Use of Estuary English

Estuary English is widely encountered throughout the south and south-east of England, particularly among the young. Many consider it to be a working-class accent, though it is by no means limited to the working class. In the debate that surrounded a 1993 article about Estuary English, a London businessman claimed that Received Pronunciation was perceived as unfriendly, so Estuary English was now preferred for commercial purposes.

Some people adopt the accent as a means of "blending in", appearing to be more working class, or in an attempt to appear to be "a common man" — sometimes this affectation of the accent is derisively referred to as "Mockney". For example, Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, has been heard to adopt the accent at times in TV interviews (as in the Des O'Connor show) Diana, Princess of Wales (born 1961) was sometimes said to use elements of Estuary English, though they were quite mild in her case. By contrast the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips (born 1981) speaks with a pronounced Estuary English accent. As some Australian scientists have found out researching the Queen's anniversary speeches, even she has shifted her accent slightly towards what is called Estuary.

The Queen's English is drifting down the social hierarchy, scientists in Australia say.

After trawling through archives of Her Majesty's annual Christmas messages since 1952, they conclude that the royal accent is becoming less "posh".

The experts, based at Sydney's Macquarie University, believe the vowel sounds of Queen Elizabeth II have been influenced by subjects who are younger or of lower social standing.

As a result, they say, the Queen's accent is moving towards the standard accent of southern England, away from the cut-glass "upper-crust" accent of the 1950s.

Lead researcher Jonathan Harrington told BBC News Online: "In the last 40 or so years, there have been dramatic changes to the social class structure in Britain and to a certain extent this is reflected in pronunciation.

"It demonstrates that the monarchy, at least as far as the spoken accent is concerned, isn't isolated from the rest of the community."

"Hed" to "Had"

The researchers base their conclusions on an acoustic analysis of vowel sounds from archive recordings of the Queen's annual Christmas message.

They compared recordings from the 1950s and the 1980s with the standard accent of southern Britain, as spoken by female BBC broadcasters.

Writing in the scientific journal Nature, the team say the Queen's pronunciation of vowel sounds has slowly shifted over the years "towards one that is characteristic of speakers who are younger and/or lower in the social hierarchy".

In the Queen's Christmas broadcasts of the 1950s, for example, the word "had" almost rhymed with "bed". But 30 years later "had" migrated halfway to the standard southern English pronunciation, which rhymes with "bad".

Blurring of accents

The researchers say the Queen's English is part of a nationwide trend towards a blurring of accents that once distinguished different social classes.

The standard accent of England - modern, received pronunciation - has been subtly influenced by the Cockney accent, for example, leading to some people dropping the "l" from milk.

And Estuary English has a glottal stop, dropping the "t", as in "a li'le bi' of breab wiv a bi' of bu'er on i'".

Jonathan Harrington is quick to point out that although the Queen no longer speaks the Queen's English of the 1950s, researchers have found no trace of Cockney influences over the years.

Royal stereotypes

And Paul Foulkes, a linguistics expert at York University, UK, says that although younger members of the Royal Family, such as Prince William, have been heard to use glottal stops, this does not extend to the Queen.

He told BBC News Online: "If you look at the way Spitting Image and other professional mimics might stereotype the Queen's speech with words like House pronounced as 'Hice', that is something she would be likely to change to reduce the distance between herself and other people.

"But she is not likely to start dropping her aitches or using glottal stops."

So for the time being at least, the House of Windsor is unlikely to become the 'Ouse of Windsor'.

English English

English English refers to the English language as spoken in England, part of the United Kingdom. Other terms used are Anglo-English, English in England and England English.

In this usage, the term British English has a wider meaning and is usually (but not always) reserved to describe the features common to English English, Welsh English Scottish English and sometimes Hiberno-English.

General features

The British Isles are one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the English-speaking world. Significant changes in dialect (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary) may occur within one region. The four major divisions are normally classified as Southern English dialects, Midlands English dialects, Northern English dialects and Scottish English, and the closely related dialects of Scots and Ulster Scots (varieties of Scots spoken in Ulster). There is also Hiberno-English (English as spoken in Ireland) and the form of English used in Wales. The various English dialects differ in the words they have borrowed from other languages. The Scottish and Northern dialects include many words originally borrowed from Old Norse; the Scottish dialects include words borrowed from Scots and Scottish Gaelic. Hiberno-English includes words derived from Irish.

An important feature of English regional accents is the bundle of isoglosses, which separate different pronunciations in different areas.

Accents throughout Britain are influenced by the phoneme inventory of regional dialects, and native English speakers can often tell quite precisely where a person comes from, frequently down to a few miles.

In addition, speakers may modify their pronunciation and vocabulary towards Standard English, especially in public circumstances. In consequence, the accent best known to many people outside the United Kingdom as English English, is that of Received Pronunciation (RP).

