔːθwɪndˈbluːəzˈhɑːdəziˈkʊd,bətðəˈmɔːhiˈbluːðəˌmɔːˈkləʊslidɪdðəˈtrævləˈfəʊldhɪzˌkləʊkəˈraʊndhɪm,ændətˈlɑːstðəˈnɔːθwɪndˌɡeɪvˈʌpðiəˈtempt.ˈðenðəˈsʌnˌʃɒnaʊtˈwɔːmli,ændəˈmiːdiətliðəˈtrævləˈtʊkɒfɪzˈkləʊk.ˌsəʊðəˈnɔːθˈwɪnwəzəˈblaɪdʒdkənˈfesðətðəˈsʌnwəzðəˈstrɒŋɡr̩əvðəˈtuː.

Allophonic

ðəˈnɔːθˈw̥ɪndən̪n̪əˈsʌndɪˈspj̊u̟ːtɪŋˈwɪʔtʃwəzðəˈstɹ̥ɒŋɡə,wenəˈtɹ̥ævl̩əˌkʰeɪməˌlɒŋˈɹæptʰɪnəˈwɔːmˈkl̥əʊkˣ.ðeɪəˈɡɹ̥iːd̥ð̥əʔðəˈwʌnɦuˈfɜːssəkˈsiːdɪdɪmˈmeɪxɪŋðəˈtɹ̥ævləˌtʰeɪk̟x̟ɪsˈkl̥əʊkɒfʃʊbbikʰənˌsɪdəd̥ˈstɹɒŋɡəð̥ən̪n̪iˈʌðə.ˈðen̪n̪əˌnɔːθw̥ɪndˈbluːəz̥ˈhɑːd̥əsiˈkʊd,bət̬ð̥əˈmɔːhiˈblu̟ːðəˌmɔˈkl̥əʊsl̥id̥ɨdð̥əˈtɹ̥æv̥ləˈfəʊld̥hɪz̥ˌkl̥əʊkʰəˈɹaʊndhɪm,ændətˈl̥ɑːstð̥əˈnɔːθw̥ɪndˌɡ̊eɪv̥ˈʌpði̥əˈtʰemʔt.ˈðen̪n̪əˈsʌnˌʃɒnaʊtˈwɔːmli,ændəˈmiːdiətl̥ið̥əˈtɹ̥ævləˈtʰʊkɒfɪz̥ˈkl̥əʊkˣ.ˌsəʊðəˈnɔːθˈw̥ɪnwəz̥əˈblaɪdʒ̊tʰɵkʰənˈfesð̥əʔð̥əˈsʌnwəz̥z̥əˈstɹ̥ɒŋɡɹ̩əv̥ð̥əˈtʰu̟ː.

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. [135]

Notable speakers

David Attenborough's voice
Gyles Brandreth's voice
Stephen Fry's voice

The following people have been described as RP speakers:

