King's and Queen's English

[Tom]

Hi

I would like to know if ever there was a time when either the king or the queen spoke perfect English? How did this idiom come into existance? What about Queen Elizabeth and her son, Charles? Do they speak refined and 'the Queen's' English? And you might also tell me about Prince William and his brother.

Tom

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

It's important to realise the link between the language and the state. The UK happens to be a monarchy and so the 'official ' language is referred to as the Queen's English as the current monarch is a woman in the same way that in her father's time it was referred to as the King's English. This doesn't refer to the way any monarch actually speaks. After all the UK has had monarchs who couldn't speak very much English or if they did it was with a strong accent. It so happens that the present Queen's father, George VI had a very marked speech impediment poor chap and had a terrible time making speeches on the radio that had to be severely edited. Probably the current younger generation within the royal family because of the broader education they have had do tend to speak a standard form of English without what you might call the affectations of their elders. But you have to realise that in the 1920s and 1930s as you can discern from old black and white movies, so-called educated English sounds very clipped and affected to modern ears.

Alan
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[gypsy1900]

this idiom is also sometimes used to infer that something said wouldn't be polite to say in front of the queen. E.G. something that is correct to say to the guys at the bar might not be 'the queens english'
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[Englishuser]

Hi Alan,

You wrote:

[Torsten]

Hi Englishuser, I take it your abbreviation URP stands for Upper Received Pronunciation? If so, where did you come across this term and how many "RP's" are there? Is there a lower RP and a middle RP too?
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[Alan]

Hi,

What I said was that it sounds

[Englishuser]

Hi Alan,

What exactly do you mean when you say that URP sounds affected?

Englishuser

[Alan]

Hi,

There are many examples of affected accents which I would willingly reproduce but this is not an audio forum.

A
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[Englishuser]

Hi Torsten,

Please try the following link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/storysofar/posh.shtml

That's where I came across the term 'Upper Received Pronunciation'.

Yes, there are different types of RP. I have listed some of the most commone ones below:

Modern/Demotic RP
Standard RP
Conservative/Marked/Upper RP

Englishuser

[Englishuser]

Hi Alan,

In many of your posts you have argued that no one is worried about or cares about which accent someone speaks with. Does this extend to URP?

Englishuser

[Torsten]

Hi Englishuser, I think there is a difference between trying to pronounce English words as clearly as possible and sounding affected.
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[Torsten]

[Englishuser]

Hi Torsten,

All I would like to know is whether Alan thinks URP accents are all right. Is it acceptable to sound very aristocratic? What do you think, Torsten?

Englishuser

[Englishuser]

Hi Torsten,

You wrote:

[Torsten]

This probably depends on a variety of things. Where do you live? What do you want to achieve in life? What is your profession? Who are you speaking to? Let's say you work as a survery engineer in Texas. Why would you want to use 'pure' URP (I think this is a theoretical term anyway) and sound very aristocratic?
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