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 Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:31 am Received Pronunciation |
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Books I've read on the dialects of England say that RP is spoken by 3% to 5% of the population of England. Compared to the number of native speakers of English in the world, this is nearly nothing. In other words, almost all native speakers of English speak with some other accent.
The RP accent is easy for people anywhere in the world to understand, but it is not the only one that is easy to understand. Nobody has problems understanding a Canadian accent, for example. The accent of Brooklyn, New York, is also easy for everyone to understand, but no English teacher would dream of having his class speak with that accent.
The problem with foreigners aiming for a conservative RP accent is that it can make them sound comical in many parts of the English-speaking world. In many situations it would be better to have a mild Japanese or Russian accent than it would be to have a conservative RP accent. My friends and I have some hilarious stories about foreigners with perfect conservative RP accents making grammar or vocabulary mistakes in English. It is specifically the conservative RP accent combined with the mistake that makes the stories funny, and if the person had had a foreign accent instead, we would not have found his mistakes comical. In fact, if he'd had any other English accent, we would have been impressed with his pronunciation, rather than finding him funny the way we did when he spoke conservative RP.
If someone were a perfect accent mimic and wanted to know which accent to model his pronunciation on, I'd recommend he choose any standard national accent, but not the most conservative form of RP. The accents on the BBC are normally fine, or the General American used in broadcasting. Almost any Canadian accent is fine too.
As for which accents to avoid, I'd recommend avoiding the accents of the British royal family, the accent of any British person on MTV (just to be safe), the American south, or the specific accents of New York City, among others.
This is normally not an issue, though, because almost all foreign speakers of English have the accents of their own countries. Native speakers don't mind those accents at all, as long as they are clear and we don't need to work too hard to understand the person. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:42 am Best English accents |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: | | As for which accents to avoid, I'd recommend avoiding the accents of the British royal family, the accent of any British person on MTV (just to be safe), the American south, or the specific accents of New York City, among others. |
Why wouldn't you recommend the accent of the British Royal Family? Isn't HM Queen Elizabeth II speaking English with an accent comprehensible enough or what is this about? What is more, conservative RP accents are considered prestigious. However, sometimes accents like this attract ridicule when communicating with people in English although I find it hard to understand why. |
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Englishuser
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:08 pm RP |
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| Englishuser wrote: | | However, sometimes accents like this attract ridicule when communicating with people in English although I find it hard to understand why. |
A foreigner speaking with a good RP accent will hardly ever sound ridiculous to native English speakers unless they already find it ridiculous when other natives have or use it, I should think. It may sound funny if combined with grammar mistakes, as Jamie pointed out, but not ridiculous, surely. |
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Conchita
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:21 pm Received Pronunciation |
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| Englishuser wrote: | | What is more, conservative RP accents are considered prestigious. |
Hi Englishuser
Unfortunately, this type of pronunciation is frequently (but not always) perceived by the listener as "hoity-toity" (pretentiously self-important or pompous), particularly if the speaker doesn't happen to be royal --- which is usually the case. 
| Englishuser wrote: | | However, sometimes accents like this attract ridicule when communicating with people in English although I find it hard to understand why. |
See my first comment. Also, as Jamie mentioned, it can become extremely comical when you hear someone speak who sounds just like the Queen and at the same time makes a grammar or vocabulary blooper (or worse, many bloopers).
Amy
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Yankee
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 13:50 pm Received Pronunciation |
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| Englishuser wrote: | | Why wouldn't you recommend the accent of the British Royal Family? Isn't HM Queen Elizabeth II speaking English with an accent comprehensible enough or what is this about? What is more, conservative RP accents are considered prestigious. However, sometimes accents like this attract ridicule when communicating with people in English although I find it hard to understand why. |
Of course, Queen Elizabeth II has a very clear, comprehensible accent. The problem is the prestige.
Almost no person walking down the street who is not a British nobleman has this accent. People are born into nobility, and do not enter that stratum of society by choice. Therefore, there is a good chance that someone who is not British nobility but has that accent is probably some kind of phony. A Japanese, an African or a Russian is not British nobility, so if he speaks with a conservative RP accent, he is liable to sound comical at times, with or without grammar and vocabulary mistakes. If he has an ordinary BBC announcer's accent, or any other standard-sounding national accent, he'll sound very impressive, but if he sounds like Prince Charles, people are liable to think he's comical.
Again, with regard to the prestige: Most people in English-speaking countries are more oriented toward democracy and equality than toward prestige. Therefore, there is a great deal of negative feeling if an ordinary person speaks like royalty. He sounds uppity.
And with regard to the phoniness: An ordinary person who speaks a conservative form of RP has obviously taken on some accent that is not his own. This means that in some way he could be a fraud. People may assume he is generally dishonest or has some other personality defect that makes him unreliable or difficult to deal with, and they may avoid him.