See also

Notes and references

  1. Wells (2008), p. xix, paragraph 2.1.
  2. 1 2 "Bias against working-class and regional accents has not gone away, report finds". The Guardian. 3 November 2022. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  3. Cruttenden (2014), pp. 74–81.
  4. Jones (1926), p. ix.
  5. DuPonceau (1818), p. 259.
  6. "Oxford English Dictionary". Oxford English Dictionary (subscription required). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
  7. Wyld (1927), p. 23.
  8. Ellis (1869), p. 3.
  9. Crystal (2003), pp. 54–5.
  10. Crystal (2005), pp. 243–4.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Robinson, Jonnie. "Received Pronunciation". British Library. Archived from the original on 29 August 2019. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
  12. "Regional Voices – Received Pronunciation". British Library.
  13. Cruttenden (2008), pp. 77–80.
  14. Jenkins (2000), pp. 13–6.
  15. Wells (1982), p. 117.
  16. Jones (2011), p. vi.
  17. Ladefoged (2004).
  18. Trudgill (1999).
  19. Jack Windsor Lewis. "Review of the Daniel Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary 15th edition 1997". Yek.me.uk. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  20. Jack Windsor Lewis. "Ovvissly not one of us – Review of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary". Yek.me.uk. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  21. Jack Windsor Lewis (19 February 1972). "British non-dialectal accents". Yek.me.uk. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  22. Windsor Lewis, Jack (1972). A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of British and American English. Oxford. ISBN   0-19-431123-6.
  23. Jack Windsor Lewis. "Review of CPD in ELTJ". Yek.me.uk. Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  24. 1 2 Cruttenden (2014), pp. 80–2.
  25. Collins & Mees (2003), pp. 3–4.
  26. International Phonetic Association (1999), p. 4.
  27. Laski, M., comp. (1974) Kipling's English History. London: BBC; pp. 7, 12 &c.
  28. Schmitt (2007), p. 323.
  29. Wells (1982).
  30. exotic spices, John Wells's phonetic blog, 28 February 2013
  31. Kortmann, Bernd (2004). Handbook of Varieties of English: Phonology; Morphology, Syntax. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 217–230. ISBN   978-3110175325 . Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  32. British Library. "Sounds Familiar" . Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  33. Jones (1917), p. viii.
  34. Burrell, A. (1891). Recitation: a Handbook for Teachers in Public Elementary School. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  35. 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.
  36. Trudgill, Peter (8 December 2000). "Sociolinguistics of Modern RP". University College London. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
  37. Windsor Lewis, Jack. "A Notorious Estimate". JWL's Blogs. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  38. Upton, Clive (21 January 2019). "Chapter 14: British English". In Reed, Marnie; Levis, John (eds.). The Handbook of English Pronunciation. John Wiley & Son. p. 251. ISBN   978-1119055266.
  39. Pearsall (1999), p. xiv.
  40. International Phonetic Association (1999).
  41. Hudson (1981), p. 337.
  42. Crystal, David (March 2007). "Language and Time". BBC voices. BBC. Retrieved 18 April 2011.
  43. 1 2 McArthur (2002), p. 43.
  44. Stuart-Smith, Jane (1999). "Glasgow: accent and voice quality". In Foulkes, Paul; Docherty, Gerard (eds.). Urban Voices. Arnold. p. 204. ISBN   0340706082.
  45. "Scottish and Irish accents top list of favourites". The Independent. 13 May 2007.
  46. McArthur (2002), p. 49.
  47. Fishman (1977), p. 319.
  48. Cruttenden (2014), p. 78.
  49. 1967: John REITH explains the "BBC ACCENT" | Lord Reith Looks Back | BBC Archive , retrieved 7 October 2022
  50. Schwyter, Jürg R. (2016). "Schwyter, J.R. 'Dictating to the Mob: The History of the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English', 2016, Oxford University Press". Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198736738.001.0001. ISBN   978-0-19-873673-8.
  51. 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
  52. Discussed in Mugglestone (2003 , pp. 277–8), but even then Pickles modified his speech towards RP when reading the news.
  53. Zoe Thornton, The Pickles Experiment – a Yorkshire man reading the news, Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 2012, pp. 4–19.
  54. Roach, Peter; Setter, Jane; Esling, John (2011). Daniel Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge. p. xii.
  55. Wells (2008).
  56. Upton, Kretzschmar & Konopka (2001).
  57. Upton, Clive; Kretzschmar, William (2017). The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. Routledge. ISBN   9781138125667.
  58. "Case Studies – Received Pronunciation". British Library. 13 March 2007. Retrieved 27 January 2019. As well as being a living accent, RP is also a theoretical linguistic concept. It is the accent on which phonemic transcriptions in dictionaries are based, and it is widely used (in competition with General American) for teaching English as a foreign language.
  59. Brown, Adam (1991). Pronunciation Models. Singapore University Press. ISBN   9971-69-157-4.
  60. Cruttenden (2014), pp. 325–52.
  61. Roach (2004), pp. 240–1.
  62. 1 2 3 4 5 Roach (2004), p. 241.
  63. 1 2 Roach (2004), p. 240.
  64. 1 2 Gimson (1970).
  65. Stahlke, Herbert F. W. (1 January 2003). "Fortis and lenis obstruents in English". WORD. 54 (2): 191–216. doi: 10.1080/00437956.2003.12068832 . S2CID   141381109.
  66. Lodge (2009), pp. 148–9.
  67. Shockey (2003), pp. 43–4.
  68. Roach (2009), p. 112.
  69. Halle & Mohanan (1985), p. 65.
  70. Jones (1967), p. 201.
  71. Cruttenden (2008), p. 204.
  72. Collins & Mees (2003 :95, 101)
  73. Collins & Mees (2003 :92)
  74. Cruttenden (2014), p. 118.
  75. Roach (2009), p. 24.
  76. Wiik (1965).
  77. Cruttenden (2014), p. 101.
  78. Cruttenden (2014).
  79. Roach (2004), pp. 241, 243.
  80. "A World of Englishes: Is /ə/ "real"?". 19 June 2013. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  81. Roca & Johnson (1999), p. 200.
  82. Cruttenden (2014), p. 154.
  83. Wells, John. "Blog July 2006" . Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  84. Wells, John. "Blog July 2009" . Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  85. Wells, John. "Blog Nov 2009" . Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  86. Roach (2009), pp. 18–9.
  87. Wells (1982), pp. 203ff.
  88. Jack Windsor Lewis (1990). "Review of Longman Pronunciation Dictionary". The Times.
