Territorial varieties of English pronunciation

     CONTENT 

Introduction…………………………………………………………………

I. Theoretical part. Territorial varieties of English pronunciation

     1.1 English based pronunciation standards……………………….

     1.2 Welsh English

     1.3 Scottish English

     1.4 Northern Ireland English………………………………………..

     1.5 American-based pronunciation standards of English

II. Experimental part…………………………………………………....

          2.1.

Conclusion………………………………………………………………

Literature…………………………………………………………………

Appendix………………………………………………………………..

 

      INTRODUCTION 

         The theme of the course paper is “Territorial varieties of English pronunciation”.

     The object of scientific research is British and American varieties of pronunciation standards.

     The subject of scientific research is specific features of pronunciation of different varieties of English.

     The actuality and necessity of scientific research. The modern English language is an international language nowadays. English is spoken today on all five continents as a result of colonial expansion in the last four centuries or so. The colonial era is now definitely over but its consequences are clearly to be seen in the presence of English as an official and often native language in many of the former colonies. Another legacy of colonialism is that English fulfils the function of a lingua franca (for example, in Nigeria). It is also the first spoken language of such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa.

     That is why it is important to know the regional differences of English pronunciation.

     The aim of the present work is to study the characteristic features of the present day varieties of the English language of the United Kingdom and beyond its boundaries.

     To achieve this aim it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

     1. To give the definition to the notion “Standard English”.

     2. To identify the term of “Received Pronunciation”

     3. To find out the differences between the varieties of English pronunciation.

     Practical value of this course research paper is that its findings could be interesting for everyone keen on the varieties of English pronunciation, and could serve for better understanding of spoken English.

     Theoretical value of the course paper is that it could provide a source for further research in the sphere of English pronunciation.

     Methods of research: critical overview of relevant literature, method of comparison.

     The structure of the course paper. The work consists of two parts: theoretical and experimental, focused on the information about “Territorial varieties of English language pronunciation”. In the Introduction the object, the subject, the actuality and necessity, practical and theoretical value and methods of research are written and explained.  

     THEORETICAL PART

     TERRITORIAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

     1.1 ENGLISH BASED PRONUNCIATION STANDARDS

     Standard English -- the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms. Local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.

     The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape-recorder, etc. Data collected in this way show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations which vary from region to region.

     Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema.

     The dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete in Standard English are still kept in dialects, e. g. to and 'envy'<OE andian; barge 'pig'<OE berg; bysen 'blind'<OE bisene and others.

     BEPS (British English Pronunciation Standards and Accents) comprise English English, Welsh English, Scottish English and Northern Ireland English (the corresponding abbreviations are EE, WE, ScE, NIE)./2/

     ENGLISH ENGLISH

     Roughly speaking the non-RP accents of England may be grouped like this:

     1. Southern accents.

1. Southern accents (Greater London, Cockney, Surray, Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire);
2. East Anglia accents (Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire;
3. South-West accents (Gloucestershire, Avon, Somerset, Wiltshire).

     2. Northern and Midland accents.

1. Northern accents (Northumberland, Durham, Cleveland);
2. Yorkshire accents;
3. North-West accents (Lancashire, Cheshire);
4. West Midland (Birmingham, Wolverhampton).

     RP (Received Pronunciation)

     It has long been believed that RP is a social marker, a prestige accent of an Englishman. In the nineteenth century "received" was understood in the sense of "accepted in the best society". The speech of aristocracy and the court phonetically was that of the London area. Then it lost its local characteristics and was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as "King's 'English". It was also the accent taught at public schools. With the spread of education cultured people not belonging to the upper classes were eager to modify their accent in the direction of social standards.

     We may definitely state now that RP is a genuinely regionless accent within Britain; i.e. if speakers have it you cannot tell which area of Britain they come from; which is not the case for any other type of British accents.

     It is fair to mention, however, that only 3 - 5 per cent of the population of England speak RP. British phoneticians (Ch. Barber, A.C. Gimson, A. Hughes and P. Trudgill) estimate that nowadays RP is not homogeneous. A.C. Gimson suggests that it is convenient to distinguish three main types within it: "the conservative RP forms, used by the older generation, and, traditionally, by certain profession or social groups; the general RP forms, most commonly in use and typified by the pronunciation adopted by the BBC, and the advanced RP forms, mainly used by young people of exclusive social groups -- mostly of the upper classes, but also for prestige value, in certain professional circles".

     This last type of RP reflects the tendencies typical of changes in pronunciation. It is the most "effected and exaggerated variety" of the accent. Some of its features may be results of temporary fashion, some are adopted as a norm and described in the latest textbooks. Therefore, it is very important for a teacher and learner of English to distinguish between the two. RP speakers make up a very small percentage of the English population. Many native speakers, especially teachers of English and professors of colleges and universities (particularly from the South and South-East of England) have accents closely resembling RP but not identical to it. P.Trudgill and J.Hannah call it Near-RP southern. So various types of standard English pronunciation may be summarized as follows: Conservative RP; General RP; Advanced RP; Near-RP southern./22/

     Regional Non-RP Accents of England

     As was stated above, we grouped regional accents of England into southern and northern ones. This division is very approximate of course, because there are western and eastern accents but their main accent variations correspond either with southern or northern accentual characteristics. Thus we would like to point out here the main differences between southern and northern accents.

