Chapter 7 Standard and regional accents 7.1 The emergence of a standard In the three centuries after the Norman conquest official business was conduc :d < in either Latin or French. There were accepted written standards in both languai.. s. is Classical Latin was that of Cicero and Horace; French was at first Norman Pre :h % but later became that of the French court in Paris. Until the latter half of 'he i fourteenth century English was very much the speech of the lower classes id J little of it was written. But from then on English started to replace Frencl in ? many areas and over the next four centuries a standard written English emer ;d i| (particularly in spelling and grammar), codified eventually by grammarian: n the eighteenth century.1 Jf Although written English gained ground rapidly in the fifteenth century, yjt writing which commented on the spoken language did not appear until mel sixteenth century, when one type of regional speech began to be said to h '^jf prestige. It was London and the speech of the monarch's court which was fv 4g up as the dialect to be imitated.2 John Hart noted in 1570 that it is 'in the O jj and London .. . where the genera! flower of all English country speachei m chosen and read ... for that unto these two places, do dayly resort from all to\ i* and countries, of the best of all professions'.3 Around the same time in^ijf Puttenham (1589) gives advice about language to poets recommending. I the usual speech of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying ab1 s London within 60 miles and not much above .. . Northern men, whet il they be noblemen or gentlemen, or of their best clerks, [use an hngli I which is not so courtly or so current as our Southern English is.4 I But there follows a hint that this form of speech may nevertheless sometimes used in other areas of England: 'in every shire of England there may be gcnneini.'flj and others that speak ... as good Southern as we of Middlesex or Sunev *4 , there is the suggestion that courtly speech has to some extent spread as a nation^ standard. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the speech of Loril^j' and its court are held up as the acme of pronunciation. Price (1665)." Standard and regional accents 75 example, gives rules 'whereby any outlandish or meer English man, woman, or child, may speedily attain to the exact spelling, reading, writing, or pronouncing of any word in the English tongue'. Writing 'to the ingenious student' he says: 'All grammars are rales of common speech; yet 1 have not been guided by our vulgar pronunciation but by that of London and our universities'. In the eighteenth century the influence of the court begins to be criticised and at the same time there begins an interest in codifying the pronunciation of English. In a letter to his patron, Swift complains that 'the Court which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, [is now] the worst school in England for that accomplishment'. He wants to set up a society 'made up of such persons, as are generally allowed to be best qualified for such a work, without any regard to quality, party or profession'. He hopes his patron himself will be part of it. He says that 'the persons who are to undertake this work will have the example of the French [the Academie Francaise] before them to imitate where these have proceeded right and to avoid their mistakes'.6 Nothing came of this, and despite Swift's criticisms, the court continues to be held up by some as the model for polite speech. Sheridan asserts that 'the pronunciation of English, as used by people of the best taste at court is so perfect that there are few of our words capable of improvement'.7 But there was in the eighteenth century a greater concern with correctness in grammar rather than in pronunciation. Not till the end of this century did pronunciation become centre stage. • Johnson in his dictionary (1755) had intended to give guidance on the pronunciation of words, but this obviously added too much to what was already a massive burden (it took him nine years to compile) and in the end he gave little guidance on pronunciation. While Johnson's dictionary was the first comprehensive dictionary to deal with definitions (previous ones had often limited themselves to hard words), Kenrick (1773) and Walker (1791) filled the pronunciation gap left by Johnson; both attempted comprehensive pronouncing dictionaries. Walker was conscious of the need to choose his model of pronunciation carefully. In the Preface he states that 'custom [= usage] is the sovereign arbiter of language' but, as asks, 'what is this custom to which we must so implicitly submit?' No one aad ever suggested wholly relying on the usage of the greater part of speakers, JOod or bad'. Should it, he says, be based on the speech of the majority in alleges and schools, together with those in the learned professions? Or should tie based on the speech 'of those who, from their elevated birth or station, give 1*5 to the refinements and elegancies of a court?' But • neither a finical pronunciation of the court, nor a pedantic Graecism of the .schools, will be denominated respectable usage till a certain number of Aftgeneral mass of speakers have acknowledged them; nor will a multitude 'v of common speakers authorise--------- "learned and polite. ■ any pronunciation which is reprobated by the The sounds of English legitimate'.8 This comes very near to recommendations in the twentieth century to attend to the actual usage of educated speakers. hi the last quotation in the previous paragraph there occurs the phrase 'generally received' and this recurs on other occasions in Walker's Dictionary. And the word 'received' eventually comes to dominate for a long time the idea of a model for British pronunciation. 