Southern English Accents

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 565.

We now turn to an examination of regional non-RP accents of England and we shall first give a brief outline of the group of Southern accents.

As was stated above, educated Southern speech is very much near-RP accent whereas non-standard accents are very much near Cockney. Therefore we shall focus our attention on the rather detailed description of uneducated London accent — Cockney.

Cockney accent. It has been long established that Cockney is a social accent — the speech of working-class areas of the Great­er London. Here are some pronunciation peculiarities of it.

In vowels

1. [ʌ] is realized as [æi]: blood [bLvd] — [blæid];

2.[æ] is realized as [ɛ] or [ɛı]: bag [bæg] — [bɛg], [bɛig];

3. [i] in word-final position sounds as [i:]: city ['siti] — ['siti:];

4. when [ɔ:] is non-final, its realization is much closer, it sounds like [o:]: pause [pɔ:z] — [po:z]; when it is final, it is pro­nounced as [ɔ:ə]: paw [pɔ:] — [pɔ:ə];

5. the diphthong [ei] is realized as [æi] or [ai]: lady ['leidi] — ['læidi:], ['laidi:];

6. RP [ɜu] sounds as [æu]: soaked [sɜukt] — [sæukt];

7. RP [au] may be [æə]: now [nau] — [næə].

In consonants

1. [h] in unstressed position is almost invariably absent;

2. [ʔ] is widely spread in Cockney speech: paper ['pæiʔpə], butterfly ['bʌʔtəflai];

3. The contrast between [Ɵ] and [f] is completely lost: thin [fin], booth [bu:f];

4. The contrast between [ð] and [v] is occasionally lost: weather ['wevə];

5. when [ð] occurs initially it is either dropped or replaced by [d]: this [ðis], them [(d)əm];

6. [l] is realized as a vowel when it precedes a consonant and follows a vowel, or when it is syllabic: milk [mivk], table [teibv]; when the preceding vowel is [ɔ:], [l] may disappear completely;

7. [ŋ] is replaced by [n] in word-final position: dancing ['da:nsin] or it may be pronounced as [iŋk] in something, any­thing, nothing: ['nʌfiŋk];

8. [p, t, k] are heavily aspirated, more so than in RP;

9. [t] is affricated, [s] is heard before the vowel: top [tsɒp].