Received pronunciation (RP)

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 546.

It is considered to be regionless though historically it appeared on the bases of London dialect belonging to the group of the Southern regional type. It was accepted as the phonetic norm in the second half of the 19^th century. It is spoken all over Britain but by a very small number of people =5% of population. RP has some name – Public School Accent - because there are the most prestigious type of school, with classical type of teaching, they provide pupils with knowledge which gives them the opportunity to enter famous universities, pupils of such schools belong to higher level of society. BBC English members of BBC use it. Royal English members of Royal family speak it. Though these varieties of British English are carefully reserved in Public school, modern RP differs greatly from the former RP of the previous century. Thus 3 variants of RP are distinguished today: the conservative RP – older generation; general RP – used mostly on radio, television; advanced RP – by young generation, very often it reflects temporary passion. The main changes that have recently taken place in RP concern mainly vowels: diphthongization of historically long vowels; smoothing of triphthongs and diphthongs; the change of the former diphthong (centring of the nucleus). This tendency is so strong that the transcription symbol has been changed in British dictionaries. In the system of consonants the main changes are: devoicing of final B,D,G (dog, mood, mob)/voicing of Tin intervocalic position (better); the assimilation of the sounds; loss of initial H esp in rapid speech. Smt it is dropped completely; the use of the intrusive “R” (the intrusive R is pronounced where their is no letter R in spelling. Some 30-40 years ago it was carefully avoided by RP speakers).

RP is the teaching norm of the teaching of English because it has been investigated and described more thoroughly, more than any other type of British Pronunciation. It is a teaching norm because of the degree of understandability in English-speaking countries, and the number the textbooks and audio-visual aids. Yet, there are many educated people in Great Britain who do not speak RP but their English is good and correct because they speak standard English with accent.