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Tag Archives: Received Pronunciation (RP)
On Dictionaries & Pronunciation
The fine folks over at Collins contacted me recently about their online dictionary. It’s in beta, but looks to be an excellent addition to a growing body of online word tools. I recommend checking it out here. Anyway, this got … Continue reading
The Accents in Downton Abbey
I am apparently the last person in the English-speaking world to watch Downton Abbey, but got a chance to see the first series over the past two evenings. For the unfamiliar, the show takes place in an English country estate … Continue reading
Circumstances – Circumstnses
Forgive the trivial nature of today’s post, but I’m curious about a minute detail of British pronunciation. That would be the word ‘circumstance.’ To clarify, when I say ‘British pronunciation’ here, I’m referring to the word’s pronunciation in British RP and … Continue reading
Was There Ever a ‘Veddy British’ R?
One of the supposed traits of older types of British Received Pronunciation is that /r/ can be a tapped sound (for those reading this week, this sound is similar to the ‘tt’ in American ‘butter’). In ‘traditional’ RP, this typically occurs … Continue reading
Bidder Budder Badder: The Extent of T-tapping
Americans like myself ‘tap’ the ‘t’ in between vowels. This means that the ‘t’ in ‘butter’ is pronounced not with a /t/ sound, but rather with the ‘r’ consonant in Spanish ‘pero.’ The common impression, though, is that ‘t’ becomes … Continue reading
Posted in English Phonetics Tagged Cockney, Estuary English, phonetics, Received Pronunciation (RP) 32 Comments
Accent of a Contrarian: Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens passed away yesterday. His controversial life is far beyond the purview of a blog about dialects, yet I can think of few people with an accent as inextricably linked with their personality. Here is a brief clip of … Continue reading
American Ash
It’s time for us to talk about ash. ‘Ash’ refers not to the product of burnt charcoal, but rather the ‘short-a’ vowel symbolized by æ in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In both the British Received Pronunciation and General American dialects of English, this … Continue reading
Accents at the Renaissance Faire
Yesterday I went to the Renaissance Faire. For those unfamiliar with this tradition, the Ren Faire is a type of festival set in a milieu vaguely indicative of the Renaissance, with jousts, fortune tellers, mead, period music, and Elizabethan costumes. … Continue reading
Anna Karenina … in a British Accent?
This week, British actress Keira Knightley revealed that the upcoming film adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina will feature British accents instead of Russian. Quoth Knightley: “It’s going to be an English accent. It’s always very tricky when you are doing something that is … Continue reading
How Do Falkland Islanders Speak?
English has a number of isolated speaker communities throughout the world. Among the most isolated are the Falkland Islands, which comprise a sparsely populated British territory of about 3,000. To date, I’ve only found one speech sample of someone truly … Continue reading