By Olga Smith
In our apps and books, we teach Received Pronunciation(RP). According to phonetician David Abercrombie, "RP is a privileged accent: your social life, or your career, or both may be affected by whether you possess it or not".
RP is an accent taught for many decades since it was popularised by the BBC and many know it as BBC English. In the past, it was called Queen’s English and Oxford English. RP is the accent that boys learn very quickly in Eton if they do not want to be mocked for their regional sounds. Clearly, RP is associated with the quality of one's education and a certain social and economic position. It is interesting to note that a study revealed, that the more refined is the RP of a person the higher is their social status and the better is their economic situation. No wonder that native English speakers with regional accents, who see the obvious benefits of RP decide to learn RP with our apps and books and book elocution lessons to master all the sounds of RP. They often ask me the following questions:
How has RP changed over the past 100 years or so? what is different with older speakers of RP compared with the more contemporary variety?
What mistakes do native English speakers who have acquired some RP, but not perfected it, often make?
Are there common mistakes for people (native speakers) who try to use RP by imitation but haven't been trained professionally, which often marks them out?
To answer the first question I would like to outline three main types of Received Pronunciation:
1. General RP, which is used as a teaching model for foreign people. It is also used in pronouncing Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries. Therefore it is the most understood version of the English accent. General RP is also a compulsory accent to learn in London drama schools. Actors learn RP to be able to perform classic plays, like Oscar Wild, etc.
2. Refined/heightened RP is associated with the aristocracy, certain professions such as officers in the navy, etc. Refined RP is spoken by an older generation. It is spoken, for example, by the Queen.and Prince Charles. General RP is spoken by the Queen’s grandchildren.
My tennis partner is a 25 years old girl. She is a Cambridge graduate, whose grandfather was a British spy which suggests that she comes from an elite family. She speaks with slightly heightened RP: beautifully pronounced /t,d/ sounds, fantastic sentence stress and lovely long vowels. She stands out in our group; both teachers and pupils have an automatic heightened respect for her.
3. Near-RP is basically RP with a slight mix of individual, foreign or regional sounds and characteristics. The majority of RP speakers speak with near-RP.
Near RP is growing and represents the largest percentage of RP speakers today. Below are a few reasons:
In recent years there is a tendency on the BBC to hire presenters with regional accents because there is an opinion that RP is a minority accent. Indeed it is an accent of the elite.
Many RP speakers also try to accommodate to their environment, perhaps unconsciously, to blend in with different social groups. They also adjust their RP to a prevailing accent in their workplace.
I would like to answer the second question with examples from my experience. Recently I went to a publishing event. A vast majority of publishers in the UK tend to speak with heightened or general RP. They lean on long vowels and diphthongs, enunciate /t,d/; they enjoy their speech, make long pauses and prominent stresses, there is a feeling that they have all the time in the world to talk and enjoy. We were talking and suddenly one of the men stood out: his vowels were too short and he rushed his speech, he looked a bit sheepish. To my amazement, others looked at this man as if he was not supposed to be there.
A few years ago, I was asked to analyse Victoria Beckham speech before and after she became wealthy. I received audio clips with her speech in 1998, 2004, 2009. As you know Victoria comes from a simple background and her speech in 1998 reflected it: non-RP vowels, bad articulation, no sentence stress, weak and incorrectly pronounces consonants. By 2009, her speech changed a lot., it was very obvious to me that she had elocution lessons. What I noticed first is that she slowed down her speech and that allowed her time to pronounce long vowels. She clearly learned what to stress in a sentence. Victoria does not speak with Standard RP due to the following reasons:
1. She doesn’t know how to pronounce lateral plosions correctly;
2. Her long vowels are still not long enough;
3. Her /t, d, l/ sounds are non-RP.
4. Her schwa or neutral vowel is still too long.
This leads me to the answer to the third question. Generally, native English speakers, who tried to learn RP make the following mistakes:
They do not know how to pronounce long and short vowels and diphthongs correctly. The schwa or neutral vowel is not correct and often too long and long vowels are too short. There is a tip for you: if you lean on long vowels then the schwa should automatically become shorter as there is not enough energy for long/incorrect schwa. We show how sounds are formed in the mouth in our video elocution courses.
Their consonants are lazy and weak, particularly at the end of the word: /t,d,l, p, b, r/. For example, /t,d/ endings are not pronounced at all and glottal stop is inappropriately used instead. /l/sound is formed using lips, and not togue, and as a result, it sounds like the /w/ sound, we hear "wiw" instead of "will". We recommend our app Get Rid of your Accent UK1 to master all RP sounds.
They speak too fast, in paragraphs without sentence stress and pauses.
They don't know how to modulate their voice. This skill can be practised with our app 4Ps, Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause.
They do not use a full range of intonation/inflections; they tend to use simple falling too often which may make them sound a bit dull. You can learn and practice different types of inflection in our app Fluent English Speech.
Melvyn Bragg writes: "We are each one of us, all talking advertisement of our history. Accent is the snake and the ladder in the upstairs-downstairs of social ambition. Accent is the con man's first resource."
I would say that acquiring RP is a short cut to social and economic success. RP open doors to fantastic opportunities. The best way to master your RP is to find good apps and books and having elocution lessons. We recommend one lesson a week. Read our popular blog about the benefits of elocution lessons.
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