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Standard accent for British English

Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English. A similar term, received standard, was coined by Henry C. K. Wyld in 1927. The early phonetician Alexander John Ellis used both terms interchangeably, but with a much broader definition than Jones's, saying, "There is no such thing as a uniform educated pron. of English, and rp. and rs. is a variable quantity differing from individual to individual, although all its varieties are 'received', understood and mainly unnoticed". Although a form of Standard English had been established in the City of London by the end of the 15th century, it did not begin to resemble RP until the late 19th century. RP has most in common with the dialects of what has been termed the South East Midlands, in particular the Golden Triangle of universities, namely London, Oxford and Cambridge, and the public schools that fed them, such as Eton, Harrow and Rugby. In 1922, the BBC selected RP as its broadcasting standard, citing its being widely understood globally as a reason.

Some linguists have used the term "RP" while expressing reservations about its suitability. The Cambridge published English Pronouncing Dictionary (aimed at those learning English as a foreign language) uses the phrase "BBC Pronunciation", on the basis that the name "Received Pronunciation" is "archaic" and that BBC News presenters no longer suggest high social class and privilege to their listeners. Other writers have also used the name "BBC Pronunciation". The term 'The Queen's English' has also been used by some writers. a "ridiculously archaic, parochial and question begging term" and noted that American scholars find the term "quite curious". He used the term "General British" (to parallel "General American") in his 1970s publication of A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of American and British English and in subsequent publications. The name "General British" is adopted in the latest revision of Gimson's Pronunciation of English. Beverley Collins and Inger Mees use the term "Non Regional Pronunciation" for what is often otherwise called RP, and reserve the term "Received Pronunciation" for the "upper class speech of the twentieth century". Received Pronunciation has sometimes been called "Oxford English", as it used to be the accent of most members of the University of Oxford.

Traditionally, Received Pronunciation has been associated with high social class. It was the "everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons whose men folk [had] been educated at the great public boarding schools" and which conveyed no information about that speaker's region of origin before attending the school. An 1891 teacher's handbook stated, "It is the business of educated people to speak so that no one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed". Nevertheless, in the 19th century some British prime ministers, such as William Ewart Gladstone, still spoke with some regional features. Opinions differ over the proportion of Britons who speak RP. Trudgill estimated 3% in 1974, but that rough estimate has been questioned by J. Windsor Lewis. Upton notes higher estimates of 5% (Romaine, 2000) and 10% (Wells, 1982) but refers to these as "guesstimates" not based on robust research. The claim that RP is non regional is disputed, since it is most commonly found in London and the southeast of England. It is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as "the standard accent of English as spoken in the South of England", and alternative names such as "Standard Southern British" have been used. Despite RP's historic high social prestige in Britain, being seen as the accent of those with power, money, and influence, it may be perceived negatively by some as being associated with undeserved, or accidental, privilege and as a symbol of the southeast's political power in Britain. Based on a 1997 survey, Jane Stuart Smith wrote, "RP has little status in Glasgow, and is regarded with hostility in some quarters". A 2007 survey found that residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland tend to dislike RP. It is shunned by some with left wing political views, who may be proud of having accents more typical of the working classes. Since the Second World War, and increasingly since the 1960s, a wider acceptance of regional English varieties has taken hold in education and public life. Nonetheless, surveys from 1969 to 2022 consistently show that RP is perceived as the most prestigious accent of English in the United Kingdom. In 2022, 25% of British adults reported being mocked for their regional accent at work, and 46% in social situations.

In the early days of British broadcasting speakers of English origin almost universally used RP. The first director general of the BBC, Lord Reith, encouraged the use of a 'BBC accent' because it was a "style or quality of English which would not be laughed at in any part of the country". He distinguished the BBC accent from the 'Oxford accent', to which he was "vehemently opposed". In 1926 the BBC established an Advisory Committee on Spoken English with distinguished experts, including Daniel Jones, to advise on the correct pronunciation and other aspects of broadcast language. The Committee proved unsuccessful and was dissolved after the Second World War. While the BBC did advise its speakers on pronunciation, there was never a formalised official BBC pronunciation standard. A notable departure from the use of pure RP came with the Yorkshire born newsreader Wilfred Pickles during the Second World War; his accent allowing listeners to more clearly distinguish BBC broadcasts from German propaganda, though Pickles had modified his accent to be closer to RP. Since the Second World War RP has played a much smaller role in broadcast speech. RP remains the accent most often heard in the speech of announcers and newsreaders on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and in some TV channels, but non RP accents are now more widely encountered.