It gets very weird when you leave the UK. In Michigan, where I live, if I meet a middle-aged man who speaks a conservative form of RP, and I know he is not British, I assume that (a) he is probably homosexual, (b) he is probably involved with the theater somehow, (c) he feels emotionally insecure about his geographic or social origins and his trying to hide them. This whole combination, especially (c), can make him a difficult person to deal with. In my time working as an arts administrator, I met several American men who spoke RP, and they all fit this profile. I have never met any other type of American who spoke RP, and I have especially never met an American woman who spoke RP. Furthermore, the "evil genius" in American films always speaks conservative RP. When we're trying to sound like Dr. Frankenstein or some other mad scientist, we speak that type of RP (or our best imitation of it).
As I say, if there really is a chance that a foreigner can acquire a native-sounding accent, I would recommend a LESS CONSERVATIVE form of RP (i.e., standard British but not royal), the other ordinary accent of educated Londoners nowadays (it's RP mixed with something else; I don't know what they call it), General American or standard Canadian. These are clear and hold enough prestige without attracting negative attention. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 14:58 pm Received Pronunciation |
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Jamie wrote: It gets very weird when you leave the UK. In Michigan, where I live, if I meet a middle-aged man who speaks a conservative form of RP, and I know he is not British, I assume that (a) he is probably homosexual, (b) he is probably involved with the theater somehow, (c) he feels emotionally insecure about his geographic or social origins and his trying to hide them. This whole combination, especially (c), can make him a difficult person to deal with. In my time working as an arts administrator, I met several American men who spoke RP, and they all fit this profile. I have never met any other type of American who spoke RP, and I have especially never met an American woman who spoke RP. Furthermore, the "evil genius" in American films always speaks conservative RP. When we're trying to sound like Dr. Frankenstein or some other mad scientist, we speak that type of RP (or our best imitation of it).
As I say, if there really is a chance that a foreigner can acquire a native-sounding accent, I would recommend a LESS CONSERVATIVE form of RP (i.e., standard British but not royal), the other ordinary accent of educated Londoners nowadays (it's RP mixed with something else; I don't know what they call it).
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Londoners these days tend to speak some sort of Estuary English which is a mixture of modern RP and Cockney. It's interesting to note that RP is associated with homosexuality. I wonder where this comes from. Personally I think that a conservative RP accent (or a foreign person's very best imitation of it, respectively) is useful in Britain, but when you enter the States it all changes. People literally either get angry with you or then they laugh themselves into stitches. The latter seems to be especially true for younger Americans. Some Americans find RP accents a bit exotic, though, but this applies most to educated Americans and in particular Americans that have majored in English or something like that. |
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Englishuser
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 15:04 pm Received Pronunciation |
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| Englishuser wrote: | | Personally I think that a conservative RP accent (or a foreign person's very best imitation of it, respectively) is useful in Britain, but when you enter the States it all changes. People literally either get angry with you or then they laugh themselves into stitches. The latter seems to be especially true for younger Americans. |
Note that Americans don't usually find the accent funny if they know it's your native accent. If they know it's not, then they're definitely liable laugh -- maybe not in front of you, but surely after you're gone.
| Englishuser wrote: | | Some Americans find RP accents a bit exotic, though, but this applies most to educated Americans and in particular Americans that have majored in English or something like that. |
Many of these people are under the misimpression that RP is the "original" English accent, which it is not. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 15:13 pm Value of RP pronunciation? |
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Note that Americans don't usually find the accent funny if they know it's your native accent. If they know it's not, then they're definitely liable laugh -- maybe not in front of you, but surely after you're gone.
Yes, I agree: but only to an extent. Many Americans place foreign speakers with an excellent command of English for Britons if they have a British accent. And for how many people is conservative RP a native accent these days? For very few people. We are talking about less than one per cent of the British population (mostly older British noblemen). Even HRH Prince William speaks in an accent which certainly isn't conservative RP.
| Englishuser wrote: | | Some Americans find RP accents a bit exotic, though, but this applies most to educated Americans and in particular Americans that have majored in English or something like that. |
Many of these people are under the misimpression that RP is the "original" English accent, which it is not.
Perhaps. I wouldn't know. But how many people aim for an Elizabethan pronunciation? It might be nice to sound like Shakespeare, although it might give rise to some communicational problems. In today's world RP, and it's conservative variant, is certainly the accent which is considered most prestigious. Even funnily so. |
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Englishuser
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 16:40 pm English accents and RP |
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Hi,
I feel obliged to join in here. I'm tickled pink about some of the outdated expressions being bandied about. To me RP went out with the ark as I seem to recall saying about the so called Oxford accent. There's been reference to the Queen, nobility, homosexuals, BBC English and something called conservative RP (what on earth is that?) It's like coming out of a tardis with Dr Who and listening to a conversation taking place in a bygone age. Mind you, I can only speak as a resident of the UK in 2006 and to me and I guess I'm not alone in this, I believe that an acceptable accent is one that is clear and doesn't jar and above all fits the speaker.
