Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation (RP) is a special accent of British English that many people think of as the standard way of speaking in England. It has been very important and well-known around the whole English-speaking world since the early 1900s. People often call it the Queen’s English or the King’s English.

When we talk about RP, we are only talking about how words are pronounced, not about the words themselves, the grammar, or the style of speaking. Scholars and language experts have many different ideas about what RP really means, where it comes from, and whether it is a good choice for a standard accent. Because it has changed so much over the last 100 years, some of the old ways of studying it are no longer used by experts.

Some linguists now use the term Standard Southern British English (SSBE) to talk about the newer form of this accent that developed in Southern England after the mid-1900s. There isn’t full agreement on whether SSBE is completely different from RP or just another name for it in some situations.

History

In 1917, a man named Daniel Jones called this accent "Public School Pronunciation" in his book. By 1926, he changed it to "Received Pronunciation" because he couldn’t think of a better name. Other people had used similar words much earlier, though.

This accent became important in the late 1800s. It sounds most like the way people talk in parts of southern England, especially around London, Oxford, and Cambridge. In 1922, the BBC chose this way of speaking for their broadcasts because many people around the world could understand it.

Some people have called it other names too, like "BBC Pronunciation" or "The Queen’s English". Others prefer names like "General British" or "Standard Southern British". Experts sometimes talk about different kinds of this accent, like older and newer versions, but it can be hard to know exactly what each version means.

Prevalence and perceptions

Received Pronunciation, often called the standard British accent, has traditionally been linked to high social class. It used to be the everyday speech of families in Southern England whose sons went to certain well-known schools. This accent didn’t give away where someone grew up before going to school.

People have different ideas about how many people in Britain actually speak RP. Some experts think only about 3% do, while others guess it might be as high as 10%. RP is most common in London and the southeast of England. Even though it has been seen as the accent of powerful and wealthy people, some people dislike it. Surveys show that RP is still considered the most prestigious accent in the United Kingdom today.

Use

In the early days of British broadcasting, speakers of English usually used an accent called Received Pronunciation (RP). The first director-general of the BBC encouraged using a special "BBC accent" so people everywhere would understand it. He did not like the "Oxford accent". In 1926, the BBC created a group to help with correct pronunciation, but this group stopped when the Second World War began. During the war, a newsreader named Wilfred Pickles used his Yorkshire accent to help people tell BBC broadcasts from German propaganda. After the war, RP became less common in broadcasting. Today, RP is still often used by English-born announcers on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, but many other accents are also heard.

Most English dictionaries in Britain, including the Oxford English Dictionary, show RP pronunciations. Special pronunciation dictionaries, like the English Pronouncing Dictionary, are based on RP. RP has traditionally been used in teaching British English, but choosing a pronunciation model can be tricky.

Phonology

Consonants

Nasals and liquids (/m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, /l/) may be syllabic in unstressed syllables. The consonant /r/ in RP is generally a postalveolar approximant, which would normally be expressed with the sign [ɹ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the sign /r/ is nonetheless traditionally used for RP in most of the literature on the topic.

Voiceless plosives (/p/, /t/, /k/, /tʃ/) are aspirated at the beginning of a syllable, unless a completely unstressed vowel follows. (For example, the /p/ is aspirated in "impasse", with primary stress on "-passe", but not "compass", where "-pass" has no stress.) Aspiration does not occur when /s/ precedes in the same syllable, as in "spot" or "stop". When a sonorant /l/, /r/, /w/, or /j/ follows, this aspiration is indicated by partial devoicing of the sonorant. /r/ is a fricative when devoiced.

Syllable final /p/, /t/, /tʃ/, and /k/ may be either preceded by a glottal stop (glottal reinforcement) or, in the case of /t/, fully replaced by a glottal stop, especially before a syllabic nasal (bitten [ˈbɪʔn̩]). The glottal stop may be realised as creaky voice; thus, an alternative phonetic transcription of attempt [əˈtʰemʔt] could be [əˈtʰemm̰t].

