English Pronunciation

We use the term ‘accents’ to refer to differences in pronunciations. Pronunciation can vary with cultures, regions and speakers, but there are two major standard varieties in English pronunciation: British English and American English.

Within British English and American English there are also a variety of accents. Some of them have received more attention than others from phoneticians and phonologists. These are Received pronunciation (RP)* and General American (GA).

Received pronunciation is a form of pronunciation of the English language, sometimes defined as the "educated spoken English of southeastern England". RP is close to BBC English (the kind spoken by British newscasters) and it is represented in the pronunciation schemes of most British dictionaries. RP is rather a social accent than regional, associated with the educated upper classes (and/or people who have attended public schools) in Britain.

English pronunciation is also divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme /r/ is pronounced. Rhotic speakers pronounce written "r" in all positions. They will pronounce the "r" in stork, whereas non-rhotic speakers won't, making no distinction between stork and stalk. Non-rhotic speakers pronounce "r" only if it is followed by a vowel - right, rain, room, Robert, far awey, etc.

Non-rhotic accents are British Received Pronunciation and some other types of British English, Australian, New Zealand and South African English. American English is rhotic (the "r" is always pronounced), with the notable exception of the Boston area and New York City. Rhotic accents can be found also in most of Canada. SE Britain is apparently the source of non-rhotic. England is non-rhotic, apart from the south-western England and some ever-diminishing northern areas. Scotland and Ireland are rhotic.

 

 

 

 

EXERCISES

 

 

 

Spoken English consists of 44 phonemes (basic units of speech such as /b/, /sh/, /f/, etc). As there are only 26 letters in our alphabet, one letter cannot represent only one sound. Some letters may have more than one sound (phoneme) such as the /y/, /c/, /g/ for example. Words can be segmented in onset and rime: the onset being the initial part of the syllable (consonant/consonant blend) before the first vowel and the rime being the part of the syllable from the first vowel onwards (i.e. s/un; str/ing; ch/at).  Of all letters, vowels are problematic for spellers as these five letters alone or in combination with other letters (i.e. /ow/, /aw/, /ar/) represent numerous sounds. Understanding and knowing vowel patterns makes for a more reliable sound-spelling association than relying solely on individual phoneme sounds. Research tells us that the brain is NOT a “rule applier”, but rather a “pattern detector”. Familiarity with patterns promotes automatic decoding when reading.  Research by Wylie and Durrell show that only 37 rimes (vowel patterns) make up approximately 500 words. Although there are still exceptions and irregularities, rimes are much more consistent in their sound-spelling association than are the individual phonemes.