I forgot to mention that another bizarro world occurence is when people say <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/nəˌgəʊ.siˈeɪ.ʃən/</span> instead of <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/nəˌgəʊ.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/</span> , something I've noticed on BBC, and stuff like <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈɪs.juː/</span> , which is quite legitimate and correct, except that it kind of goes against the current of dying-out pronunciations like <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈtɪs.juː/</span> . Oh, well, I guess they're not dying out as some would like to point out.

Edited February 5, 201114 yr by Sylph

Yeah, many of the sounds you mentioned that have a distinctly "affected" ring to them to the average American are still taught as part of Standard American Speech for the stage. Specifically, for the purpose of performing classical texts, even more specifically, Shakespeare. For instnace, the "liquid u" as you pointed out in words like issue and tissue (and yes, we use a "s" and not a "sh", so for anyone else reading this thread other than you and I who is not familiar with IPA, we get issue=issyoo, tissue=tissyoo, Tuesday=Tyoozdih).

And yes, learning the IPA was a part of our speech curriculum, we had written tests and pop quizzes on it and all that. I have PLENTY of faults so I'll be kind enough to pat myself on the back for my good ear, I did quite well with accent work. Something I should practice more often though, I've learned that you can easily lose it not only when you're rusty but when you're nervous.

"I also found it amusing that RADA still teaches /hw/ as a distinct sound, even though today's RP does not have the so-called wine–whine distinction. But it does differentiate between foot and strut, it's still non-rhotic, has the broad a, Mary–marry–merry are all quite distinct as well as nearer and mirror and so on."

Yes, hw is still taught in SAS ("Hwy, hwat would you?/Hwither hwich way?"). It's a very light sound though, they overdo it on TV when they're making fun of it, but it's supposed to be like you're softly blowing out a candle. They also still teach, "Very merry Mary married hairy Harry Harris from Harrisburg." (veh-rih meh-rih mare-y ma[like the a in hat]-rid hare-y ha-rih ha-ris from ha-risbirg). The sound "ear" in "nearer" is its own vowel and "mirror" doesn't rhyme like "meer-er" but is "mih-ruh". I do not get the foot/strut thing, what's that about?

"What was once /ɪ/ (kit, mirror, rabbit) in the conservative RP, today turned into /i/, in words such as happy or valley. The weak /ɪ/ turned into to /ə/ in words such as countless or problem. The /ɔː/ of cough, salt, off, austere turned into /ɑ/. The word square is differently pronounced, too."

Yes, the crisp, bright "diamond ɪ (ih)", the i of "kit" or "chicken" gave way to the schwa in many cases where it's an unstressed syllable. So a very prrrrim and proper high RP Brit may have said 'eh-mih-lih for Emily where now we'd schwa out that middle syllable for 'eh-muh-lih. Suffix y's and other words are still properly ɪ, like the days of the week ('sun-dih, 'mon-dih), 'can-dih (candy), 'chel-sih (Chelsea)... As for the ɔː sound, the word "off" is actually not an ɔː word in the states, but an ɒ word in SAS (off, copper, pot, top, et cetera). It's very rare in everyday English, usually bastardized as aw as in claw (like the Brits) or ah as in father. But it's in actuality a very short round sound, like you're about to say "aw" but you quickly jab your uvula with your toothbrush before you get it all out.

Edited November 29, 201015 yr by SFK

I lived in England, and I can only recall one person who said "issyuu" and "tissyuu" for issue and tissue. Admittedly he had a posh accent, was older, and clearly from the right side of the tracks. The Hw sound in what or where was somehwhat more common and occasionally one still slips into my speech. The aw sound in off is sort of a cousin to the aw sound in NY english. I don't even know if I could spell how they sound, England was Cohfee, NY is more Cawfee. This is compared to the way say coffee in California or wherever, Cahfee.

Edited November 29, 201015 yr by quartermainefan

OMG, I too thought I went overboard and that no one was reading!

Thank you for that very detailed reply, I love it. I didn't know that even the SAS teaches <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/hw/</span>! It would be nice to examine the differences between SAS today and the accent which quartermainefan called the "1940s radio accent", which is called Mid-Atlantic English (or trans-Atlantic): http://en.wikipedia....tlantic_English, a sort of a mixture between British and American speeches.

As for the ɔː sound, the word "off" is actually not an ɔː word in the states, but an ɒ word in SAS (off, copper, pot, top, et cetera). It's very rare in everyday English, usually bastardized as aw as in claw (like the Brits) or ah as in father. But it's in actuality a very short round sound, like you're about to say "aw" but you quickly jab your uvula with your toothbrush before you get it all out.