7.2 Early uses of 'received* and 'received pronunciatic-' 'Received' as an adjective is little used nowadays being only commonly li -ird in a few set phrases, notably 'received wisdom and 'received opinion'. Rt its wider use goes back to at least before Shakespearean times. Among othen lie OED records 'received form' (1542) and 'received custom' (1597), Walker': se (1791) is the first time it is used with reference to pronunciation and he us it .' with reference to the pronunciation of words to be transcribed in his dictior y; ;: there is as yet no idea of a standard system. In the hundred years or so .ilier j Walker (whose dictionary itself continued to be reprinted for all that time) l re » were numerous manuals of elocution published in England (directed at t se;J engaged in public speaking or acting) which talk of southern and northern spccfa { but certainly have no concept of a standard pronunciation. Nor does the u: oljj the word 'received' applied just to individual sounds or words seem to bee i«2 any more common; it is not used at all in any of Alexander Melville B..1'** numerous publications (e.g. 1849). But Alexander Ellis tells us that in the present day we may, however, recognise a received pronunci: ijjj [note no use of capitals] all over the country, not widely differing m particular locality, and admitting a certain degree of variety. It may ■? & especially considered as the educated pronunciation of the metropolr-. u* ■ the court, the pulpit and the bar. But in so far as all these localities ■•mi W professions are recruited from the provinces, there will be a varied th .. g of provincial utterance running through the whole.9 y Two things should be noted about this statement: (1) there is still the retei to the court, and (2) it is accepted that there will be a regional elem.u' In tte?^ received pronunciation. Despite other occasional uses of the phrase 'reef i"«dffi pronunciation' there is no systematic description of any type of standard prcnuitfJH ciation alongside the minutely detailed descriptions of very many diakii freCSI-lj Henry Sweet, who was the direct successor to Bell and Ellis, does not apparc.:OJJKi use the term 'received pronunciation' at all nor does he attempt to set up "?JbJ preferred model of English. But in his Primer of Spoken English he display5 ■Wtl ambiguous attitude to the idea of a standard: f 1 must disclaim any intention of setting up a standard of spoken EngflHEE All I can do is to record those facts which are accessible to me—to ^""JjfiJ Standard and regional accents 77 ft home of Standard English both in its spoken ZlLrT^ ^ Daniel Jones, the BBC, RP and GB I lie impetus for codifying something that is considered a standard system of h i enunciation seems to have come from the increased interest in teaching English ,. a foreign language, plus the increased interest in spoken language resulting )in the spread of literacy in elementary education. The journal Le Maitre tonetiqiie, founded in 1886 (in the first three years called Dhifonetik tttcer and p.iw the Journal of the International Phonetic Association) was prominent in (pis development. Daniel Jones became its editor in 1906 and was to dominate onetics in England for the next half century. Three books by Jones, first published rly in the twentieth century but all remaining in print in various later editions roughout the century, established the term 'Received Pronunciation' or 'RP' representing standard spoken British English." But it is also worth noting at Jones declared: 'I wish it to be understood that other types of pronunciation ,."dst which may be considered equally good'.12 Nevertheless Jones's books, rticularly the English Pronouncing Dictionary and the Outline of English '•mnetics, were regarded as the standard books from the 1920s to the 1960s and 'nee RP was the term used regularly to describe standard British English pro-meiation. Most other books in these years promulgated a similar standard and . ieerally called it RP. The largest reason for the spreading of a standard pronunciation in the early ■®ntieth century was the beginning of broadcasting by the BBC in 1926 with ■^formidable head John Reith, who was much concerned with prestige in that :espect. The Advisory Committee on Spoken English, which he set up, had "vo phoneticians on it, Daniel Jones and Arthur Lloyd James, who managed to "Stsuade it to adopt a relatively tolerant attitude. So even Reith himself in the Steward to the Committee's first publication wrote: "There has been no attempt •establish a uniform spoken language .. . The policy might be described as that :seeking a common denominator of educated speech'.13 The BBC has never Micitly advocated a standard such as RP. 