English in southern England PDF

Preview

Summary

Presentación...

Description

English in southern England

When foreign learners of English first come to the British Isles, they are usually surprised to discover how little they understand of the English they hear. For one thing, people seem to speak faster than expected. Also, the English that most British or Irish people speak seems to be different in many ways from the English the visitor learned. While it is probably differences of pronunciation that will immediately strike them, learners may also notice differences of grammar and vocabulary. I have to make clear the way are going to be used two important terms, dialect and accent. 



A dialect is a language variety distinguished from other varieties by differences of grammar and vocabulary. So Standard British English is therefore a dialect of English, just as the other standard dialects of the language as Standard Scottish English. Accent, on the other hand, refers just to variations in pronunciation.

When British is taught to foreign learners, the accent presented as a model for the learner will most typically be Received Pronunciation. ‘Received’ here is to be understood in its nineteenth century sense of ‘accepted in the most polite circles of society’. Only a small percentage of population of England speaks RP. The rest of the islands’ native English speaking inhabitants instead have some form of regional accent. Regional accents are sometimes spoken of as, for instance, ‘northern’ or ‘southern’ English but of course, this is not to say that there is just one north of English accent. It means that only that speakers in one of those areas have enough pronunciation features in common with each other which are not shared with speakers of other areas. At the same time, unless there is a considerable obstacle to communication between the two areas, such as a mountain or a sea, those differences will be so slight that we wouldn’t have a succession of distinct accent but an accent continuum, a gradual changing in pronunciation. Standard English, as we have said, is a dialect. Besides this, there are many regional dialects in Britain, which differ from Standard English in various ways. I am going to explain some of the features of the south of England dialect and accent. Firstly, South East England and the Home Counties (the counties bordering London) tend to reflect the interface between the London region and other regional accents. Affluent districts are associated with a modified Received Pronunciation accent, reflecting their traditional popularity with upper middle and upper-class residents which has spread throughout more social classes broadly in rural areas with commuting access to London. Less affluent areas have traditionally mainstream London accents that grade into southern rural outside urban areas. According to Kerswill and Williams’ article written for the Britain in 2002, there is a widespread homogenization in the south-east. The features present a levelling between the extremes of Estuarine Pronunciation and careful Received Pronunciation and except where an intuitive neutral parity position exists, they include:



Reduced amount of H-dropping (omission of the initial H)

 

Increased amount of TH-fronting (th=f/V) R- dropping (fire fai’)



t between vowels retained as /t/ (or a glottal stop, in its variants), where GA changes it to /d/.

Southern Rural and West Country accents This family of similar strongly rhotic accents – now perceived as rural – originally extended across much of southern England south. They persist most strongly in areas that remain largely rural with a largely indigenous population, particularly the West Country. In many other areas they are declining due to immigration by RP and Estuary speakers. As well as rhoticity (speakers pronounce the historical rhotic consonant (/r/) in all instances), common features of West County accents include    





The diphthong /aɪ/ (as in price) realised as [ʌɪ] or [ɔɪ], sounding more like the diphthong in Received Pronunciation choice. The diphthong /aʊ/ (as in mouth) realised as [ɛʊ], with a starting point close to the vowel in Received Pronunciation dress. The vowel /ɒ/ (as in lot) realised as an unrounded vowel [ɑ], as in many forms of American English. In traditional West Country accents, the voiceless fricatives /s/, /f/, /θ/, /ʃ/ (as in sat, farm, think, shed respectively) are often voiced to [z], [v], [ð], [ʒ], giving pronunciations like "Zummerzet" for Somerset, "varm" for farm, "zhure" for sure, etc. In the Bristol area a vowel at the end of a word is often followed by an intrusive dark l, [ɫ]. Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle, and Normal (written Eva, Ida, and Norma). L is pronounced darkly where it is present, too, which means that in Bristolian rendering, 'idea' and 'ideal' are homophones. H-dropping in South Devon and Cornwall....