I think it's also starting to become something else in the contemporary RP, too, the <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɔː/</span> sound. The BL web page above illustrates the shifts. Which brings me to this: how can the <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɔː/</span> be bastardized as aw in claw when it really is pronounced as <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/klɔː/</span>? Perhaps I got something wrong. Copper is pronounced as <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈkɒp.ə/</span> and so is pot, though someone should check whether that shifted from <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɔː/</span> too. For example, to me it would make sense to pronounce the word for a police officer that way, but not the name of the metal, which would retain the <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ɔː/</span>. LOL.

The foot–strut split is here:

http://en.wikipedia....oot-strut_split

And IPA for English, if anyone at all is interested, can be found here, though it kind of leans towards American English, I think:

http://en.wikipedia....IPA_for_English

British is here:

http://dictionary.ca.../phonetics.html

That Clive Upton guy really made a mess, he introduced certain symbols into one of the Oxford dictionaries in the early 1990s and all we ended up is more confusion:

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Clive_Upton

So, given all the above, quartermainefan, I think you mean: British – <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈkɒf.i/</span>, American – <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈkɔːfi/</span> or <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/ˈkɑːfi/</span>.

Edited February 5, 201114 yr by Sylph

Note also the lovely <span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode;">/eɪ/</span> sound of that elderly lady, who is a conservative RP speaker, in that link above I gave: I think the beach is still a lovely place to play, with lots of, lots of space and, uh, beautiful surroundings.

Edited February 16, 201114 yr by Sylph

<span style="font-size:19.5pt;">Cameron and Clegg: who is more upper crust?</span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;">It's an intriguing, very British – and entirely pointless – pastime to work out which of our leaders is the posher </span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;">Ben Macintyre</span>

<span style="font-size:9pt;">"It is most odd," said my friend, a Frenchman now living, like most sensible Frenchmen, in London. "Your country has given birth to twins. This Cameron and Clegg, he is the same person, no? They are both, how you say, posh?"

"Yes," I explained. "But they are different sorts of posh."

He looked confused: "But both went to private school, both are rich, both are sons of financiers. Even the hair is similar."

"True," I conceded. "But they are not the same species of posh. David Cameron is Eton-Oxford-country- clubby-cutglass-shooting party sort of posh, whereas Nick Clegg is Westminster-Cambridge- metropolitan-foreign-glottalstop-trustfund sort of posh. Cameron is upper-upper-middle class with a dash of English gentry, but Clegg is middle-upper-middle class with a hint of European aristocracy. These are quite different things."

From the look on his bemused Gallic face I could see I was not getting through. So I started from basics.

In British society there are not three classes, but an infinite variety of sub-classes, governed by a multiplicity of minute distinctions, invisible and incomprehensible to anyone outside the system. These are partly dependent on wealth, geography and education, but also on lineage, accent, pastimes, parsimony and where you buy your shoes.

In France, there are just two classes: the ruling and the ruled. The revolution made very little difference to this. In Britain, as pointed out by John Prescott (working-middle-class- peer-to-be), there is only one class, the middle one, to which we all belong. All members of the middle class are equal, but some are more equal than others.

"Aha," said my French friend, Frenchly. "Then who is more grand, Cameron or Clegg? Who is plus posh?"

This is a tricky question, and one worthy of Anthony Powell, the great observer and chronicler of the English class system. An insatiable snob, Powell understood better than any other novelist, with the possible exception of Evelyn Waugh, the minute gradations of British class and social placement that once separated, say, a baronet who has joined the middle class from a self-made peer who buys his own furniture.

The drawing of such distinctions, not just between but also within classes, is a peculiarly British urge. As Lord Robert Cecil once wrote: "Directly Man has his most elementary material wants, the first aspiration of his amiable heart is for the privilege of being able to look down on his neighbours." So who, in the new Cameron-Clegg ménage, is looking down on whom? Which was born with the longer silver spoon?

Cameron would seem to be posher, genealogically. He is a descendant of William IV and distantly related to the Queen. His mother is the daughter of a baronet. His mother-in-law is a viscountess. Samantha Cameron is authentic old money county posh, being the eldest daughter of Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet and a descendant of Charles II.

But there is blueish blood in the Clegg veins too. His grandmother was a White Russian baroness. His great uncle was clubbed to death by his own peasants, which carries a certain aristo-cachet. His great aunt was a spy: it is well known that before about 1992 MI6 did not recruit anyone who was not directly out of the top drawer. On the other hand, his ancestors on the other side were Dutch colonial entrepreneurs: yes, trade.

Cameron's manners are exquisitely upper-class. Unlike Clegg, who did not hesitate to barge in during the televised debates, Cameron fell silent when interrupted, and when asked to be quiet, he was. This may explain why he didn't triumph in the debates.