'In the early years of broadcasting, announcers and newsreaders heard on the BBC spoke with an RP accent but tWas a by-product of the restricted social group from which BBC employment r.drawiii rather than a matter of deliberate policy.,M Nevertheless the BBC t*ta.hiige pan in the promulgation of that accent described in Jones's books tZ&SV!^nlL\r:mt °f POpUlati°n °f Britain *■ RP -cent *«-«is '^^z^zz^- Bteven a figure as low 5 n,gner tnan A31 fOT my other established variety, 78 The sounds of English and no other accent is so widely spread (hence appropriate for foreign learners). Speakers of any dialect rarely regularly speak the broadest forms of their local accent and any modifications are usually towards RP. All this means that RP represents the 'common denominator' in many varieties of regional Frmli-'h, although, as is indicated below, the term General British (GB) is now prelerred. 7.4 'Modern RP' In the latter half of the twentieth century the type of pronunciation represented as RP changed considerably (even in public schools). Newsreaders anil other regular broadcasters before the 1960s sound noticeably different from their current equivalents (even if those with obviously regional pronunciations like Scottish English are excluded).15 The same applies to (ex-)army officers of that period. At the same time, with the advent of universal secondary education in 1944 and a huge expansion of tertiary education between the 1970s and the 1990s, the difference in pronunciation habits between those in public schools and oilier types of secondary education was considerably reduced. So we get a luuduti •> type of pronunciation used by a wider range of people and specificalh called ■ 'Modern RP' by some writers.17 , i The existence of Modern RP has remained unacknowledged by some in using/; the term RP only to refer to the older type of pronunciation, one which lingers mainly in the speech of some older people. To such people RP remains rea.'idod as class-ridden, outdated and limited to a small minority in southern Englandsj! One scholar writes: 'Since the late twentieth century, Received Pronunciation^ has been gradually lessening in social prestige, and is no longer used by manfl members of the social and professional groups with which it was traditionally associated.'18 A BBC Radio 4 programme in 2011 was called 'RP, RIP?', in whichji RP was represented as upper-crust and dying.19 Those who take this amtud|| probably have the sound of what we will in this book call Conspicuous Gent- ► laymen, linguists and phoneticians, object to the term in a variety of ways: either it is posh, it is an imposed standard, it is too regionally limited, or it is outdated. If we accept that the accent we are describing is one which we feel should continue to be the standard, can we call it something better than RP? In the past the terms Oxford English and the Queen's (or King's) have been used. If. at some stage in the past, or ever, Oxford people, or just Oxford academics, spoke unadulterated RP, it is certainly not true now (as can be readily heard if we listen to various Oxbridge dons presenting series on British television). Although the present Queen's English has changed considerably during her reign, at the moment it still tends towards what in previous editions of this book was called Refined RP. The term BBC English is used in recent editions of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, the Introduction to the fourteenth edition of which states: The time has come to abandon the archaic name Received Pronunciation. The model used for British English is what is referred to as BBC English; this is the pronunciation of professional speakers employed by the BBC as newsreaders and announcers on BBC1 and BBC2, the World Service, and BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. It goes on to say that the accent is typical of broadcasters with an English accent (i.e. as opposed to Scottish, Welsh, or Irish). Given such restrictions the statement ■ may be weakly true although there are some newsreaders and announcers who . are English but have some regional characteristics. Moreover the Introduction to (he CF.PD goes on to say: 'Their speech does not cany for most people the "• connotations of high social class and privilege that RP and PSP [= Public School Pronunciation] have had in the past'. Thus the editors seem to be saying the eaceent they are describing is not RP, which is apparently still equated with PSP. c milarly it was recently written: 'The great majority of native speakers [of RP] /are educated at private schools and it is a misnomer to call it an accent of ■ •liish English'.20 The RP in these quotations evidently refers to an older type >n"HP. The fact that the last quotation was based on the speech of a 50-year-old '^oman educated at a preparatory school, a grammar school and Oxford Univer-conftrms this, as do the vowel diagrams in the article: /a/ is not lowered and ■•i:'.is.not fronted as they are in a modern, evolved form of RP. What of Southern British, or Standard Southern British? It is true that the -ipsifch of south-east England is nearest to the standard described in this book, but •^■^n.