Most English dictionaries published in Britain (including the Oxford English Dictionary) now give phonetically transcribed RP pronunciations for all words. Pronunciation dictionaries represent a special class of dictionary giving a wide range of possible pronunciations: British pronunciation dictionaries are all based on RP, though not necessarily using that name. Daniel Jones transcribed RP pronunciations of words and names in the English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge University Press continues to publish this title, as of 1997 edited by Peter Roach. Two other pronunciation dictionaries are in common use: the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, compiled by John C. Wells (using the name "Received Pronunciation"), and Clive Upton's Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, (now republished as The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English).

Pronunciation forms an essential component of language learning and teaching; a model accent is necessary for learners to aim at, and to act as a basis for description in textbooks and classroom materials. RP has been the traditional choice for teachers and learners of British English. However, the choice of pronunciation model is difficult, and the adoption of RP is in many ways problematic.

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 and are slightly diphthongized, and are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs and
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' is shorter than the vowel in 'bad' 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" in 'reach' (which ends with a voiceless consonant) may be shorter than the vowel called "short" in the word 'ridge' (which ends with a voiced consonant). Wiik, cited in , 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 and often have no audible release utterance finally, and voiced consonants are partly or completely devoiced (as in ); 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 and occur (e. g. happy , throughout ). The neutralisation is common throughout many English dialects, though the phonetic realisation of e. g. rather than (a phenomenon called happy tensing) is not as universal. According to Jane Setter, the typical pronunciation of the short is a weakly rounded near close near back rounded vowel .

There are differing opinions as to whether in the BATH lexical set can be considered RP. The pronunciations with are invariably accepted as RP. The English Pronouncing Dictionary does not admit in BATH words and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists them with a § marker of non RP status. John Wells wrote in a blog entry on 16 March 2012 that when growing up in the north of England he used in "bath" and "glass", and considers this the only acceptable phoneme in RP. Others have argued that is too categorical in the north of England to be excluded. Clive Upton believes that 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 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 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
Jack Windsor Lewis has noted that the Oxford Dictionary's position has changed several times on whether to include short within its prescribed pronunciation. The BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names uses only , 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 vowel in BATH words. A. F. Gupta wrote, "Many of the northerners were noticeably hostile to , describing it as 'comical', 'snobbish', 'pompous' or even 'for morons'." On the subject, 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 vowel as "the main instance of conscious rejection of RP" in his research in West Wirral.

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 (as in bon), and and (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 (there rendered as ) and the unrounded of banc for a total of four nasal vowels.