Cameron is said to enjoy shooting pheasants, whereas the closest Clegg has come to blood sports is at the Liberal Democrat annual conference. "Eton and Oxford" still sounds immeasurably grander than "Westminster and Cambridge", which sounds merely clever. Cameron is clubbable (Whites, the Bullingdon) in a way that Clegg is not.

Cameron eats fish and chips and enjoys reading cheap paperbacks, which is itself a mark of extreme poshness. Only the very grand are instinctively frugal, as demonstrated by this week's revelation that the Queen Mother rented a television set for her Scottish castle.

Clegg's accent is fluent BBC, with a hint of the Estuary twang perfected by Tony Blair (lower-upper-middle class). Cameron's accent, according to friends, used to be rather more "fruity and patrician", and his vowels have grown flatter as he has ascended higher.

George Orwell once said of Winston Churchill that the Prime Minister was "too old to have acquired the modern 'educated' accent ... he speaks with the Edwardian upper-class twang which to the average man's ear sounds like Cockney". Today, Clegg has the "educated" accent and Cameron the Edwardian remnants, but to the average man (and Frenchman) they sound identical.

And that, finally, is the point. Clegg and Cameron occupy very slightly different niches on the social spectrum, but it matters not a jot. In earlier times, it is easy to imagine Clegg being dismissed by the likes of Anthony Powell as a jumped-up nouveau riche, or Cameron being lampooned by Evelyn Waugh as a member of the Bollinger Club, "crimson and roaring", brought up to "the sound of English county families baying for broken glass".

(Waugh's own snobbery was matched by the snootiness of others towards him: "a silly little suburban sod with an inferiority complex and no palate – drinks Pernod after meals," sniffed his history tutor.) Today, the infinitesimal gradations of class are of anthropological interest, but of no political relevance whatever. The election result has offered conclusive evidence that voters know that there are more important considerations than where someone went to school, how they speak and whether they like to kill animals at the weekend.

Peter Mandelson, among others, tried to get the class war going by insisting that Cameron was looking down his "rather long toffee nose". But it failed to ignite, for the same reason that the Clegg-Cameron alliance will be seen not as some upper-class, public school conspiracy but as a genuine transformation of the political landscape.

British social distinctions are now merely interesting, rather than important. We are still conscious of class, without being paralysed by class consciousness.

"I think I get it," said my French friend. "These two people are posh in different ways, but it makes no difference."

"Voila!"

"How very English."

http://www.timesonli...icle7129129.ece</span>

Edited December 17, 201014 yr by Sylph

How about "ultra mega super posh RP in extremis accent" of the art critic Brian Sewell? Anybody else finding it fascinating?

The greatest accent of this sort is Anthony Blanche from Brideshead. He stutters, but the accent is perfect.

Hm... His r's aren't really perfect, are they?

Hm... His r's aren't really perfect, are they?

I have no idea, but he certainly is great to listen to.

I've noticed at least three or four instances when the r is uvular (as in French). In RP r is usually an alveolar approximant and once also used to be an alveolar tap in intervocalic positions after an accented syllable, meaning words like spirit, very, sorry etc.

To hear the difference, go and check TheRoyalChannel on YouTube and the Queen's latest Christmas message – when she says spirit and very, it's an alveolar tap, but Christmas, recovery and inherited all have r as an alveolar approximant, another sign of how the Queen's English has changed quite a bit during the last decades.

Edited December 27, 201014 yr by Sylph

I can actually do most of those accents. Although, they do get a bit muddled if I try to do them in rapid succession. Most of the friends of my youth have long been used to my switching off dialects for no reason. I even had a chance to do it for an (employed, working) actor once. I told him to name an accent and I'd do it. He stumped me on Scottish.

There was an story on This American Life a LONG time ago about southern accents in film and how bad they are. (The difference between life and "lahf" or time and "tahm". I consider English/British and American Southern to be the most closely related in sheer variety and geographical tells.

ETA: One accent I've never been able to tackle in spite of the fact I lived with a native speaker for years is Swedish. I just don't understand how they make those sounds.

Edited December 27, 201014 yr by marceline

Observe Noël Coward's r's, for example in the words such as four, during, flagrant – those are taps:

Or Surrey:

I can actually do most of those accents. Although, they do get a bit muddled if I try to do them in rapid succession. Most of the friends of my youth have long been used to my switching off dialects for no reason. I even had a chance to do it for an (employed working) actor once. I told him to name an accent and I'd do it. He stumped me on Scottish.

There was an story on This American Life a LONG time ago about southern accents in film and how bad they are. (The difference between life and "lahf" or time and "tahm". I consider English/British and American Southern to be the most closely related in sheer variety and geographical tells.

Well, marceline, if you're a boss where at your current work place, you should order people what to do in that 'appalling', cut-glass Etonian accent! That should raise some hairs!

.

Edited February 5, 201114 yr by Sylph