Tuesday 26 February 2013

RP vs Standard English

 Have you ever wanted to speak like the Queen? Many of my Students have, but they are not aware that it might not be such a good idea...

"In the last 40 or so years, there have been dramatic changes to the social class structure in Britain and to a certain extent this is reflected in pronunciation." - seems obvious..
"It demonstrates that the monarchy, at least as far as the spoken accent is concerned, isn't isolated from the rest of the community." - to read more click on the below link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1080228.stm

But if you are more empirical than theoretical, just listen to that:


   
and that:



Spotted the difference?

Now,

RP (received pronunnciation) - the pronunciation of British English considered to be least regional, being originally that used by educated speakers in southern England.

Standard English - English spoken with a 'standard' pronunciation which corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary.

"It is important not to confuse the notion of Received Pronunciation, as a standard accent, with the standard variety of the English language used in England that is given names such as "Standard English", "the Queen's English", "Oxford English" or "BBC English". The study of RP is concerned exclusively with pronunciation, while study of the standard language is also concerned with matters such as grammar, vocabulary and style."

My conclusion:
Be careful with your RP pronunciation just not to sound too posh. Otherwise, you'll simply sound ridiculous and nobody wants that, right?






source: youtube and also a vvv interesting blog here - thank you for inspiration.

2 comments:

  1. That's just great, i think it's high time we started speaking with more american accent, don't you think? it's way safer :)
    And I had no idea who Harry enfield is, he's so funny :)

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  2. not so fast My DEEEAR ;) US English... well, i don't believe you prefer Brad Pitt's to Cllive Owen......'s pronunciation (of course) or Jeremy Irons.....'s. ;)
    however, when teaching we're somehow forced to continually navigate between UK and US.
    And the sad truth is, that most of the time i'm drifting somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic :(

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