Talk:Received Pronunciation/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Notable speakers

Three names have recently been added to the section 'Notable speakers' (Cleese, Dimbleby, Blair). The other names listed are presented as having been identified by John Wells as RP speakers, but no such reference has been given for the new ones. I think it would be a bad idea if this list were to start being added to with names that are not supported.I will remove these names unless they are given citations. RoachPeter (talk) 09:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree - especially since Tony Blair is cited as an example of an Estuary English speaker. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:50, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I find the inclusion of the British Royal family rather startling, not to say confusing: HM, Prince Charles and Prince William all sound different. And Andrew sounds different from Charles.

Or is it meant to be a sort of time-lapse thing?

Paul Magnussen (talk) 17:11, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

The idea of BBC pronunciation is, to say the least, absurd. Anyone who listens to Lyse Doucet cannot relate her vocal cadence with that of Mary Smalls. Zeyna Baddawy and the economics correspondent Andrew Harding have different accents. And, for listeners to the flagship 'Sportsworld', Alan Green does not sound like anything like his more 'standard' co-commentators Russel Fuller, Martin Foukes, Lee James or Mike Costello. James Coomarasamy is different from Andrew Harding. So, which is the BBC pronunciation? I prefer Messrs James and Costello for their clear diction and refined rhythm.

I would note that the sports section (as with items such as gardening or children's entertainment) has never been the sole preserve of RP speakers, even in the days when the BBC had a much smaller range of accents broadcast. Epa101 (talk) 13:15, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I think the idea of having a list of Notable Speakers of RP is good, and it is essential that every person listed there is referenced, I am unhappy that all those listed are rtefeenced to John Wells, particularly as all seven individuals listed are male. Do any women speak RP apart from members of the British Royal Family? Mike Spathaky (talk) 09:49, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Lyse Doucet is Canadian, I think; she speaks General American. Zeinab Badawi is an RP speaker, Philippa Thomas too. Rothorpe (talk) 12:54, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

No objection to the recent addition of Emma Watson as an RP speaker, but her name has been added to a list supposedly put forward by John Wells. The Emma Watson proposal doesn't come from him. RoachPeter (talk) 17:53, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree on the reference. Another possible female addition could be Diana Athill. There is a reference here, albeit from a rather poorly-written article. Epa101 (talk) 13:25, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I read the article and couldn't find a reference to RP (though this was clearly what the writer had in mind). RoachPeter (talk) 17:44, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

I feel it would be useful to direct people to YouTube clips of the listed "Notable speakers" so they can get a feel for what RP sounds like in fairly natural speech, so I have located clips of all of the current list. I'm a bit hesitant about editing these into the article, since some people might object to using YouTube in this way. I'd be grateful for any guidance on this. (The edited version is sitting in my sandbox at the moment, if anyone wants to look at what I've collected together). I am actually pretty sceptical about RP in general and this list in particular, but I don't want to spoil it for people who are RP enthusiasts. RoachPeter (talk) 10:57, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The accent of Standard English??

Hi everyone, just thought I'd point this matter out as I find the opening sentence to this article "Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent of Standard English in the United Kingdom" rather confusing and somewhat misleading. The reasons why it is confusing is because most people in the United Kingdom as far as I'm aware don't speak Standard English with an RP accent, which is especially the case for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales (except maybe the southern parts of the country) and even central and northern England (please correct me if I've missed a few). Another reason is because that description implies that people in the UK speak Standard English with the RP accent and not frequently with a regional accent even though most people would speak it with their own regional accents (which they may also use for the dialects of English in those countries/counties/areas) unless they've been educated with RP. Of course I know RP is the accent most people outside the UK associate with the UK or Britain, but it still isn't a very widely spoken accent within the UK itself.

