Received pronunciation, English dialects and American English

Received Pronunciation (RP) is, in fact, just another dialect but, unlike other dialects, it concerns only pronunciation because it has neither specific vocabulary, nor grammar. It is a matter of ten home counties situated south-west of London but speakers mainly acquire RP in boarding schools like Eton, Rugby and Harrow for rich children. It was a standard pronunciation of educated people in Britain. This language of middle and upper class was closely connected with the leading role Britain played since it was a superpower and for administration Britain needed the official standard language spoken by civil servants.

English dialects

A DIALECT refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular region or a group of speakers. There are many dialects in Britain which make it very hard for foreigners to understand. In America, differences are not that huge so a non-native speaker has much bigger chance to understand Americans across the U.S. than the British of various regions. The term comes from the Greek word dialektos meaning discourse (dia = through, lego = I speak).  A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and intonation. However, where the pronunciation only is involved, we speak of an ACCENT.

Tendencies of the contemporary Received pronunciation

The pronunciation model we traditionally adopt for learners of English as a foreign language is called Received Pronunciation. RP is considered geographically non-regional and socially upper-class but these qualities modern demographic and social changes in Britain have made no longer desirable.

Psysiological, acoustic and auditory aspects of speech

Articulatory phonetics studies the way speech sounds are made (articulated).

Acoustic phonetics studies physical properties of speech sounds as transmitted between mouth and ear.

Auditory phonetics studies the perceptual (vjemovou) response to speech sounds.

Basic terminology of phonetics

Phonetics = the science which studies the characteristics of human sound making, especially those used in speech. Major activities are description of sounds made in speech, their classification and transcription by transcription symbols.

Relevance of syllable

The syllable is a very important unit. Speakers can naturally count syllables in a sentence even though they are not linguists and tapping at syllables shows the syllable's importance in the rhythm of speech. Syllables are very important for rhymes since rhyming works by matching the last syllable of a line.

Rhythm and intonation

Rhythm = the arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.

English has stress-timed rhythm = stressed syllables tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not so the times from each stressed syllable to the next will tend to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. English rhythm has a characteristic isochromy (stejnočasovost) that goes from stress to another stress while the number of syllables is of no importance to the rhythm. The typical poetic rhythm in English poetry is iamb (da-DUM -> A man put on his hat.) and English language is based on it.

English stress, strong and weak forms

Stress = when a syllable is pronounced with more force than the rest of the syllables. Primary stress is marked by an apostrophe ‘, secondary stress by comma. Czech language has stress always on the first syllable but English stress depends on various factors:

1. Number of syllables 2. Word formation process 3. Part of speech 4. The neighbourhood where the word is situated = dictionary stress is not ultimate because it can change in connected speech!

Assimilation and connected speech

Assimilation

Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been completed. Assimilation means that sounds belonging to one word can cause changes in sounds belonging to neighbouring words. This happens mostly in casual rapid speech and less likely in slow careful speech.

hot potato --> the (t) in 'hot' is dropped as the lips prepare for the (p) sound in potato

Consonants

The main difference between vowels and consonants is that with vowels sound production, there is no obstruction to the flow of the air as it passes from the larynx to the lips. With consonants sounds during production, there are obstructions made with parts of our vocal tract (lips, tongue, teeth). Because the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique symbol to each consonant. Consonants occur together with vowels, not separately, there are 24 of them. Consonants are noises named after their sound.

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Diphthongs

Diphthong is a sound that consists of a movement from one vowel to another, there are 8 diphthongs in English. First part of diphthong is longer than the second part. For example in a word "eye" there is a diphthong aɪ and only the last quarter of the diphthong does the ɪ glide to become noticeable. As the glide to ɪ happens, the loudness of the word decreases. Therefore, foreign speakers should remember not to make the last part of diphthong too strongly.

Vowels

The most common description of vowels is that it is the sound in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from larynx to the lips. Vowels are pure tones because there is no noise. There are 7 short vowels and 5 long vowels.