Until recently, RP English was widely believed to be more educated than other accents and was referred to as the King's (or Queen's) English, or even "BBC English" (due to the fact that in the early years of broadcasting it was very rare to hear any other dialects on the BBC). However, for several decades, regional accents have been more widely accepted and are frequently heard. Thus the relatively recent spread of Estuary English is influencing accents throughout the south east.

Some of the features of English English:

· Most versions of this dialect have non-rhotic pronunciation, wherein r is not pronounced in syllable coda position. This pronunciation is also found in many other English dialects, including Australian English, New Zealand English, and South African English, as well as most non-native varieties spoken throughout the Commonwealth of Nations. Areas with rhotic accents are the far north, the West Country, Lancashire other than the Manchester area and the town of Corby where there was a large Scottish influence. Some parts of England are partially rhotic, such as the East Riding of Yorkshire. Up until the early 20th century, Standard English was rhotic. The fifth book of On Early English Pronunciation (1889) treated rhoticity as the sign of refined pronunciation when discussing various English and Lowland dialects.

· Northern versions of the dialect often lack the foot-strut split, so that there is no distinction between /ʊ/ and /ʌ/, making put and putt homophones as /pʊt/.

· In the Southern variety, words like bath, cast, dance, fast, after, castle, grass etc. are pronounced with the long vowel found in calm (that is, [ɑː] or a similar vowel) while in the Midlands and Northern varieties they are pronounced with the same vowel as trap or cat, usually [a]. For more details see Trap-bath split. There are some areas of the West Country that would use the Southern variety for some words and the Northern variety for other words.

· Many varieties undergo h-dropping, making harm and arm homophones. This is a feature of working-class accents across most of England, but was traditionally stigmatised (a fact the comedy musical My Fair Lady was quick to exploit) but less so now.^[2] The accents of Northumberland, Tyneside and parts of Norfolk are an exception to this rule. In the past, working-class people were often unsure where an h ought to be pronounced, and, when attempting to speak "properly", would often preface any word that began with a vowel with an h (e.g. "henormous" instead of enormous, "hicicles" instead of icicles); this was referred to as the "hypercorrect h" in the Survey of English Dialects, and is also referenced in literature (e.g. the policeman in Danny the Champion of the World).

· A glottal stop for intervocalic /t/ is now common amongst younger speakers across the country; it was originally confined to some areas of the south-east and East Anglia. Many in the older generation consider this to be "annoying".

· The distinction between /w/ and /ʍ/ in wine and whine is lost in most varieties.

· Most varieties have the horse-hoarse merger. However some northern accents retain the distinction, pronouncing pairs of words like for/four, horse/hoarse and morning/mourning differently.

· The consonant clusters /sj/, /zj/, and /lj/ in suit, Zeus, and lute are preserved by some.

· Many Southern varieties have the bad-lad split, so that bad /bæːd/ and lad /læd/ do not rhyme.

· In most of the eastern half of England, plurals and past participle endings which are pronounced /ɪz/ and /ɪd/ (with the vowel of kit) in RP may be pronounced with a schwa /ə/. This can be found as far north as Wakefield and as far south as Essex. This is unusual in being an east-west division in pronunciation when English dialects tend to divide along north-south lines.

Change over time

The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken in the 1950s and 1960s to preserve a record of the traditional spectrum of rural dialects that merged into each other. The traditional picture was that there would be a few changes in lexicon and pronunciation every couple of miles, but that there would be no sharp borders between completely different ways of speaking. Within a county, the accents of the different towns and villages would drift gradually so that residents of bordering areas sounded more similar to those in neighbouring counties.

As a result of greater social mobility and the teaching of Standard English in secondary schools, this model is no longer very accurate. There are now certain English counties within which there is little change in accent/dialect, and people are more likely to categorise their accent by a region or county than by their town or village. As agriculture became less prominent, many rural dialects were made redundant. Some urban dialects have also declined.
References

1. Queen's speech 'less posh' - BBC News

2. Roach, Peter (2004), "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 239-245

3.  “In the English-speaking world”, Carol Goodwright, Janet Olearski, Chancerel International Publishers, 1998, ISBN 5-86866-106-0

4. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка. / М.А. Соколова, К.П. Гинтовт, И.С. Тихонова, Р.М. Тихонова. — 3-е изд. — М.: Владос, 2004

5. Crystal D. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. CUP, 1995

6. Wilkinson J. Introducing Standard English. London, 1994

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_dialect

10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estuary_English

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English English

12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/

 

[1] Spotlight on Britain, Second Edition, Susan Sheerin, Jonathan Seath, Gillian White, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-432788-4, page 3, Language

[2] Miss G.M. Miller, BBC Pronunciation Unit preface to the BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names, 1971