Information About ™Received Pronunciation |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION | |
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| standard english | |
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Received Pronunciation ('''RP''') is a form of Pronunciation of the English Language which has traditionally been the prestige British Accent (see Prestige Dialect ). RP is a form of English English , sometimes defined as the "educated spoken English of southeastern England ." It is often taught to non-native speakers; used as the standard for English in most books on general Phonology and Phonetics ; and represented in the pronunciation schemes of most British dictionaries. According to '' Fowler's Modern English Usage '' ( 1965 ), the term is "''the'' Received Pronunciation." Received Pronunciation was also sometimes referred to as BBC English as it was traditionally used by the BBC . This term remains in use today, though less frequently than in past decades, as many other accents are now to be heard on the BBC. In recent decades many people have asserted the value of other regional and class accents, and many younger members of the groups which traditionally used Received Pronunciation have moved away from it to varying degrees. Many Britons abroad modify their accent to make their pronunciation closer to Received Pronunciation, in order to be better understood than if they were using their usual accent. They may also modify their Vocabulary and Grammar to be closer to Standard English , for the same reason. CHANGING STATUS OF RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION Traditionally, Received Pronunciation is the Accent of English which is "''the everyday speech of families of Southern English persons whose menfolk have been educated at the great public boarding schools''" ( Daniel Jones , ''English Pronouncing Dictionary'', 1926—he had earlier called it "Public School Pronunciation"), and which conveys no information about that speaker's region of origin prior to attending the school. For many years, the use of Received Pronunciation was considered a mark of education. It was standard practice until around the 1950s for university students with regional accents to modify their speech to be closer to RP. As a result, at a time when only around five percent of the population attended universities, accent had a similar prestige among Scottish accents.) From the 1970s onwards, attitudes towards Received Pronunciation have been slowly changing. One of the primary catalysts for this was the influence in the 1960s of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson . Unusually for a prime minister, he spoke with a strong Yorkshire Accent , exaggerated, some said, to appeal to the working classes his party represented. As a result of the trend begun by Wilson and others in the 1960s , the accents of the English regions and of Scotland , Wales , and Ireland are today more likely to be considered to be on a par with Received Pronunciation, which by the turn of the century was only spoken by around three percent of the population. BBC reporters no longer need to, and often do not, use Received Pronunciation. The ongoing spread of Estuary English from the London metropolitan area through the whole South-East leads some people to believe that this will take the place of Received Pronunciation as the "Standard English accent" of the future. There are, however, important factors that militate against this, including the perceived inferior status and alleged lower intelligibility of Estuary English, which is characterised by the dropping of consonants, and use of the Glottal Stop . PHONOLOGY Consonants A table containing the Consonant Phoneme s is given below Vowels The Vowel phonemes of Received Pronunciation are shown in the following tables: Examples: in ''kit'' and ''mirror'', in ''foot'' and ''put'', in ''dress'' and ''merry'', in ''strut'' and ''curry'', in ''trap'' and ''marry'', in ''lot'' and ''orange'', in the second syllable of ''sofa''. Examples: in ''fleece'', in ''goose'', in ''nurse'' and ''bird'', in ''north'' and ''thought'', in ''father'' and ''start''. Examples: in ''near'' and ''theatre'', in ''face'', in ''square'' and ''Mary'', in ''goat'', in ''price'', in ''mouth'', in ''choice'', in ''cure''. There are also the Triphthong s as in ''fire'' and as in ''tower''. There are some variations in transcription. In particular
Characteristics
Historical variation The form of RP has itself changed over the past decades. Sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was standard to pronounce the sound, as in ''land'', with a vowel close to , so that ''land'' could sound similar to ''lend''. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even the Queen has changed her pronunciation over the past 50 years, no longer using a -like vowel in words like ''land''. Some old-fashioned forms of RP have some variations in their phonology.
SEE ALSO
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