Indeed in my own experience, as I've lived in England all my life, I myself mostly speak Standard English with a regional accent (or at least without RP), mostly a mild Yorkshire accent but with a few Southern/Midland English influences, as I'm from South Yorkshire but have lived in Staffordshire most of my life, and I haven't frequently encountered people with RP accents except towards Southern England and in School, College, University, and in films & TV. So I definitely suggest changing the opening description from "Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent of Standard English" to "Received Pronunciation (RP) is the main accent of Standard English" as to me that is less confusing and doesn't exclude regional accents from Standard English. I'd be grateful if anyone an answer my query here as I don't want to change it myself without proper consensus, in case the edit is controversial, thank you. Broman178 (talk) 12:39, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

I think that is made clear later in the paragraph where it says "Peter Trudgill estimated in 1974 that 3% of people in Britain were RP speakers,but this rough estimate has been questioned by the phonetician J. Windsor Lewis.". I that they whole idea of people "speaking Standard English" is questionable, as most people will register shift, only using Standard English in formal or official settings. -- Q Chris (talk) 07:48, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I think you are right in saying that this matter is made clearer later on in the paragraph although I still think the opening statement should be reworded as like I said, it implies that RP is the only accent of Standard English when many regional accents are used for it in the UK. It could either be reworded to what I said above or also "Received Pronunciation (RP) is an accent of Standard English in the United Kingdom" and "Received Pronunciation (RP) is an accent mainly associated with Standard English in the United Kingdom". I think this was discussed in the past judging by the archives for this talk page, although I doubt theres been a definite conclusion/consensus for this matter. Broman178 (talk) 22:12, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest you be bold (WP:BB) and just edit it. I don't think anyone would object to either of your texts, though I find the second one clearer. If anyone does object we can discuss here and come to a consensus. -- Q Chris (talk)

Okay, I will go for it. I think I'll edit it using the second one for the time being and I'll mention in my edit summary that if anyone objects against it, they should discuss it here. Just thought I'd discuss it first before editing it in case my edit was controversial. Many thanks. Broman178 (talk) 09:13, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

All done now. Broman178 (talk) 09:21, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

The trap vowel - change to /a/?

Isn't time in for a change in the trap vowel from /æ/ to /a/? Alan Cruttenden uses /a/ in the latest version of Gimson's, Pronunciation of English from 2018, as well as the Oxford dictionaries for native learners. Also, British library uses /a/ for the 'standard' and 'contemporary' version of Received Pronunciation (http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/received-pronunciation/vowel-sounds-rp/), marking the old /æ/ as 'conservative RP'.

From a foreign learners perspective, the difference between British /a/ and American /æ/ is as almost as noticeable as the difference in rhoticity. And also, the difference in pronunciation of 'cat' /kat||kæt/ is arguably just as large as the difference in 'hot' /hɒt||hɑt/.

Sylvaticum (talk) 13:16, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

We discussed this recently (along with /eə/ → /ɛː/), and as I expressed then, I'm not inclined for this change. If we were to change it to /a/ to approximate to the narrow IPA, it would only make sense to change other vowels too (such as /ʌ, uː, ɔː/), and if we were to do it to follow Oxford and Cruttenden, I don't think it would be too late if we waited until Cambridge and Longman followed suit. As Roach (2004), Wells (2001), and Windsor Lewis (2003) point out, the Gimsonian notation has gained wide currency and to meddle with it in a half-baked way only obstructs accessibility and consistency. Nardog (talk) 00:20, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, the current system is undeniably outdated, and actually sometimes directly misleading. If someone actually pronounced [heə] with [e] really meaning something close to cardinal [e], then it would sound as hear rather than hair (modern: [hɛː]). Similarly, if someone (younger) said [tuː] it could mean tool rather than too (modern: [tʉː] or [tɨː]). Sylvaticum (talk) 10:25, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Which is why one should never mistake phonemic representation for phonetic realization. The SQUARE vowel in RP was probably never pronounced as [eə]. In fact it was ⟨ɛə⟩ in Jones' original EPD transcription, but it was simplified to ⟨eə⟩ when Gimson succeeded him.[1]