As in other varieties of English, voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /ɡ/, /dʒ/) are partly or even fully devoiced at utterance boundaries or adjacent to voiceless consonants. The voicing distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds is reinforced by a number of other differences, with the result that the two of consonants can clearly be distinguished even in the presence of devoicing of voiced sounds:

• Aspiration of voiceless consonants syllable-initially
• Glottal reinforcement of /p, t, k, tʃ/ syllable-finally
• Shortening of vowels before voiceless consonants

As a result, some authors prefer to use the terms fortis and lenis in place of voiceless and voiced. However, the latter are traditional and in more frequent usage.

The voiced dental fricative (/ð/) is more often a weak dental plosive; the sequence /nð/ in phrases like even then is often realised as [n̪n̪] (a long dental nasal). /l/ has velarised allophone ([ɫ]) in the syllable rhyme. /h/ becomes voiced ([ɦ]) between voiced sounds.

Some conservative RP speakers in England may use /hw/ for ⟨wh⟩, which often reflects a conscious choice rather than being a natural feature of their accent.

Vowels

Examples of short vowels: /ɪ/ in kit, mirror and rabbit, /ʊ/ in foot and cook, /e/ in dress and merry, /ʌ/ in strut and curry, /æ/ in trap and marry, /ɒ/ in lot and orange, /ə/ in ago and sofa.

Examples of long vowels: /iː/ in fleece, /uː/ in goose, /ɛː/ in bear, /ɜː/ in nurse and furry, /ɔː/ in north, force and thought, /ɑː/ in father and start.

The long mid front vowel /ɛː/ is elsewhere transcribed with the traditional symbols ⟨ɛə, eə⟩. The predominant realisation in contemporary RP is monophthongal.

"Long" and "short" vowels

Many conventional descriptions of the RP vowel system group the non-diphthongal vowels into the categories "long" and "short". This should not be taken to mean that RP has minimal pairs in which the only difference is vowel length. "Long" and "short" are convenient cover terms for a number of phonetic features. The long-short pairings shown above include also differences in vowel quality.

The vowels called "long" high vowels in RP /iː/ and /uː/ are slightly diphthongized, and are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs [ɪi] and [ʊu]. The starting point of the diphthongal /uː/ can be either close to [ʊ] or a more centralised and even unrounded [ɨ̞], and its narrow transcriptions could be either [ʊu] or [ɨ̞ɯ̈].

Vowels may be phonologically long or short (i.e. belong to the long or the short group of vowel phonemes) but their length is influenced by their context: in particular, they are shortened if a voiceless (fortis) consonant follows in the syllable, so that, for example, the vowel in bat [bæʔt] is shorter than the vowel in bad [bæˑd]. The process is known as pre-fortis clipping. Thus phonologically short vowels in one context can be phonetically longer than phonologically long vowels in another context. For example, the vowel called "long" /iː/ in reach /riːtʃ/ (which ends with a voiceless consonant) may be shorter than the vowel called "short" /ɪ/ in the word ridge /rɪdʒ/ (which ends with a voiced consonant). Wiik, cited in (Cruttenden 2014), published durations of English vowels with a mean value of 172 ms for short vowels before voiced consonants but a mean value of 165 ms for long vowels preceding voiceless consonants.

In natural speech, the plosives /t/ and /d/ often have no audible release utterance-finally, and voiced consonants are partly or completely devoiced (as in [b̥æˑd̥]); thus the perceptual distinction between pairs of words such as bad and bat, or seed and seat rests mostly on vowel length (though the presence or absence of glottal reinforcement provides an additional cue).

Unstressed vowels are both shorter and more centralised than stressed ones. In unstressed syllables occurring before vowels and in final position, contrasts between long and short high vowels are neutralised and short [i] and [u] occur (e.g. happy [ˈhæpi], throughout [θɹuˈaʊʔt]). The neutralisation is common throughout many English dialects, though the phonetic realisation of e.g. [i] rather than [ɪ] (a phenomenon called happy-tensing) is not as universal.

