Received Pronunciation
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Template:IPA notice 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.
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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, 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 most of the best 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, the Edinburgh 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 phonemes is given below
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Received Pronunciation are shown in the following tables:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Near-close | Template:IPA | Template:IPA | |
| Mid | Template:IPA | ||
| Open-mid | Template:IPA | Template:IPA | |
| Open | Template:IPA | Template:IPA |
Examples: Template:IPA in kit and mirror, Template:IPA in foot and put, Template:IPA in dress and merry, Template:IPA in strut and curry, Template:IPA in trap and marry, Template:IPA in lot and orange, Template:IPA in the second syllable of sofa.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Template:IPA | Template:IPA | |
| Open-mid | Template:IPA | Template:IPA | |
| Open | Template:IPA |
Examples: Template:IPA in fleece, Template:IPA in goose, Template:IPA in nurse and bird, Template:IPA in north and thought, Template:IPA in father and start.
| Second component close front | Second component close back | Second component central | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First component close front | Template:IPA | ||
| First component is mid-open front | Template:IPA | Template:IPA | |
| First component is mid-central | Template:IPA | ||
| First component is open | Template:IPA | Template:IPA | |
| First component is back and rounded | Template:IPA | Template:IPA |
Examples: Template:IPA in near and theatre, Template:IPA in face, Template:IPA in square and Mary, Template:IPA in goat, Template:IPA in price, Template:IPA in mouth, Template:IPA in choice, Template:IPA in cure.
There are also the triphthongs Template:IPA as in fire and Template:IPA as in tower.
There are some variations in transcription. In particular
- Template:IPA as in trap is often written Template:IPA.
- Template:IPA as in dress is often written Template:IPA.
- Template:IPA as in nurse is sometimes written Template:IPA.
- Template:IPA as in price is sometimes written Template:IPA.
- Template:IPA as in square is sometimes written Template:IPA, and is also sometimes treated as a long monophthong Template:IPA.
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 Template:IPA and not Template:IPA.
- RP has the bad-lad split making a difference between Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
- RP is a non-rhotic accent, meaning Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA is not present.
- RP uses Template:IPA, called dark l, when Template:IPA occurs at the end of a syllable, as in well, and also for syllabic l, like in little or apple.
- The Template:IPA phoneme in words like butter is pronounced as Template:IPA rather than flapped (as in most forms of American English) or realised as a glottal stop (as in some other forms of English English, including Cockney).
- Unlike many other varieties of English English, there is no h-dropping in words like head.
- RP does not have yod dropping after Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA. Hence, for example, new, tune and dune are pronounced Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA rather than Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA. 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 Template:IPA sound, as in land, with a vowel close to Template:IPA, 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 Template:IPA-like vowel in words like land.
Some old-fashioned forms of RP have some variations in their phonology.
- Words like off, cloth, gone can be pronounced with Template:IPA instead of Template:IPA. See lot-cloth split.
- The horse-hoarse merger may not have occurred, with an extra diphthong Template:IPA appearing in words such as hoarse, force, mourning.