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Received Pronunciation has been the subject of many academic studies, [2] and is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. [ 3 ] [ page needed ] The widely repeated claim that only about two percent of Britons speak RP [ 2 ] is no more than a rough estimate and has been questioned by several writers, most notably by ...
Differences in pronunciation between American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) can be divided into . differences in accent (i.e. phoneme inventory and realisation).See differences between General American and Received Pronunciation for the standard accents in the United States and Britain; for information about other accents see regional accents of English.
One phenomenon apparently unique to North American U.S. accents is the irregular behavior of words that in the British English standard, Received Pronunciation, have /ɒrV/ (where V stands for any vowel). Words of this class include, among others: origin, Florida, horrible, quarrel, warren, borrow, tomorrow, sorry, and sorrow.
In the vowels chart, a separate phonetic value is given for each major dialect, alongside the words used to name their corresponding lexical sets. The diaphonemes for the lexical sets given here are based on RP and General American; they are not sufficient to express all of the distinctions found in other dialects, such as Australian English.
Some linguists have used the term "RP" while expressing reservations about its suitability. [16] [17] [18] The Cambridge-published English Pronouncing Dictionary (aimed at those learning English as a foreign language) uses the phrase "BBC Pronunciation", on the basis that the name "Received Pronunciation" is "archaic" and that BBC News presenters no longer suggest high social class and ...
Words that had Middle English [au] had a regular development to [ɒː] (for example, paw). However, before a nasal, such words sometimes instead developed to [aː] (e.g. palm). The [aː] of the late 17th century has generally backed to [ɑː] in several varieties of contemporary English, for example in Received Pronunciation.
The order of the variant pronunciation symbols is the same as in the source. Smaller text (like so) highlights variant pronunciations that are not preferred (only some dictionaries make such a distinction). A comma (,) separates different pronunciation depending on the word or depending on the region.
The desire to speak eloquently and, in particular, to have correct received pronunciation was common in Britain and America during the 19th century, with the study of English orthoepy at its zenith. One feature of phonetic orthographies was that they converted written words into a single consistent form of pronunciation, which would often ...