It's not outdated, it's just abstract. And we're better off keeping it that way. Nardog (talk) 12:51, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Let's hope there'll be a major revision in the coming editions of the major dictionaries; the current system is indeed outdated due to social levelling and other ongoing processes. For example, it fails to show that /iː/ is actually composed of to different diphtongs running in totally opposite directions [ɪi] (as in feed) or [iə] (in feel). Ultimately, the main objective of using IPA at all is to help foreign learners tackle pronunciation, so viewing to different diphtongs running in opposite directions as the same phoneme can't be anything but misleading. Also, the fact that monophtongs like [ɪː] (weird) and [ɛː] (square) are written as diphtongs /ɪə/ and /eə/, while a diphtong like [ɪi] is written as a monophtong /iː/, can't be anything but confounding at best. Surely, the current system is excellent in analysing the speech of Baroneess Margereth Thatcher and Sir David Attenborough, but virtually all foreign learners are much younger than that. Sylvaticum (talk) 5:14, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Unnecessarily complex language in the introduction

The introduction states

• "An individual using RP will typically speak Standard English"

and then states

• "the contrapositive is usually correct. It is very unlikely that someone speaking RP would use it to speak a regional dialect."

These two statements are equivalent (a statement and its contrapositive are always equivalent). Adding the second statement just makes things sound more complicated and confusing than they are.

I recommend deleting the statement about the contrapositive. Shaferjo (talk) 07:46, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@Shaferjo: Agreed - it was quite jarring upon reading. Deleted unneeded and confusing sentences. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 15:29, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

"The Study of..."? What does this mean?

This statement in the introduction just confuses me:

"The study of RP is concerned exclusively with pronunciation, whereas Standard English, the Queen's English, Oxford English, and BBC English are also concerned with matters such as grammar, vocabulary, and style. An individual using RP will typically speak Standard English, although the converse or inverse is not necessarily true."

I would fix it, if only I understood what it meant. What confuses me is "the study of". Is this statement comparing two areas of study? Linguists who study RP, vs. linguists who study Standard English? Sort of like "The study of Arithmetic is concerned exclusively with numbers and operations on numbers, whereas Mathematics is also concerned with matters such as calculus, geometry, and set theory"?

Or, is this statement comparing the definitions of words? As in, "An 'accent' is purely a difference in pronunciation, whereas a 'dialect' involves differences in grammar and vocabulary"?

Please help me here. I came to this article to understand what RP is. And now I'm more confused than when I got here! 2601:646:C101:8C70:8CD7:C077:5349:121A (talk) 14:55, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Nobody has bothered to respond to you here, so you could simply make a change yourself to what you THINK the sentence means and then see if anyone objects. That is the way progress is sometimes made in cases like this: See WP:Bold, revert, discuss. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 02:09, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

What is U-RP?

Half way through the article one paragraph talks about U-RP, which in context is presumably a variation of Received Pronunciation, but there doesn't seem to be any clue as to what the U standards for (apart from suggesting young and old people speak some variation of it, which by omission suggests people in between those ages don't for some reason). I guess I could search for it, but presumably it should be explained in the article somewhere before the abbreviated version is used. --87.242.189.106 (talk) 13:42, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Using text to describe sounds is hilariously insuitable

It's probably my fault, but having to learn fifty words to understand what an accent sounds like is no fun. This article could use some audible examples. Wrapash (talk) 19:25, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

1685 v 1848

Here is Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1848 in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second contrasting the rural gentry of 1685 with those of his own day:

We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves the squires of the seventeenth century as men bearing a close resemblance to their descendants, the county members and chairmen of quarter sessions with whom we are familiar. The modern country gentleman generally receives a liberal education, passes from a distinguished school to a distinguished college, and has ample opportunity to become an excellent scholar. ... The heir of an estate often passed his boyhood and youth at the seat of his family with no better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough to sign his name to a Mittimus. ... His language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire.