-it-ahout central-southern or sonth-woct»™ c—1~-j —<- 5;asd "bribing is that it is not geographically limited: there may be more pure ^s*i*ike:-, of this variety in south-east England but there are a lesser number *vW ugions of Britain and even in those areas the influence of the variety is ------« «■ una uuuft, UUL "ten* quite a wav'TmT "^efm ,EnSland- a 'pre-consonantal The sounds of English 80 However, despite many attempts to say that RP has evolved and includes considerable variation within it, non-phoneticians and even some British linguists and phoneticians, persist in identifying RP as a type of posh, outdated, falsely prestigious accent spoken, for example, by various senior members of the Roy 1 family (e.g. Prince Charles, but compare Prince Harry's much more model i pronunciation). Because of this narrow use by many of the name RP, and tt s frequent hostility to it, the name of the accent described in this book has bee i changed to General British (GB). But it has to be made clear that, compare I with previous editions of this book, it is not a different accent that is beir ; described, but an evolved and evolving version of the same accent under a dil ■ feTent name. 7.6 General British (GB)" In considering what term would be best as a replacement for RP, it has to I j noted that Gimson himself commented on the prospect of our eventual arriv.il at the present situation. In the third edition of this book (Gimson, 1980: 303) r : . remarked that 'General British' (GB) 'has been used and may in time supersec : ; .. . RP'. It is now indeed to be preferred, paralleling General American and i ,, • abbreviation GA. The first time the term General British was used, at least i . a serious publication, was in Windsor Lewis (1972). In the introductory seciio-?; called 'The design of the dictionary' the author says: ;* this dictionary excludes any British pronunciations which are associate ;| specifically only with a public boarding-school or any socially conspicuoi l| background .. . This most general type of educated British pronunuatiu J| ... is described fully in . . . Gimson's . .. Pronunciation of English. [Genera.$ British is] a welcome avoidance of the less than happy, archaic-soundmjj term 'Received [Pronunciation]'.22 | Maidment's Speech Internet Dictionary (2012) has the entry 'General Britis-| English' and describes it as I The British accent whose varieties are least associated with any specifu iivj" ) of Great Britain. It is the most frequent model employed in the teaching t."3"i names including BBC English, and Southern (Standard) British English and, very widely but decreasingly often, Received Pronunciation. The eighth edition of the Oxford Advanced Sish pronunciations given are those of younger speakers o Gener^ This includes RP (Received Pronunciation) and a range< ^ ZM! 1 ^^ which lsLT7 ^T" ^ * tem as RGB t0 describe the type lot strongly regional-To except for the presence of a few reg2 the term General British (GB) is now used m this book. Besides 'H^Wt ma>/ wel1 §° unnoticed even by other speakers of GB. For Standard and regional accents 81 England there are lesser numbers of speakers of GB in south-west England, in the north of England, in Wales and in Scotland (it is not difficult to hear local speakers of GB in Cardiff and Edinbvirgh). There are an even larger number of speakers of Regional GB (i.e. GB with a small admixture of local characteristics) in all these areas. Ireland probably has fewer GB speakers (but Britain is not normally taken to include Northern Ireland). 7.7 Conspicuous General British (CGB)24 Conspicuous General British (CGB) is that type of GB which is commonly considered to be 'posh', to be associated with upper-class families, with public schools and with professions which have traditionally recruited from such families, e.g. officers in the navy and in some army regiments. But the number of speakers of CGB, even in these areas, has considerably declined in the last fifty years and is now mainly limited to older speakers. For many other speakers, both of GB and of regional dialects, a speaker of CGB is often regarded as affected and a figure of fun. Particular characteristics of CGB are the conspicu-ous use of the vowel III finally in words like city, happy, fully, etc. (though this also occurs in some dialects) and of a very open word-final hi (and where [g] ! forms part of lis/ and /us/) in words like bitter, here, sure. The vowel ItJ is also • pronounced very open, this time in all positions (e.g. in burn, occur, certain). The vowel /a/ is often diphthongised as [?a] (e.g. in mad, matter) and /sol as [eu] (e.g. in bone, open, -window) (though this last refinement has never been as •widespread or persisted as long as the others). A common factor in most of these -vowels is that the tongue and jaw positions are more open than in mainstream GB. Among consonantal pronunciations the maintenance of /tj,dj,sj/ in words slike tube, duly and suit is notable. 