In the same way as we fall about laughing when we see a character in an old film using a 'mobile' phone the size of a large dictionary, so we fall about listening to actors talking to each other in British films made in the 30's and 40's but hey aren't we now in the 21st century?
Alan
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Alan
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 19:32 pm English accents and RP |
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| Alan wrote: | Hi,
There's been reference to the Queen, nobility, homosexuals, BBC English and something called conservative RP (what on earth is that?) It's like coming out of a tardis with Dr Who and listening to a conversation taking place in a bygone age. |
'Conservative RP' is a term used by Professor A. C. Gimson in his book "An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English" and refers to the variety of RP used by e.g. the British Royal family and some other (mostly older) RP speakers. It could very well be that Gimson, who used to be a Professor of Phonetics in University College at the University of London, uses some archaic terms in his works: in the most recent edition of Daniel Jones' classic pronouncing dictionary the RP is no longer used.
| Alan wrote: | | In the same way as we fall about laughing when we see a character in an old film using a 'mobile' phone the size of a large dictionary, so we fall about listening to actors talking to each other in British films made in the 30's and 40's but hey aren't we now in the 21st century? |
Do Britons normally associate RP with the 30's and the 40's? This insinuation sounds rather strange to me. Many British people consider BBC English synonymous with RP, or at least I've got an impression like this. Also the Queen's speech is considered RP, although rather 'old-fashioned', 'remarked', or, indeed, 'conservative' RP. |
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Englishuser
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 20:33 pm Value of RP pronunciation? |
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| Englishuser wrote: | | Many Americans place foreign speakers with an excellent command of English for Britons if they have a British accent. |
Now wait a minute! If the foreigner has a British accent, then there is no way to tell that he is not British.
There may be another phenomenon at work here: Many foreigners use RP as their model and then think that they have a British accent. In fact, almost all of them have a foreign accent -- German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Yoruban, whatever -- that is INFLUENCED by RP. Americans don't perceive that foreign accent as RP, and it doesn't elicit the same reaction that RP does.
I'm reminded of Americans my sister knows who stopped speaking Spanish to Latin Americans, claiming that, "We learned Castilian Spanish in school, and the Latin Americans laugh at it." In fact, practically all North Americans schools teach Spanish according to a Mexican or other Latin American model, and the problem was almost certainly that these gringos just spoke funny Spanish.
| Englishuser wrote: | | And for how many people is conservative RP a native accent these days? For very few people. We are talking about less than one per cent of the British population (mostly older British noblemen). Even HRH Prince William speaks in an accent which certainly isn't conservative RP. |
That's a point I made a couple of posts ago. Why model your speech on an accent that hardly anyone has?
| Englishuser wrote: | | In today's world RP, and it's conservative variant, is certainly the accent which is considered most prestigious. Even funnily so. |
Well, I don't think an accent is prestigious when so many people make fun of it. I just don't think conservative RP is a good accent for foreigners to have. It doesn't give them any prestige. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 20:45 pm English accents and RP |
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| Englishuser wrote: | | Many British people consider BBC English synonymous with RP, or at least I've got an impression like this. |
What's BBC English anymore? You'll hear every English accent imaginable on there now, but the common denominator is that it's all clear English.
Of course, non-Britons use "BBC English" in the same way they use "RP" and "Oxford English", as a brand name for a variety of English that still does exist (albeit probably among fewer speakers) and is used as a model in many parts of the world. For Alan to pretend foreigners are out of it for not knowing the British have changed their terms again is something like me faulting him for not knowing the starting lineup for the Chicago Cubs or not knowing what American Chicanos prefer to be called this year. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 20:50 pm RP vs. other accents |
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Hi,
The question is: What do you mean by BBC English? The point I was trying to make was that these descriptions have no relevance. Who cares how the Queen speaks or for that matter how Tony Blair speaks? There are specific reasons why they speak the way they do. I honestly can't get my head round this prestige bit. The idea that anyone would want to copy nasal and clipped tones or breathless staccato speech (I'll leave it to you to decide which description fits whom) is faintly ridiculous and totally laughable if the end result sought is the engendering of prestige. Where are you guys living? Dr Who open your tardis and let me travel on.
Alan
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Alan
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| Wed Jun 07, 2006 20:56 pm Accent |
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Hi Jamie,
You said:
| Quote: | | For Alan to pretend foreigners are out of it for not knowing the British have changed their terms again is something like me faulting him for not knowing the starting lineup for the Chicago Cubs or not knowing what American Chicanos prefer to be called this year. |
Who's doing the pretending? I believe your comments are doing the pretence and fostering this archaic belief that the world is worried about different accents.
Alan
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