This suggests RP, the idea of a unified class accent, originated some time in the 18th or early 19th century. jnestorius^(talk) 09:07, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Misleading statement about /r/

"While the IPA symbol [ɹ] is phonetically correct for the consonant in 'row', 'arrow' in many accents of American and British English, most published work on Received Pronunciation represents this phoneme as /r/. "

This paragraph is worded in a very vague and misleading way. Which sign the phoneme is conventionally 'represented' with and how it is actually realised are two different things, but they seem to be confused here, implying that the RP realisation of the sound is an alveolar trill. That is just totally wrong. Even Daniel Jones' pronouncing dictionary from the early 20th century already describes /r/ as a 'postalveolar fricative' (meaning approximant). [r] might occur very rarely in certain positions, but most of the time it's [ɹ] in any form of modern RP, or, I dare say, in RP as used during most of the 20th century, although the more old-fashioned varieties did display the variant [r] (or, more commonly, [ɾ]) more often than it is heard now. *Nobody* speaks RP with [r] as his main realisation of /r/, and I doubt if anybody ever has. --94.155.68.202 (talk) 03:13, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think you need to worry about this being vague and misleading. It is perfectly normal to state that (in the present case) a given phoneme is phonetically [ɹ] but for the sake of typographical convenience is written phonemically as /r/. The slant brackets stand for an instruction to the reader NOT to interpret the symbol as a precise phonetic value. Representing the phoneme with /r/ therefore does not imply that the realization is an alveolar trill. On a separate point, I wonder on what you base your claim that nobody has ever pronounced /r/ as an alveolar trill. RoachPeter (talk) 08:42, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Missing clarification: "weak vowels"

There is a vowel chart right under the monophthong chart, the description of which is "Ranges of the weak vowels in RP and GA". The term "weak vowels" not defined in this article. Yordan Grigorov (yoreei) (talk) 17:23, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

"Conservative RP"

Section 5, "Conservative RP" was previously a separate article. I'm afraid that moving it into Received Pronunciation has not improved things much. This section is almost entirely based on one piece of writing by one author. The "Conservative RP" described there is presented as a current variety of RP used by some speakers instead of "Contemporary RP", but it is clear that what is being described is in fact simply normal RP of 50 to 100 years ago. Consequently there is a large amount of overlap with Section 4.3 (Historical variation), as well as with Section 1.2 concerning nomenclature (where the terms Conservative, Traditional, Upper and Contemporary used in Section 5 might be explained). I propose to move any useful material to be found in Section 5 into Sections 1.2 and 4.3, and then delete Section 5. RoachPeter (talk) 11:16, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I have now made the changes proposed above. RoachPeter (talk) 07:49, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

COMMA/LETTER vs. unstressed NURSE

Unstressed NURSE (as in urbane and transfer (n.)) strikes me as being realized with lips that are considerably more spread (or however you'd call that) than it's the case with COMMA/LETTER (vowel height aside, I know that the latter can be as low as STRUT - I'm talking about cases when it's not, e.g. word-initially). Does anyone have a source that would confirm that? I think that in normal speech, urbane is distinguished from a bane by the amount of lip spreading more than it is by vowel length. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Usage

A sentence under the heading 'Usage' needs scrutiny. It reads "Most British voices in apps like Siri and Google Assistant speak RP, and most TV and radio stations across the UK use this accent." Although it may be true, I have seen no published evidence to support the claim about Siri and Google Assistant. The second part of the sentence is clearly wrong - although the conditions in which RP is still used on TV and radio are very important ones, the vast majority of speakers have other accents. RoachPeter (talk) 14:22, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Early sections need tidying up

I think that a newcomer to the topic would find the Lead and the first three sections rather confusing. There is too much detailed information in the Lead, and too much overlap and duplication in Sections 1, 2 and 3. I propose to do some rewriting to make this part of the article clearer and simpler. RoachPeter (talk) 09:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

It is hard for a newcomer to the topic to find information in this article about the origin of Received Pronunciation. The "History" section only addresses the history of the term, but does not address the history of the accent itself. 2600:1702:2FF0:1D00:5DA7:DBDF:F477:CF9D (talk) 23:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Improvements of 2nd March 2021

