Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation RP

Received Pronunciation

• Received Pronunciation (RP) is regarded as the standard accent of Standard English in the United Kingdom, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms. RP is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as "the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England", although it can be heard from native speakers throughout England Wales. Peter Trudgill estimated in 1974 that 3% of people in Britain were RP speakers.

• Popular terms for this accent, such as ‘The Queen’s English’, ‘Oxford English’ or ‘BBC English’ are all a little misleading. The Queen, for instance, speaks an almost unique form of English, while the English we hear at Oxford University or on the BBC is no longer restricted to one type of accent. RP is an accent, not a dialect, since all RP speakers speak Standard English. In other words, they avoid non-standard grammatical constructions and localised vocabulary characteristic of regional dialects. RP is also regionally non-specific, that is it does not contain any clues about a speaker’s geographic background. But it does reveal a great deal about their social and/or educational background.

• The various forms of RP can be roughly divided into three categories. • Conservative RP refers to a very traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and the aristocracy. • Mainstream RP describes an accent that we might consider extremely neutral in terms of signals regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker. • Contemporary RP refers to speakers using features typical of younger RP speakers. All, however, are united by the fact they do not use any pronunciation patterns that allow us to make assumptions about where they are from in the UK

RP today • Like any other accent, RP has also changed over the course of time. The voices we associate with early BBC broadcasts, for instance, now sound extremely old-fashioned to most. Just as RP is constantly evolving, so our attitudes towards the accent are changing. For much of the twentieth century, RP represented the voice of education, authority, social status and economic power. The period immediately after the Second World War was a time when educational and social advancement suddenly became a possibility for many more people. Those who were able to take advantage of these opportunities - be it in terms of education or career - often felt under considerable pressure to conform linguistically and thus adopt the accent of the establishment or at least modify their speech towards RP norms.

Consonants • Nasals and liquids (/m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, /l/) may be syllabic in unstressed syllables. While the IPA symbol [ɹ] is phonetically correct for the consonant in 'row', 'arrow' in many accents of American and British English, most published work on Received Pronunciation represents this phoneme as /r/. • 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 secondary 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. /r/ is a fricative when devoiced.

Consonant phonemes Labial Nasal p b Approxi mant /Lateral Velar t θ ð s d z k ʃ ɡ dʒ ʒ r l Glottal ŋ tʃ v Palatal N Affricate Fricative f Postalveolar Alveolar m Stop Dental h j w

Consonants • Syllable final /p/, /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 [ˈbɪʔn ]). The glottal stop may be realised as creaky voice; thus, an alternative phonetic transcription of attempt [əˈtʰemʔt] could be [əˈtʰemm t]. • 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: • Aspiration of voiceless consonants syllable-initially. • Glottal reinforcement of voiceless consonants syllable-finally. • Lengthening of vowels before voiced 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 (/ð/) is more often a weak dental plosive; the sequence /nð/ is often realised as [n n ] (a long dental nasal). /l/ has velarised allophone ([ɫ]) in the syllable rhyme. /h/ becomes voiced ([ɦ]) between voiced sounds.

Vowels • Long and short vowels • RP's long vowels are slightly diphthongised, especially the high vowels /iː/ and /uː/. • "Long" and "short" are relative to each other. Because of phonological process affecting vowel length, short vowels in one context can be longer than long vowels in another context. • For example, the long vowel /iː/ in 'reach' /riːtʃ/ (which ends with a voiceless consonant) may be shorter than the short vowel /ɪ/ in the word 'ridge' /rɪdʒ/ (which ends with a voiced consonant).

Vowels • Conversely, the short vowel /æ/ becomes longer if it is followed by a voiced consonant. In natural speech, the plosives /t/ and /d/ may be unreleased utterance-finally, and voiced consonants partly or completely; thus distinction between these words would rest mostly on vowel length and the presence or absence of glottal reinforcement.

Diphthongs Diphthong Example Closing /eɪ/ /beɪ/ bay /aɪ/ /baɪ/ buy /ɔɪ/ /bɔɪ/ boy /əʊ/ /bəʊ/ beau /aʊ/ /baʊ/ bough Centring /ɪə/ /bɪə/ beer /eə/ /beə/ bear /ʊə/ /bʊə/ boor (formerly /ɔə/) /bɔə/ boar

Diphthongs • 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, although the sound /ʊə/ is still found in conservative speakers (and this is still the only pronunciation given in the OED).

Diphthongs • 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 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.

Triphthongs As two syllables Triphthong Loss of midelement Further simplified as [aɪ. ə] [aɪə] [aː] [ɑʊ. ə] [ɑʊə] [ɑː] [əʊ. ə] [əʊə] [əːə] [ɜː] [eɪ. ə] [eɪə] [ɛː] [ɔɪ. ə] [ɔɪə] [ɔːə] -

Triphthongs • RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in ire, /aʊə/ as in hour, /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 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 /ɔɪə/. In such a case the difference between /aʊə/, /aɪə/, and /ɑː/ may be neutralised with all three units realised as [ɑː].