7.8 Regional General British (RGB)25 attempts in the early history of the BBC to use announcers who had even a mild 'glonal accent used to provoke protests even from the region whose accent was -ssd. But increasingly nowadays we hear speech which is GB with the inclusion ■f regional markers. We call such hybrids Regional General British (or RGB). -although we choose for convenience to use two distinct categories of RGB on °ne hand and a regional accent on the other, in practice there is a gradient <*ween the two. But all types of RGB have something in common; they all •*Main a large proportion of GB features. 15r°nipafed with Conspicuous General British (CGB), Regional General British twJB) reflects regional rather than class variation and will vary according to 58** region is involved. Hence, strictly speaking, we should talk of RGBs -iffS.Plural. Yet it is useful to have such a term as RGB to describe the type -■■MK-ch which is basicallv or ■ 82 The sounds of English example, vocalisation of dark [i] to [o] in words like held [heudj and ball [bs <,, a characteristic of London Regional (and some other southern accents), n passes virtually unnoticed in an otherwise fully GB accent. Or, again, the use "f /a/ instead of ia'J before voiceless fricatives in words like after, bath and p t (part of the Northern English accent within England) may be likewise acceptai;l s in an RGB. But some other features of regional accents may still be too stigmati: i to be describable as GB, e.g. realisation of Itl by a glottal stop word-medk / between vowels, as in water (in broad London speech) or the lack of a distinct mi between /a/ and hi (in much of the north of England). Even these two exampl s are becoming much less stigmatised than they were. Special mention must be made of London RGB. because, under the name f , 'Estuary English', it has provoked much discussion in the press. The vocalisat 1 S of dark [1] to [u] has already been noted as one of the features of this form >if j RGB. The name Estuary English was first used because such a pronunciation |i was thought to have spread outwards from London along the Thames Estuary ruo 4f Essex and North Kent. But claims have been made that this type of pronunciatr • i has spread not only into areas all around London (i.e. the 'Home Counties') but a ): I into urban areas remote from London, e.g. Norwich, Bristol, Hull. Manches..i, :M Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow. If this should be confirmed, Estuary EngliMi-i« would be competing with the RCJBs of these cities.20 Estuary English is said iiifjj be being adopted by those wishing to avoid the stigma of GB as 'posh' and I -Efg upwardly mobile speakers of local accents. It is often characterised among youni \jtM speakers as having 'street credibility' or 'streetcred' or being 'cool', i.e. as beir^fjl fashionable. The phonetic features of Estuary English are discussed further irfll the section on London English below (§7.12.3). 2 CGB and RGB are not accents with precisely enumerable lists of features 1 |jj rather represent clusterings of features, such clusterings varying from individuals to individual. Thus there are not categorial boundaries between the three typtn| of GB; a speaker may, for example, generally be a GB speaker but have o tv noticeable feature of CGB. And the concept of RGB reflects the fact that thue-j is nowadays a far greater tolerance of accentual variation in all walks of lit%.J although only certain types of regional dilution of GB are generally acceptable. < 7.9 GB and foreign learners GB (often under its former name of RP) has traditionally been the type ol nunciation taught to learners of British English as an L2 and that most comma is realised with no upward curl of the tongue tip, i.e. ft! = [o] or [m], red as [ned] or [itied]. This has been described as one of the features of Estuary English, but it seems more likely that it is general tendency within GB and not something particularly typical of the London area. ' (3) lei is lowered, following the lowering of /a/ (sec §7.10.2(1)). i.e. it is being 'pulled' downwards'.33 (4) [s] plus a non-syllabic consonant is used where previously a syllabic con-' > sonant has been the norm (and where the use of the [s] was considered . babylike), e.g. garden [gaidsn], bitten [bitsn], middle [itudsl], bottle [bntsl].34 k '(5) The vocalisation of dark [1] to [u] is increasingly heard more widely than .. •) in just London RGB. It is particularly common after labial consonants, e.g. in ball, field, well, but can certainly be heard following other consonants, ft e.g. in deal, kill, kneel. fi-th).. Use of the variant [du] of/su/ before [1], e.g. in goal, bold, moult, has now Jp»i spread so widely that it is reasonable to consider it part of GB, rather than 3;_ confined to London RGB. 