According to phonetician Jane Setter, the typical pronunciation of the short variant of /uː/ is a weakly rounded near-close near-back rounded vowel [ʊ̜].

Diphthongs and triphthongs

The centring diphthongs are gradually being eliminated in RP. The vowel /ɔə/ (as in door, boar) had largely merged with /ɔː/ by the Second World War, and the vowel /ʊə/ (as in poor, tour) has more recently merged with /ɔː/ as well among most speakers, although the sound /ʊə/ is still found in conservative speakers, and in less common words such as boor. See CURE–FORCE merger. More recently /ɛə/ has become a pure long vowel /ɛː/, as explained above. /ɪə/ is increasingly pronounced as a monophthong [ɪː], although without merging with any existing vowels.

The diphthong /əʊ/ is pronounced by some RP speakers in a noticeably different way when it occurs before /l/, if that consonant is syllable-final and not followed by a vowel (the context in which /l/ is pronounced as a "dark l"). The realisation of /əʊ/ in this case begins with a more back, rounded and sometimes more open vowel quality; it may be transcribed as [ɔʊ] or [ɒʊ]. It is likely that the backness of the diphthong onset is the result of allophonic variation caused by the raising of the back of the tongue for the /l/. If the speaker has "l-vocalization" the /l/ is realised as a back rounded vowel, which again is likely to cause backing and rounding in a preceding vowel as coarticulation effects. This phenomenon has been discussed in several blogs by John C. Wells. In the recording included in this article the phrase "fold his cloak" contains examples of the /əʊ/ diphthong in the two different contexts. The onset of the pre-/l/ diphthong in "fold" is slightly more back and rounded than that in "cloak".

RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in tire, /aʊə/ as in tower, /əʊə/ as in lower, /eɪə/ as in layer and /ɔɪə/ as in loyal. There are different possible realisations of these items: in slow, careful speech they may be pronounced as two syllables with three distinct vowel qualities in succession, or as a monosyllabic triphthong. In more casual speech the middle vowel may be considerably reduced, by a process known as smoothing, and in an extreme form of this process the triphthong may even be reduced to a single long vowel. In such a case the difference between /aʊə/, /aɪə/, and /ɑː/ in tower, tire, and tar may be neutralised with all three units realised as [ɑː] or [äː]. This type of smoothing is known as the tower–tire, tower–tar and tire–tar mergers.

BATH vowel

See also: Trap–bath split

There are differing opinions as to whether /æ/ in the BATH lexical set can be considered RP. The pronunciations with /ɑː/ are invariably accepted as RP. The English Pronouncing Dictionary does not admit /æ/ in BATH words and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists them with a § marker of non-RP status. John Wells, who grew up in the north of England and uses /ɑː/ in "bath" and "glass", considers this the only acceptable phoneme in RP. Others have argued that /æ/ is too categorical in the north of England to be excluded. Clive Upton believes that /æ/ in these words must be considered within RP and has called the opposing view "south-centric". Upton's Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English gives both variants for BATH words. A. F. Gupta's survey of mostly middle-class students found that /æ/ was used by almost everyone who was from clearly north of the isogloss for BATH words. She wrote, "There is no justification for the claims by Wells and Mugglestone that this is a sociolinguistic variable in the north, though it is a sociolinguistic variable on the areas on the border [the isogloss between north and south]". In a study of speech in West Yorkshire, K. M. Petyt wrote that "the amount of /ɑː/ usage is too low to correlate meaningfully with the usual factors", having found only two speakers (both having attended boarding schools in the south) who consistently used /ɑː/.

Jack Windsor Lewis has noted that the Oxford Dictionary's position has changed several times on whether to include short /æ/ within its prescribed pronunciation. The BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names uses only /ɑː/, but its author, Graham Pointon, has stated on his blog that he finds both variants to be acceptable in place names.