     In vowels

     One of the main differences between these groups of accents is in the phoneme inventory -- the presence or absence of particular phonemes. Typically, the vowel [a] does not occur in the accents of the north; e.g.

                    South             North

     blood      [blʌd]              [blud]

     one          [wʌn]              [won]  

     but           [bʌt]                [bәt]

     We can also note that many northern speakers while they do not have [ʌ] have [u:] rather than [u] in words such as hook, book, look. They therefore distinguish pairs like book and buck, which in the south sound [buk] and [bʌk], in the North as [bu:k] and [buk]:

                      South      North

     book        [buk]       [bu:k]      

     buck         [bʌk]       [buk]      

     Another well-known feature which distinguishes northern and southern accents concerns the vowels [æ] and [a:].

     Before the voiceless fricatives [f, θ, s] and certain consonant clusters containing initial [n] or [m], [æ] is pronounced in the north instead of [a:].

                      South       North

     path         [pa:θ]      [pæθ]

     dance       [da:ns]      [dæns]

     Note: Speakers with more strongly regional southern substandard accents may not have the contrast or, at most, have a contrast that is variable.

     In the south, however, [æ] is often pronounced as [a:]:

               RP   South

     bad [bæd] [ba:d]

     One more major north — south differentiating feature involves the final [i:] like in words city, money, etc. In the north of England they have [ı]. In the south of England these words are pronounced with [i:], e.g. 

                      South          North

     city           ['sıti:]          [sıtı]

     money      ['mʌni:]        ['monı]

     In consonants

     It has been mentioned above that some English accents are "rhotic" or "r-full" and other are non-rhotic or "r-less". Rhotic accents are those which actually pronounce [r], corresponding to orthographic "r" in words like bar and farm. This [r] sound is post-vocalic and is most often heard in Scotland, Ireland and in the southwest of England.

     In most regional accents the glottal stop is more widely used than in RP. In some areas, especially the north-east of England, East Anglia and Northern Ireland, the glottal stop may also be pronounced simultaneously with the voiceless [p, t, k], most strikingly between vowels: pity ['pit?i:].

     Many non-RP speakers use [n] in the suffix "-ing" instead of [ŋ]; sitting ['sıtın]. In an area of western central England which includes Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool they pronounce [ŋg]: singer ['sıŋgә], wing [wıŋg].

     In most accents [j] is dropped after [t, s]: student ['stu:dәnt], suit [su:t]. In parts of the north the change has progressed a good deal further, it has been lost after [θ]: enthusiasm [әn'θu:zıәzm].

     In large areas of eastern England [j] is lost after every consonant. In London [j] is lost after [n, t, d]: news [nu:z], tune [tu:n]./22/

     Southern English Accents

     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 [æı]: blood [blʌd] — [blæıd];

     2. [æ] is realized as [ε] or [εı]: bag [bæg] — [bεg], [bæıg];

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

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

     5. the diphthong [eı] is realized as [æı] or [aı]: lady ['leıdi:] — ['læıdi:], ['laıdi:]

     6. RP [з] sounds as [æu]: soaked [sзukt] — [sæukt];

     7. RP [au] may be [æә]: now [nau] — [næә].

     In consonants

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

     2. [?] is widely spread in Cockney speech: paper ['pæi?pә], butterfly [‘bл?әflaı];

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

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

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

     6. [1] is realized as a vowel when it precedes a consonant and follows a vowel, or when it is syllabic: milk [mıvk], table [teıbv]; when the preceding vowel is [o:], [1] may disappear completely;

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

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

     9. [t] is affricated, [s] is heard before the vowel: top [tsop]./22/

     Northern and Midland Accents

     Midland accents, Yorkshire, for example, West Midland and North-West accents have very much in common with Northern ones. Therefore they are combined in this book into one group; peculiar realization of vowels and consonants will be marked, of course, when each subgroup is described separately.

     The counties of northern England are not far from the Scottish border, so the influence of Scotch accent is noticeable, though there are of course many features of pronunciation characteristic only of northern English regions. The most typical representative of the speech of this area is Newcastle accent. It differs from RP in the following:

     In vowels

     1. RP [ʌ] is realized as [u]: love [lʌv] — [luv];

     2. RP final [ı] sounds like [i:]: city ['siti] — ['siti:];

     3. words like dance, chance which in RP have [a:] are pronounced with [æ]: [dæns], [t∫æns];

     4. [eı], [зu] are either monophthongs, or much narrower diphthongs than the ones in the south of England, or they may even sound as opening diphthongs [ıe], [uo]: bay [be:], [bıe], plate [ple:t], [plıet], boat [bo:t], [buot];

     5. words that have "al" in spelling — talk, call, all, are pro­nounced with [a]: [ta:k], [ka:l], [a:l];

     6. RP words with [з:] are pronounced with [o:] in a broad Tyneside accent: first [fo:st], shirt [∫o:t]; so first, forced; shirt, short are homonyms;