I need Received Understanding about Received Pronunciation
Ok, when I was little I used hear via recordings the “New D’Oyle Carte” company perform Gilbert & Sullivan. I considered this a sort of perfect style of English. Eventually I read that it was actually an accent known as “Stage English”, and was deliberately done via strong enunciation to be very clear and proper. I also read about the so-called Received Pronunciation, which stage english is based on; I presume this “RP” is the “Oxford” accent.
I also notice it seems to be fading out, and is no longer heard as much.
In any case, my questions are: What is the deal with Received Pronunciation? Did someone invent it? Why does it exist? How does one learn it – overtly or by imitation of Boarding School bigwigs? Is it dying out? Does anybody in England in real life speak like they do on the D’Oyle Carte Company recordings?
It would not have been invented by one person. It would have evolved as the dialect spoken by the English elite: those at the royal court, at Oxford and Cambridge (when those were the only universities ), at the law courts in London, and in and around the Palace of Westminster. It would have come from how the elite – the nobility and gentry – spoke in that part of southeastern England, centred on London and the two universities. And of course, those who wanted to be upwardly socially mobile would have emulated that accent.
It’s no longer so fashionable, because it’s not so fashionable to be “elite” any more, and it’s more fashionable to speak with the dialect of the part of England you came from, and not that of upper-class southeast England.
Yes, what you’re hearing on ‘stage’ is a very exaggerated version of RP.
As the stigma of class has diminished, so has the fashion for RP. Watch or listen to the BBC these days and you’ll hear every type of regional accent.
I can feel this thread will open a whole bag of tricks. Everyone will have their opnion so I’ll try and give my own, from a British perspective.
As a basic explanation, RP is how English is ‘supposed’ to be pronounced. Who invented it? NO idea, it probably has its roots in the Upper/Middle class boarding school system, but was exemplified in the early days of the BBC. I worked with a girl who used to be a presenter on regional BBC radio (back in the early 90s) and she was taught to speak ‘proper’, removing her regional accent. (Which I guess answers your question about whether it can be taught).
From an English (note: not British) perspective, in its modern version, I guess it’s what we would regard as ‘accentless’ (which is meaningless I know, as everyone has an accent). It removes any reference to regional accents, so is probably the accent you would most regard as ‘English’. Bit like the generic ‘American’ accent which I’ve often heard (laughably) some Americans use to prove they don’t have an accent. (I forget where that’s from: Midwest? Chicago? CNN???).
British peple (no doubt on this thread) will disagree about what RP is, where it came from, and how it fits with society today. I like to regard it as described above - the purest form of English accent. Others will hear the word RP and assign it to the weird accent spoken (increasingly less) by the ‘Upper Classes’.
For the record, I don’t believe the Queen speaks RP. Like the stage actors, I think her accent is a weird anomaly of the older upper classes.
Agree with your post, up to a point. Whilst it has become more acceptable to have a regional accent, there is still a portion of society that fights a regional accent through class/upbringing/job/whatever. Guilty as charged here - I’m from Birmingham (most unattractive regional accent) and whilst I wouldn’t claim to speak perfect RP, I certainly speak with a fairly neutral/middle class accent (by virtue of schooling, leaving home at 18 and working in a middle class environment in London).
Also, all accents are not equal. Being a Brummie, my hometown accent is regarded as a joke/unsexy/‘common’. My girlfriend is from a very working class town in Wales, but her accent is regarded is cute/sexy/fashionable and, most importantly, classless - her downtrodden routes are not discernible to English ears, she just sounds ‘welsh’, and no one would know if she’s poor or posh.
Is this true? My understanding was that RP was a nineteenth century affair, and that even into the start of the nineteenth century, it wasn’t uncommon to hear members of nobility speak with a regional accent.
I think RP is really a spectrum of accents rather than a single one. At one extreme you have the Royals, especially the older ones, who speak with a very “far back” RP, which might be caricatured with sentences such as “he fell awf the horse at the beck of the hice” (the back of the house). At the other end is generic southern English accent, the “newsreader” accent. In the middle is a posher form of RP such as that of Hugh Grant.
As SanVito says, regional accents are now much more common on TV, but they still tend to be RP-ised – compare newsreader Huw Edwards Welsh accent to a full-blown one, for example.
Just to add that there are some millions of unfortunate souls who came by this accent perfectly honestly, either by being from South East England or by having parents who spoke with this accent. I dislike my RP, because people tend to react negatively to it and judge me to be a type of person I’m definitely not; the longer I spend teaching in Peckham, though, and living with Northerners, the more sub-standard the RP becomes! When my parents complain that my enunciation/pronunciation has changed, I can point out that our own dear Queen has gone the same way. Listening to recordings of her when she was young and recordings of her now, she’s a lot less weird-sounding now.
Huw Edwards’ accent is fairly gentle, but I don’t think (from people who know him, though I don’t personally) that he’s changed it. Some places in Wales just don’t have the full-on boyo thing going on, especially parts where not so much Welsh is/was spoken. It’s like how the Dales has a very different accent to that in York; no-one’s putting it on (or taking it off), they’re just different areas.
A lot of my impression of the history comes from reading novels and plays, from the 16th century through to the present day. You can learn a lot about different pronunciation from them, even if they come to us in written form. And the different accents go back a lot further than the 19th century.
Certainly, members of the nobility and gentry have always been able to speak with regional accents – but only back home. If they went up to university or to London, and wanted to be taken seriously, they’d better learn how to speak the “educated” or “refined” way, or they won’t be taken seriously. And they’re going to learn that at school (public school or grammar school) or from the right kind of private tutor, especially if their parents are upwardly mobile.
And even in 16th and 17th century drama – e.g., the plays of Shakespeare and Jonson – it’s clear that some characters are speaking in the language of the court and the elite in London and Westminster, while others speaking in regional and/or lower-class dialects. Even Master Shakespeare himself would have had to modify his native Warwickshire accent into a better-class of London accent when he was living in London. (And note that Birmingham was part of Warwickshire then, so his accent may not have been all that different from SanVito’s Brummie accent!) Master Shakespeare came from middle-class roots in the English Midlands, but he had to work with the nobility and gentry in London – and, more importantly, many of his characters played noble or gentle parts. When acting a prince or king, he wouldn’t want to sound like a commoner from the sticks.
“Newscaster” American most closely resembles the accent you’ll find in the Midwest. Say around Iowa and Nebraska.
That’s just in general, of course. There will be exceptions. Chicago counts as being in the Midwest, but native Chicagoans tend to have a very distinctive accent.
As was noted above, General American, the accent of Peoria, Illinois; Iowa; and Eastern Nebraska; is typically thought to be the “accentless” accent of American English. This paradoxical claim seems to mean something to the effect of “not being marked as having regional features by most speakers of American English.”
It differs from RP in the sense that, while some broadcasters have worked to eliminate their regional accents in favor of GA, I think the prestige accent typically belongs to either Boston Brahmin or Mid-Atlantic English–these being the accents of such posh figures as FDR, Katherine Hepburn, Bill Buckley, and the Kennedy clan.
And like RP today, having too pronounced a Boston Brahmin accent (or the now really antiquated Mid-Atlantic English) is seen as faintly ridiculous.
Which sums up the progression of my accent from its Midland roots very well, and sends me to bed very happy. Who need the Queen’s English when you share a linguistic bed with Shakespeare?
), at the law courts in London, and in and around the Palace of Westminster. It would have come from how the elite – the nobility and gentry – spoke in that part of southeastern England, centred on London and the two universities. And of course, those who wanted to be upwardly socially mobile would have emulated that accent.