Like all accents, RP has changed with time. For example, sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was usual for speakers of RP to pronounce the sound, as in land, with a vowel close to , so that land would sound similar to a present day pronunciation of lend. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even Queen Elizabeth II shifted her pronunciation over the course of her reign, ceasing to use an like vowel in words like land. The change in RP may be observed in the home of "BBC English". The BBC accent of the 1950s is distinctly different from today's: a news report from the 1950s is recognisable as such, and a mock 1950s BBC voice is used for comic effect in programmes wishing to satirise 1950s social attitudes such as the Harry Enfield Show and its "Mr. Cholmondley Warner" sketches. but it is now rare to hear this on the BBC. There used to be a distinction between horse and hoarse with an extra diphthong appearing in words like hoarse, , and pour. The symbols used by Wright are slightly different: the sound in fall, law, saw is transcribed as and that in more, soar, etc. as Daniel Jones gives an account of the /ɔə/ diphthong, but notes "many speakers of Received English (sic), myself among them, do not use the diphthong at all, but replace it always by /ɔː/". The vowel in words such as tour, moor, sure used to be , but this has merged with for many contemporary speakers. The effect of these two mergers (horse hoarse and moor more) is to bring about a number of three way mergers of items which were hitherto distinct, such as poor, paw and pore (, , ) all becoming The vowel and the starting point of the diphthong has become lowered from mid to open mid Before the Second World War, the vowel of cup was a back vowel close to cardinal It then shifted forward to , but is increasingly used in modern RP to avoid the clash with the lowered variety of in the region (the trap strut merger). There has been a change in the pronunciation of the unstressed final vowel of happy as a result of a process known as happY tensing: an older pronunciation of happy would have had the vowel /ɪ/ whereas a more modern pronunciation has a vowel nearer to /iː/. In pronunciation handbooks and dictionaries it is now common to use the symbol /i/ to cover both possibilities. In a number of words where contemporary RP has an unstressed syllable with schwa , older pronunciations had , for instance, the final vowel in the following: kindness, witness, toilet, fortunate. The phoneme (as in fair, care, there) was realized as a centring diphthong in the past, whereas many present day speakers of RP pronounce it as a long monophthong This was often symbolized as /ou/ or /oʊ/. In modern RP the starting point is unrounded and central, and is symbolized /əʊ/. In a study of a group of speakers born between 1981 and 1993, it was observed that the vowel had shifted upwards, approaching in quality. The vowels and have undergone fronting and reduction in the amount of lip rounding (phonetically, these can be transcribed and , respectively). As noted above, has become more open, near to cardinal Ward notes pronunciations such as [njuːʔtrəl] for neutral and [reʔkləs] for reckless. Glottalization of /tʃ/ is widespread in present day RP when at the end of a stressed syllable, as in butcher [bʊʔtʃə]. The realization of /r/ as a tap or flap [ɾ] has largely disappeared from RP, though it can be heard in films and broadcasts from the first half of the 20th century. The word very was frequently pronounced [veɾɪ]. The same sound, however, is sometimes pronounced as an allophone of /t/ when it occurs intervocalically after a stressed syllable – the "flapped /t/" that is familiar in American English. Phonetically, this sounds more like /d/, and this pronunciation is sometimes known as /t/ voicing.

A number of cases can be identified where changes in the pronunciation of individual words, or small groups of words, have taken place. The word Mass (referring to the religious ritual) was often pronounced /mɑːs/ in older versions of RP, but the word is now almost always /mæs/. The indefinite article an was traditionally used before a sounded /h/ if immediately followed by an unstressed vowel, as in 'an hyaena.' This is now uncommon, especially in speech, and may be confined only to some of the more frequently used words, such as 'horrific' and 'historical.'

Like most other varieties of English outside Northern England, RP has undergone the foot–strut split: pairs like put/putt are pronounced differently. RP is a non rhotic accent, so does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel. Pairs such as father/farther, caught/court and formally/formerly are homophones. Unlike a number of North American accents of English, RP has not undergone the Mary–marry–merry, nearer–mirror, or hurry–furry mergers: all these words are distinct from each other. Unlike many North American accents, RP has not undergone the father–bother or cot–caught mergers. RP does not have yod dropping after , , , and , but most speakers of RP have yod dropping after and Hence, for example, new, tune, dune, resume and enthusiasm are pronounced , , , and rather than , , , and This contrasts with many East Anglian and East Midland varieties of English language in England and with many forms of American English, including General American. In words such as pursuit and evolution, both pronunciations (with and without ) are heard in RP. There are, however, several words where a yod has been lost with the passage of time: for example, the word suit originally had a yod in RP but this is now extremely rare. The flapped variant of and (as in much of the West Country, Ulster, most North American varieties including General American, Australian English, and the Cape Coloured dialect of South Africa) is not used very often. RP has undergone the wine–whine merger (so the sequence is not present except among those who have acquired this distinction as the result of speech training). The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, based in London, still teaches these two sounds for international breadth as distinct phonemes. They are also distinct from one another in most of Scotland and Ireland, in the northeast of England, and in the southeastern United States. Unlike some other varieties of English language in England, there is no h dropping in words like head or horse. In hurried phrases such as "as hard as he could" h dropping commonly applies to the word he. Unlike most Southern Hemisphere English and North American English accents, RP has not undergone the weak vowel merger, meaning that pairs such as Lenin/Lennon are distinct. In traditional RP is an allophone of (it is used intervocalically after a stressed syllable, after , and sometimes even after , ).