  89. Wells, John (16 March 2012). "English places". John Wells's phonetic blog.
  90. Upton (2004), pp. 222–3.
  91. 1 2 Gupta (2005), p. 25.
  92. Petyt (1985), pp. 166–7.
  93. Point 18 in Jack Windsor Lewis. "The General Central Northern Non-Dialectal Pronunciation of England" . Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  94. Pointon, Graham (20 April 2010). "Olivia O'Leary". Linguism: Language in a word.
  95. Petyt (1985), p. 286.
  96. Newbrook (1999), p. 101.
  97. 1 2 Wells (2008), p. xxix.
  98. 1 2 Roach (2011).
  99. Lindsey, Geoff (8 March 2012). "The British English vowel system". speech talk.
  100. Wells, John (12 March 2012). "the Lindsey system". John Wells's phonetic blog.
  101. Language Log (5 December 2006). "Happy-tensing and coal in sex".
  102. Enfield, Harry. "Mr Cholmondley-Warner on Life in 1990". YouTube . Archived from the original on 30 October 2021. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  103. Cruttenden (2014), pp. 83–5.
  104. The Queen's speech to President Sarkozy, "often" pronounced at 4:40.
  105. Wright (1905), p. 5, §12
  106. Jones (1967), p. 115, para 458.
  107. Lindsey, Geoff (3 June 2012). "Funny old vowels" . Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  108. Roca & Johnson (1999), pp. 135, 186.
  109. Cruttenden (2014), p. 122.
  110. Lindsey (2019), p. 22.
  111. Trudgill (1999), p. 62.
  112. 1 2 Robinson, Jonnie (24 April 2019). "Received Pronunciation". The British Library. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  113. Jones, Daniel (1957). An outline of English phonetics (9th ed.). Heffer. p. 101, para 394. ISBN   978-0521210980.
  114. 1 2 Wells, John (27 January 1994). "Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation?" . Retrieved 24 August 2011.
  115. Wikström (2013), p. 45. "It seems to be the case that younger RP or near-RP speakers typically use a closer quality, possibly approaching Cardinal 6 considering that the quality appears to be roughly intermediate between that used by older speakers for the LOT vowel and that used for the THOUGHT vowel, while older speakers use a more open quality, between Cardinal Vowels 13 and 6."
  116. Collins & Mees (2013), p. 207.
  117. de Jong et al. (2007), pp. 1814–5.
  118. Wells (1982), pp. 228–9.
  119. Ward, Ida (1939). The Phonetics of English (3rd ed.). pp. 135–6, para 250.
  120. Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger (2019). Practical English Phonetics and Phonology (4th ed.). Routledge. p. 67. ISBN   978-1-138-59150-9.
  121. Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger (2019). Practical English Phonetics and Phonology (4th ed.). Routledge. p. 69. ISBN   978-1-138-59150-9.
  122. Walker, John (1824). A critical pronouncing dictionary. p. 25.
  123. "an". The Chambers Dictionary (9th ed.). Chambers. 2003. ISBN   0-550-10105-5.
  124. Simpson, J. A., & Weiner, E. S. C. (1989). Oxford English Dictionary (Second ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
  125. Wordsworth, Dot (6 April 2017). "An historic | The Spectator". www.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
  126. Wells (1982), pp. 196 ff.
  127. Wells (1982), p. 76.
  128. Wells (1982), p. 245.
  129. 1 2 Wells (1982), pp. 228 ff.
  130. Wells (1982), pp. 253 ff.
  131. Wells (1982), pp. 167 ff.
  132. Wise (1957), p. 242.
  133. Cruttenden (2008), p. 221.
  134. Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger (2019). Practical English Phonetics and Phonology (4th ed.). Routledge. p. 52. ISBN   978-1-138-59150-9. A tap was also to be heard intervocalically ... from old-fashioned traditional RP speakers ... It was used for /r/ after a stressed vowel, e.g. carry, very, Paris.
  135. Roach (2004).
  136. 1 2 3 Wells, John (3 May 2011). "the evidence of the vows". John Wells's phonetic blog.
  137. Wells, John (11 July 2007). "Any young U-RP speakers?".
  138. Wells, John (8 November 2010). "David Attenborough". John Wells's phonetic blog.
  139. Cho, Juhyung (1 January 2022). "Vowel changes in the speech of Sir David Attenborough". SNU Working Papers in English Language and Linguistics. 18. hdl:10371/176946 . Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  140. "7 Best English Podcasts (Free and Paid)". TruFluency. Retrieved 3 July 2023. Gyles Brandreth and Susie Dent are the hosts of Something Rhymes with Purple, ... the speech of the hosts tends to show features of the Received Pronunciation (RP) English accent, ...
  141. Brandreth, Gyles (23 December 2018). "Am I posh? Is David Dimbleby? Are you?". GYLES BRANDRETH. Retrieved 3 July 2023. ... I have a 'posh' accent. In fact, I sound much less fruity and plummy than I used to do. (So does The Queen, incidentally.) I sound very like my father, and English middle class professional people of his generation (he was born in 1910) sounded like he sounded and I sound now.
  142. Wells, John (8 April 2010). "EE, yet again". John Wells's phonetic blog.
  143. 1 2 3 Woods, Vicki (5 August 2011). "When I didn't know owt about posh speak" . The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022.
  144. 1 2 3 Lawson, Lindsey (14 October 2013). "A popular British accent with very few native speakers". The Voice Cafe. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  145. 1 2 Wells, John (12 June 2008a). "RP back in fashion?".
  146. "RP: A popular British accent with very few native speakers". 13 October 2014. Examples of speakers of the more "conservative" type of RP are Stephen Fry and Dame Judi Dench.
  147. "British Accents". dialectblog.com. 25 January 2011.
  148. Stadlen, Matthew (10 July 2015). "Joanna Lumley: I'm not posh - and I eat like a horse" . Daily Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 9 August 2020.
  149. Klaus J. Kohler (2017) "Communicative Functions and Linguistic Forms in Speech Interaction", published by CUP (page 268)
  150. "Labour MP Angela Rayner : 'I'm proud of my accent'". BBC News. 10 July 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2021. Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg struggled with his "posh RP [received pronunciation] accent" when he was trying to get elected in Fife.
  151. "Voices - Your Voice". BBC.
  152. "Brian Sewell".
  153. Cooper, Glenda (4 October 2014). "A 'posh' RP voice can break down barriers" . The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022.
  154. "Has Beckham started talking posh?". BBC News.
  155. Nolan, Dave; Nolan, David (24 November 2011). Emma Watson: The Biography. Kings Road Publishing. ISBN   978-1-84358-871-9. Emma speaks her lines with crystal-clear received pronunciation...

