Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (
RP) is a form of
pronunciation of the
English language which has 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 the
Queen's English, as it is spoken by the Queen or
BBC English as it was traditionally used by the
BBC. The term
BBC English remains in use today, however it is 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. However, it has also undergone frequent change, so that the BBC accent from the 1950s is different to that spoken today on the BBC.
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.
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,
elitist notions sprang up around it and those who used it may have considered those who did not to be less educated than themselves. Historically the most prestigious British educational institutions (
Oxford,
Cambridge, many
public schools) were located in
England, so those who were educated there would pick up the accents of their
peers. (There have always been exceptions: for example,
Morningside, Edinburgh and
Kelvinside in
Glasgow had Scottish "pan loaf" accents aspiring to a similar prestige.)
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 recent prime minister, he spoke with a strong regional
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, which itself now sounds out of place, and is often discouraged in favour of more "real" accents.
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 by some of Estuary English, which is characterised by the dropping of consonants, and use of the
glottal stop. Speakers of Received Pronunciation do not all sound alike, and individuals modify their speech to varying degrees. The heightened "cut glass" form of the Received Pronunication is almost non-existent amongst young Britons, and some older RP speakers have also modified their speech. For example it has been demonstrated that in some respects even the Queen no longer speaks the "Queen's English" of the mid 20th century.
Consonants
A table containing the
consonant phonemes 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 first syllable of
ago and in the second of
sofa.
Examples: in
fleece, in
goose, in
nurse and
bird, in
north and
thought, in
father and
start.
RP's long vowels are slightly diphthongized. Especially the vowels and which are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs and .
Although these vowels are traditionally described as long vowels, whereby they have received the <ː> mark after their symbol, the length also varies according to the surrounding sounds. If a long vowel is preceded by a voiceless consonant sound (e.g. /p k s/) its length will be equivalent to that of the short vowels, with the exception of which becomes halfway between long and short. e.g. Burt = , seat = .
The short vowel becomes longer if it is followed by a voiced consonant sound. Thus, in narrow transcription
bat = and
bad = . In natural speech, the plosives and may be unreleased utterance-finally, thus distinction between these words would rest solely on vowel length.
[GIMSON, A. C. ‘An Introduction to the pronunciation of English,' London : Edward Arnold, 1970.]Diphthongs | Second component
close front | Second component
close back | Second component
central | | First component close front | | | |
| First component is mid-open front | | | |
| First component is mid-central | | | |
| First component is open | | | |
| First component is back and rounded | | | |
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
triphthongs as in
fire and as in
tower.
There are some variations in transcription. In particular
* as in
trap is often written .
* as in
dress is often written .
* as in
nurse is sometimes written .
* as in
price is sometimes written .
* as in
mouse is sometimes written
* as in
square is sometimes written , and is also sometimes treated as a long monophthong .
Characteristics
* Unlike northern
English English and most forms of
American English, RP is a
broad A accent, so words like
bath and
chance appear with and not .
* RP is a
non-rhotic accent, meaning does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel.
* Like other accents of southern England, RP has undergone the
wine-whine merger so the phoneme is not present.
* RP uses , called
dark l, when occurs at the
end of a syllable, as in
well, and also for
syllabic l, like in
little or
apple. (whereas it has been reported
[Merton, Claude Introduction to Phonetics] that "General American" speakers use the both finally and initially.)
* The phoneme in words like
butter is pronounced as rather than
flapped (as in most forms of
American English) or as in
Cockney and similar varieties of English).
* The phoneme in words like
bluntness is often pronounced as or realised as a
glottal stop.
* Unlike many other varieties of
English English, there is no
h-dropping in words like
head.
* RP does not have
yod dropping after , and . Hence, for example,
new,
tune and
dune are pronounced , and rather than , and . This contrasts with many East Anglian and East Midland varieties of
English English and with most forms of
American English.
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. Before World War II, the vowel in words like
putt and
sun was an
open-mid back unrounded vowel; This sound has since shifted to , a
near-open central vowel. The symbol <> is still used, possibly due to tradition or the fact that other dialects retain the older pronunciation.
Some old-fashioned forms of RP have some variations in their phonology.
* Words like
off,
cloth,
gone can be pronounced with instead of . See
lot-cloth split.
* The
horse-hoarse merger may not have occurred, with an extra diphthong appearing in words such as
hoarse,
force,
mourning.
*
Accent (linguistics)*
Prestige dialect*
English English*
Estuary English*
General American*
Prescription and description*
Cockney*
Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation? - An article by the phonetician
J. C. Wells about received pronunciation
