6. English Accents

1.Received Pronounciation

• status: small minority of educates southern English speakers, often serves as reference accent in dictionaries

• Names: RP, Queen’s/King’s English (Roach)

• Internal variation

  • Conservative, Mainstream, Advanced forms (Gimson)

    → increasing competition from other speech norms

• “Estuary English”

2.British and American pronounciation

Comparison of British and American transcription systems

• no national pronounciation norm for American English, “General American” =?

• Pronounciation differences in GA:

  • Retention of post-vocalic /r/ e.g. car

  • unrounded low back vowel /ɑː/ e.g. pot, possible merger of /ɒ/ and /ɔː/ (cot - caught)

  • RP /ɑː/ > /æ/ (before voiceless fricatives and nasals): staff, dance

  • Length diferences of vowels

  • /uː/ for RP /juː/ in words like tune, new, Duke, duty

  • Tendency towards sonorisation of intervocalic /t/: city, writer - rider; Example: New York City → ‘flapped t’ /sɪti̬/

3. Sound changes

• fundamental laws, frequently phonetic explanations/broad descriptions

Great vowel shift (late ME, EME)

evidence:

• loan words

  • french words borrowed before 1400 have undergone phonetic change, but not french words borrowed after GVS

• spellings

  • retains spelling from before GVS in many cases

Northern cities shift

→ inland north dialects, USA, cities:

• Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester

Southern shift

→ southern American English dialects, SE of the USA

4.Other English accents

• Australian English

• Tyneside English

• Southern Michigan (northern city)

• Liverpool (Scouse)

• Philippines English

• expanding circle = norm-dependent

• outer circle = norm-developing

• inner circle = norm-providing