Bibliography

Sources of regular comment on RP

Audio files

Related Research Articles

Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. The United Kingdom has a wide variety of accents, and no single "British accent" exists. This article provides an overview of the numerous identifiable variations in pronunciation. Such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations.

General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American, is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education, or from the North Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as using General American speech. The precise definition and usefulness of the term continue to be debated, and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness. Other scholars prefer the term Standard American English.

Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England: an "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent, Received Pronunciation, and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent, Cockney. There is some debate among linguists as to where Cockney speech ends and Estuary English begins.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scouse</span> Accent and dialect of English in the Liverpool City Region

Scouse, officially known as Liverpool English or Merseyside English, is an accent and dialect of English associated with the city of Liverpool and the surrounding Liverpool City Region. The Scouse accent is highly distinctive as it was influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh immigrants who arrived via the Liverpool docks, as well as Scandinavian sailors who also used the docks, and thus has very little in common with the accents found throughout the rest of England. Natives of Liverpool are officially known as Liverpudlians, but are usually called Scousers; the name comes from scouse, a stew originating from Scandinavian lobscouse eaten by sailors and locals.

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.

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Japanese, Kannada, Kyrgyz, Latin, Malayalam, Old English, Scottish Gaelic, Tamil and Vietnamese.

Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress). Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel (schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced". Various phonological analyses exist for these phenomena.

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.

In English phonology, t-glottalization or t-glottalling is a sound change in certain English dialects and accents, particularly in the United Kingdom, that causes the phoneme to be pronounced as the glottal stop in certain positions. It is never universal, especially in careful speech, and it most often alternates with other allophones of such as, ,, , or.

A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography.

A lexical set is a group of words that share a particular phonological feature.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardiff English</span> Regional accent of English, in Wales

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.

The distinction between rhoticity and non-rhoticity is one of the most prominent ways in which varieties of the English language are classified. In rhotic accents, the sound of the historical English rhotic consonant,, 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/. When an r is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "better apples," most non-rhotic speakers will pronounce the in that position since it is followed by a vowel in this case.

The English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD) was created by the British phonetician Daniel Jones and was first published in 1917. It originally comprised over 50,000 headwords listed in their spelling form, each of which was given one or more pronunciations transcribed using a set of phonemic symbols based on a standard accent. The dictionary is now in its 18th edition. John C. Wells has written of it "EPD has set the standard against which other dictionaries must inevitably be judged".