Some research has concluded that many people in the North of England have a dislike of the /ɑː/ vowel in BATH words. A. F. Gupta wrote, "Many of the northerners were noticeably hostile to /ɡrɑːs/, describing it as 'comical', 'snobbish', 'pompous' or even 'for morons'." K. M. Petyt wrote that several respondents "positively said that they did not prefer the long-vowel form or that they really detested it or even that it was incorrect". Mark Newbrook has assigned this phenomenon the name "conscious rejection", and has cited the BATH vowel as "the main instance of conscious rejection of RP" in his research in West Wirral.

French words

John Wells has argued that, as educated British speakers often attempt to pronounce French names in a French way, there is a case for including /ɒ̃/ (as in bon), and /æ̃/ and /ɜ̃ː/ (as in vingt-et-un), as marginal members of the RP vowel system. He also argues against including other French vowels on the grounds that not many British speakers succeed in distinguishing the vowels in bon and banc, or in rue and roue. However, the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary draws a distinction between /ɒ̃/ (there rendered as /ɔ̃ː/) and the unrounded /ɑ̃ː/ of banc for a total of four nasal vowels.

Alternative notations

Not all reference sources use the same system of transcription. Clive Upton devised a modified system for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) based on contemporary pronunciation. His changes to five symbols from the traditional Gimson system are now used in many other Oxford University Press dictionaries; the differences are shown in the table below.

Geoff Lindsey, arguing that the system of transcription once used for RP has become outdated (as his target accent is SSBE) and in consequence has proposed a new system as a replacement. Lindsey's system is as follows—differences between it and standard transcription are depicted with the traditional transcription in parentheses.

Historical variation

Like all accents, RP has changed over time. For example, old recordings show that words like land used to sound a bit like lend. Even Queen Elizabeth II changed her pronunciation during her time as queen.

The way people spoke on the BBC in the 1950s sounds very different from today. These older voices are often used for funny effects in shows that make fun of old-fashioned ways of talking, like the Harry Enfield Show.

Vowels

• Words such as cloth, gone, off, often, cross used to sound different, but now they all sound more alike.
• The way we say words like horse and hoarse has changed too.
• Words like tour and moor used to sound different but now they often sound the same.
• The sounds in words like cup and happy have shifted over time.
• The way we say words like fair and near has also changed.

Consonants

• The old way of saying words beginning with “wh”, like which, is mostly gone now.
• There are new ways of pronouncing words with certain sounds, like in neutral or reckless.
• The sound “r” used to be pronounced differently, but now it’s simpler.
• Today, people usually say words like tube and dew in a more straightforward way.

Word-specific changes

Some individual words have changed how they’re said over time:

• The word Mass used to sound different but now it’s said in a simpler way.
• The way we use “an” before words that start with “h”, like in an hyaena, is now rare.

Comparison with other varieties of English

See also: Sound correspondences between English accents

RP, like most English accents outside Northern England, has a difference in pronunciation for pairs like "put" and "putt". RP is a non-rhotic accent, meaning the "r" sound is only used when followed by a vowel. Words like "father" and "farther" sound the same in RP.

RP also keeps words like "Mary", "marry", and "merry" sounding different, unlike many North American accents. It does not mix up words like "father" and "bother" or "cot" and "caught". RP usually includes a "y" sound after certain letters, such as in "new" or "tune", unlike some other English accents. The "t" and "d" sounds in RP are usually not softened like in some other accents. RP also blends the "w" and "wh" sounds together, though some training can keep them separate. RP does not drop the "h" sound from words like "head" or "horse". Unlike many other English accents, RP keeps words like "Lenin" and "Lennon" sounding different.

Spoken specimen

The audio recording shows someone speaking with a special type of British English called Received Pronunciation.