'II Systems and standards other than GB and their influence on RGB" -"nam types of regional pronunciation are firmly established as alternative .■*iiJ<,;.(S- Some, especially Standard Scottish English (SSE), have been accepted ■jp°r ■■ least the last thirty years; others, particularly the popular forms of pro-"■SJ™ 'll0n Use^tov™s> are st'" °fien characterised as ugly (e.g. Liverpool • * ■' ilngham) or strange (e.g. Newcastle) by those (especially of the older wFlKi iuoiis) who do not use them. This remains so even though these accents twfi1 Un'y 'n a less broad variety) are heard daily on TV and radio. This is ||!jSPiion of the social connotations of speech features which, though they have llW&fe.'---" 86 The sounds of English lost some of their force, have by no means completely disappeared. On the other hand, GB itself (and particularly where there are some features of CGB) can i>e a handicap nowadays, since it may be taken as a mark of affectation or a desire to emphasise social superiority.36 Most speakers of GB have themselves becouiu aware of the fact that their type of pronunciation is one which is used by onl>-a very small part of the English-speaking world. An American pronunciation of English, for instance, is now completely familiar in Britain and a 'mid-Atlantic' accent is common in pop-singers. The changing awareness of different English accents has been bolstered by the large number of recent immigrants who speak English with hugely varying competence and a multiplicity of accents. 7.12 Comparing systems of pronunciation37 A comparison of pronunciation in two dialects will reveal differences of sever?! kinds (as first discussed in §5.3.5): ^Standard and regional accents 87 i I I (1) (2) 4- systemic differences (or differences in the inventory of phonemes)—The'* system is different, i.e. the number of phonemic contrasts is smaller o*>" greater. 'Hie GB contrast between /a/ and la:! may not be present in Ulstag or in Scotland, e.g. Sam and psalm being pronounced the same. The contrast between GB /a/ and hi may not be present in the English of the north off England, e.g. putt and put are pronounced the same. The presence of/|i§ after [rj] in such a word as sing deprives ft)] of its phonemic stains mtfjjl north-west midlands of England, i.e. [rj] then only occurs as an allu^hoip of fnl before /k,g/ as in sink, sing which are pronounced as /sink/ pnd 'sfigj and there is no minimal contrast between /rj/ and ,'nl as there is in OB, between sin /sin/ and sing /say' (see §7.12.4). |s«3 distributional differences (or different pbonotactic possibilities)—Thft system may be the same, but the phonetic context in which a phoneme ocewjj may be limited, e.g. hi GB hi has a limited distribution, being rjsinctrd turn its occurrence to pre-vocalic position as in red or horrid (accents of this so#i are called non-rhotic). Others like most American and Scottish accent-. Imfr'i a wider distribution of hi and are termed rhotic. In these accent ■'>■' occuSs pre-consonautally and pre-pausally as well as pre-vocalically, thiij pu'i car will be pronounced /parrt/ and /ka:r/ (cf. GB /part/ and /Icq:' The | and took (see §8.9.10). Other accents have hoi and /a/ like GB bat = ' instead of/a/ in, for example, one and among (see §8.9.6). GB has hi in off. doth and cross but popular London (and indeed CGB) have hil (see §8.9.8). (4) realisations differences—The system of contrasts is the same in two dialects but the phonetic realisation of some phonemes is different. The GB opposition between the vowels of bait and boat is maintained in the English of the north of England, but the realisation of both vowels is monophthongal compared with the diphthongs in GB (see, for example, §7.12.4). Accents of English throughout Britain and Ireland have an III occurring in words like lesson mi field but in most of Ireland and Wales the 11/ is 'clear' [1], while in most of Scotland it is 'dark' [1]; whereas in the south of England it is clear [1] before vowels (e.g. in lesson) and dark [1] in other positions (e.g. in field). 7.12.1 General American (GA) The traditional (although not undisputed) division of the United States for pronunciation purposes is into Eastern (including New England and New York eity, although the latter has pronunciation characteristics of its own), Southern (stretchine from Virginia to Texas and to all points southwards) and General (all the remaining area). General American (GA) can thus be regarded as that form of American which does not have marked regional characteristics (and is in this way comparable to GB) and is sometimes referred to as 'Network English' ' as GB. not entirely justifiably nowadays, is sometimes referred to as 'BBC r tijiijh'). It is the standard model for the pronunciation of English as an L2 in Car of Asia (e.g. the Philippines) and parts of Latin American (e.g. Mexico). ire are two major areas of systemic difference between GB and GA. First, i" ' icks the GB diphthongs /ra.us/ and the long vowel IvJ which correspond ' in . more widely spread than this. The vowel principally affected by this shift is /a| which becomes closer to [eJ or [eg], or even [e] or [esj. This affects both those; words like sad which have /a/ in GB and those words like after where the GA; /a/ corresponds to lail in GB. In oilier areas of the U.S. including Columbusj Ohio, and Jackson, North Carolina, short vowels seem to be going hi the opposite-direction, i.e. /t,e,a/ are lowering and losing a tendency to diphthongisation* " Standard and regional accents 89 corresponding to GB lyj in bird, serve and turn; others have the same r-coloured schwa fa-] in such words. Rhoticity in SSE is declining with many speakers now only semi-rhotic (i.e. pre-pausal and pre-consonantal irl may be treated differently). Moreover the lexical incidence of vowels before Irl may not correspond .o GB: short and sport may have different vowels as in GA, short rhyming with ,-anght but sport with boat. The SSE vowels corresponding to GB hi! and /so/ are typically monophthongal (as in General American), e.g. gate and boat are [geit] and [bo:t]. Moreover the vowel common to soot and suit is not like either of the GB vowels in these words, but is considerably fronted to something like [y\hence [syl]. More generally there is no systemic durational difference between long and short vowels, as there is in GB. The chief differences from GB in the realisation of the consonants lies in the use of a tap [r], e.g. red [red] and trip [trip], though there is variation between :his and [x] (the usual type in GB), the use of [j] being more common in post-vocalic positions and generally more prestigious. The phoneme IV is most commonly a dark [1-j in all positions, little [htlj and plough [ptau]. Finally, intervocalic Iti #often realised as a glottal stop (like London below), e.g. butter J, 11.3 London English, Estuary English (EE) and Multicultural London English (MLE) 7.12.2 Standard Scottish English (SSE) Jfhemost dialectal type of London speech is called Cockney. Unlike the previous jg/o varieties above (General American and Standard Scottish English), Cockney is. .i<- much a class dialect as a regional one. In its broadest form the dialect of iSTi -tcckaey includes a considerable vocabulary of its own, including rhyming slang. jcu"»" ----- • j Gaelic g>.uttS«yjjMF£ 1'ie characteristics of Cockney pronunciation are spread more widely through 7.12-2 Stanaara ^ languages in Scotlan ■ ^ . ^ >|y«Matt^artrion speech than its vocabulary; this type of pronunciation we henceforth There ate nowadays taken to ^^an dja\ect of Old Enghs11 v^eiaafeppflpSp&r lo ai popular London or broad London. The prevalence of a Cockney pro-, (Scottish) English- The No ^ . same time as it spread ^ .■ "^^^^M^ra^ntumon in London is now much challenged by the growth of what has come ana > , .~e c,.ti,r,ri at mucn HJfcbe kimv.n „ Multicultural London English (MLE), dealt with towards the end Hwa>. and (Scottish) English. The Northumbrian dialect oi uiu Eugum o^.— .... . south and east of Scotland at much the same time as it spread through I ::uia«ljg* and has continued in use as present-day Scots. A different type of Enghv h*^-re-introduced from the south of England in the eighteenth century but v»j> >«WB sequently much influenced by Scots; it is this that is now described its SutUKS English. Most speakers in Scotland will slightly or considerably vary tni-ii »rj$5p of speech between Scots and Standard Scottish English according to d.ifermm situations. The typical vowel system of Scottish English invoh^s the jksHW the GB distinctions between lail and /a/, between Ai:/ and lui, and betweayjB and hi. Thus the pairs ant and aunt, soot and suit, caught and cot are piOuujJif™ the same. On the other hand there may be a phonemic split corresponding M Id; while most such words have a vowel of an [e] quality, a small group of tl have a vowel of an [sj quality, e.g. heaven, eleven, next. £f SSE also has no /w,oo/ because, like General American, it '< 'M$ beard and dour are pronounced as /biird/ and l&w.rl (= [dyu])- SimiUHH leil (formerly leal) is followed by an Irl, so fare GB /&;/ becomes SSrjP Some speakers will also have different sequences of (short) K!y section. ■ike the previous two types of pronunciation there are no differences in ventory of vowel phonemes between GB and popular London and there I jPfelai".ily few (compared with GA and SSE) differences of lexical incidence. £ a"-'- .uivvcver, a large number of differences of realisation. The short front 4s. ion J lo be uniformly closer than in GB, e.g. in sat, set and sit, so much AtiJi may sound like set and set itself like sit to speakers from other regions. MoHtty-the short vowel /a/ moves forward to almost C.[a]. Among the long JJjfKsMt noticeable is the diphlhongisation of ii:l (= [si]), lull (= [au]) and Th$$*S between [oo] morpheme-medially and [ows] morpheme-finally, Wlosid], boot [baut], sword [soud], saw [ows]. Broad London speech also ^jjYe pronunciations of a number of diphthongs led = [ai], /ar/ = Lai], and