@174.7.101.229 The improvements are good in general, but I'm not sure the change to "Opinions differ over the proportion of Britons who speak RP" is a good idea. Open that out to " ... Britons who speak Received Pronunciation" and you have what sounds infelicitous to me. Can you speak a pronunciation? RoachPeter (talk) 18:13, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Long vowels: ɛ:

I may have missed discussion on this point, but it seems to me pretty confusing that the final element of SQUARE is transcribed in this article as a diphthong /eə/ but is classed as a "pure long" vowel /ɛ:/. There is plenty of support in modern phonetics literature for treating this element as a pure vowel, so why not be bold and change its classification from diphthong to long vowel? RoachPeter (talk) 12:39, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Done. RoachPeter (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

There have indeed been discussions, like this and this. What do you think about ⟨a⟩ for TRAP? Adopting Cruttenden's transcription for SQUARE but not TRAP feels somewhat incomplete.

(I'd be interested in what specific works make up "plenty of support in modern phonetics literature for treating this element as a pure vowel", by the way, given Jack Windsor Lewis (RIP) was skeptical about that.) Nardog (talk) 12:58, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

I am in favour of using ⟨a⟩ for TRAP. It was the publisher who asked for ⟨æ⟩ to be retained in CEPD because that symbol was to be used for American prons with TRAP and we wanted to avoid confusion. (No, it doesn't make a lot of sense). I will add refs to works advocating ⟨ɛ:⟩, as that's the issue I'm most concerned about at the moment. RoachPeter (talk) 20:25, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! One thing I found misleading (so I edited out) is the characterization that /ɪə/ is the "remaining" centring diphthong. Do you think /ʊə/ is completely on its way to merging with /ɔː/? Even if it is, the merger is clearly a gradual, lexically-conditioned change and literature seems to agree it's not complete at this point.

• Cruttenden (2014: 156): "Pronunciations with /ɔː/ are less frequent in uncommon monosyllabic words such as dour, gourd, Ruhr, lure. Words with a preceding /j/ are also less liable to pronunciations with /ɔː/, e.g. cure, curious, endure, pure, puerile, secure".
• Lindsey (2019: 48): "In words where the sound /r/ follows, e.g. during, Europe, security, many speakers use central monophthongs, [ɵː] or [ʉː]. Phonemically, these might be analysed as forms of the GOOSE vowel, or else as a modern, monophthongized CURE vowel."

Incidentally, your blog post reminded me of Wells (1982: 217): "a Cumbrian informant born around 1955 ... considered the pronunciations [bɪə] beer and [ʃʊə] sure 'posh', and said she would have felt out of place using them." It's also interesting he already considered monophthongal SQUARE part of RP at that point, albeit as "a minority pronunciation". Nardog (talk) 02:24, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Geography

The idea that Oxford and, particularly, London are South Midlands is pretty shonky. there only seems to be one source for this though admittedly a decent one fpr the language, is not the geography. 94.200.67.73 (talk) 10:21, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't've thought this really needs discussion. London is not in the midlands. Strobelit (talk) 15:56, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

This needs discussion because the South East Midlands is a terminology that people talk about, hence the source from the British Library, and not to mention, the South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership zone. Altanner1991 (talk) 19:36, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

It's relatively new but it's noteworthy. I even believe it would satisfy a WP:COMMONNAME as organizations use it without referring to the economic zone. On Google or Bing search engines, the query (using quotations) "south east midlands" returns ~15,000,000 to ~17,000,000 results. Altanner1991 (talk) 20:10, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

What are you on about? It's not whether SE Midlands is new/noteworthy/etc, it's whether London is part of the "SE Midlands", which it isn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.241.168 (talk) 14:15, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

That after 2 years the text still suggests that London, Oxford and Cambridge are in the south midlands makes a mockery of the wiki ideal. Absolutely ridiculous piece of misinformation and this kind of thing is one of the reasons why Wikipedia is not considered as a suitable source of citation.§ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.99.178.220 (talk) 21:09, 25 August 2022 (UTC)