The Journal of the International Phonetic Association often uses a story called the North Wind and the Sun to show how different accents sound. This recording was made by a woman born in 1953 who studied at Oxford University. There are three ways to write down how the words sound:

Phonemic

ðə ˈnɔːθ ˈwɪnd ən ðə ˈsʌn wə dɪˈspjuːtɪŋ ˈwɪtʃ wəz ðə ˈstrɒŋɡə, wen ə ˈtrævl̩ə ˌkeɪm əˌlɒŋ ˈræpt ɪn ə ˈwɔːm ˈkləʊk. ðeɪ əˈɡriːd ðət ðə ˈwʌn hu ˈfɜːst səkˈsiːdɪd ɪn ˈmeɪkɪŋ ðə ˈtrævlə ˌteɪk hɪz ˈkləʊk ɒf ʃʊd bi kənˌsɪdəd ˈstrɒŋɡə ðən ði ˈʌðə. ˈðen ðə ˌnɔːθ wɪnd ˈbluː əz ˈhɑːd əz i ˈkʊd, bət ðə ˈmɔː hi ˈbluː ðə ˌmɔ ˈkləʊsli dɪd ðə ˈtrævlə ˈfəʊld hɪz ˌkləʊk əˈraʊnd hɪm, ænd ət ˈlɑːst ðə ˈnɔːθ wɪnd ˌɡeɪv ˈʌp ði əˈtempt. ˈðen ðə ˈsʌn ˌʃɒn aʊt ˈwɔːmli, ænd əˈmiːdiətli ðə ˈtrævlə ˈtʊk ɒf ɪz ˈkləʊk. n̩ ˌsəʊ ðə ˈnɔːθ ˈwɪn wəz əˈblaɪdʒd tʊ kənˈfes ðət ðə ˈsʌn wəz ðə ˈstrɒŋɡr̩ əv ðə ˈtuː.

Allophonic

ðə ˈnɔːθ ˈw̥ɪnd ən̪n̪ə ˈsʌn wə dɪˈspj̊u̟ːtɪŋ ˈwɪʔtʃ wəz ðə ˈstɹ̥ɒŋɡə, wen ə ˈtɹ̥ævl̩ə ˌkʰeɪm əˌlɒŋ ˈɹæptʰ ɪn ə ˈwɔːm ˈkl̥əʊkˣ. ðeɪ əˈɡɹ̥iːd̥ ð̥əʔ ðə ˈwʌn ɦu ˈfɜːs səkˈsiːdɪd ɪmˈmeɪxɪŋ ðə ˈtɹ̥ævlə ˌtʰeɪk̟x̟ɪs ˈkl̥əʊk ɒf ʃʊbbi kʰənˌsɪdəd̥ ˈstɹɒŋɡə ð̥ən̪n̪i ˈʌðə. ˈðen̪n̪ə ˌnɔːθ w̥ɪnd ˈbluː əz̥ ˈhɑːd̥ əs i ˈkʊd, bət̬ ð̥ə ˈmɔː hi ˈblu̟ː ðə ˌmɔ ˈkl̥əʊsl̥i d̥ɨd ð̥ə ˈtɹ̥æv̥lə ˈfəʊld̥ hɪz̥ ˌkl̥əʊkʰ əˈɹaʊnd hɪm, ænd ət ˈl̥ɑːst ð̥ə ˈnɔːθ w̥ɪnd ˌɡ̊eɪv̥ ˈʌp ði̥ əˈtʰemʔt. ˈðen̪n̪ə ˈsʌn ˌʃɒn aʊt ˈwɔːmli, ænd əˈmiːdiətl̥i ð̥ə ˈtɹ̥ævlə ˈtʰʊk ɒf ɪz̥ ˈkl̥əʊkˣ. n̩ ˌsəʊ ðə ˈnɔːθ ˈw̥ɪn wəz̥ əˈblaɪdʒ̊ tʰɵ kʰənˈfes ð̥əʔ ð̥ə ˈsʌn wəz̥z̥ə ˈstɹ̥ɒŋɡɹ̩ əv̥ ð̥ə ˈtʰu̟ː.

Orthographic

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveller take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveller fold his cloak around him, and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shone out warmly, and immediately the traveller took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

Notable speakers

Some well-known people have been described as speaking with an RP accent. This includes members of the British royal family as well as famous actors, writers, and public figures like Julie Andrews, David Attenborough, Judi Dench, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Emma Watson, and many more. These individuals are recognized for using this particular way of speaking English.

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