Two Types of Pronunciation of English language

The English language possesses many different types of pronunciation across different geographical locations. Variations of English pronunciation could come both in terms of phonetics and phonology. Phonetically, two varieties of English pronunciation could have the same phonemes, yet one or more phonemes may be realized differently. Phonological differences include segmental and suprasegmental ones. The different number of phonemes between two accents is categorized as a segmental difference, and the distribution difference of a phoneme in different accents is deemed to be a suprasegmental one.

Distinctions are often made between the Received Pronunciation (BBC pronunciation), which is the accent of Standard English in England and General American (Network English), which is “the accent of the majority of American speakers of English.” (Roach, 2009) These distinctions will be analyzed at length in this essay through an attempt to determine whether the author’s own pronunciation is more British or more American. The material for analysis is a recording of a short passage “The Shopping List” done by the author in November, 2010.

The Analysis

The most notable difference between RP and GA is the distribution of the /r/ phoneme. In GA, it is rhotic, meaning it could appear in all positions, while in RP it is generally not found before consonants or at the end of an utterance. The vowels in GA are also heavily influenced by the /r/ following them. In the case of diphthongs, /ɪə/, /eə/ and /ʊə/ in RP are generally replaced with /ɪr/, /er/ and /ʊr/ respectively in GA. The pronunciation of many words in The Shopping List could serve as indicators of this rhotic difference. For example, “large” (line6) is pronounced as /lɑːdʒ/ in RP and /lɑːrdʒ/ in GA. My pronunciation from the recording shows clearly the rhotic feature, suggesting a tendency towards an American accent. The examination of similar examples shows a consistency in my way of pronunciation for this kind of words.

Another difference concerning the production of vowels between RP and GA is that the /ɒ/ in RP is sometimes realized as /ɑ(ː)/, a more open sound with no lip rounding in GA. Examples of this kind of words include shopping, John, pot, etc. Interestingly, I found my pronunciation of words within this category is inconsistent. Moreover, I could even have different pronunciation for the same word “John” as it occurred at the beginning and the end of the passage. There are also words for which my pronunciation seems “in between” RP and GA, with little lip rounding but not as open as /ɑ(ː)/. .

The next distinction to discuss is that in some words like “path”, instead of the /ɑː/ heard in RP, the more open vowel /æ/ is used. Only two examples are found in the passage, half and banana. I pronounced both as /æ/, a clear indication of American accent.

Finally, the last vowel distinction between the two varieties of pronunciation to be made in this essay concerns the diphthong /əʊ/. In GA, instead of the noble-sounding /əʊ/, the sound /oʊ/, with a more back starting point, is adapted. There are abundant examples in the passage concerning this point, including words like going, kilos, yellow, tomatoes, potatoes, whole and sole. Again, I found all my pronunciations of these words in congruence with the GA standard. All of them are pronounced as /oʊ/.

Having looked at the difference in vowels between the two varieties of pronunciation, now we set out to examine the consonants. Firstly, between an alveolar consonant and the vowel /u:/, a /j/ sound is typically added for RP, but not for GA. Three such examples are found in the passage. In this case, my pronunciation became inconsistent again. For the first example “tube”, my pronunciation did not include the /j/ sound, according to GA. However, as for “new”, the /j/ was again included. The third example was rather difficult to find, as it contained two words instead of one. It was found in the transition of the two words “that useful”. In connected speech, the last phoneme from “that”, /t/, which is an alveolar, is joint with the beginning of “useful”. In GA, it should be connected as /tu:sfl/. However, in my own speech, the /j/ is still retained, ,following the rules of RP.

Secondly, in GA, the /t/ sound between two vowels exhibits a special feature. It is said to be “tapped”, meaning the tongue is used to quickly touch the alveolar ridge while producing the sound. On the contrary, this kind of /t/ is usually realized by a glottal stop with younger speakers of RP. Please refer to Table 3 for my pronunciation of this kind of sounds.

A final note would be that there are certain special words that are pronounced differently in RP and GA. A good example would be the word “tomatoes’, in which the second vowel is pronounced as /ɑː/ in RP and /eɪ/ in GA. My pronunciation coincides with the latter.

Conclusion

This essay has examined the differences of RP and GA both in terms of phonological distribution and phonetic realization. From the analysis above, we could safely conclude that my pronunciation is generally more American than British despite the fact that sometimes it is a mixture of the two.

The text is provided by Henan Hongxing,which is the professional manufacturer of complete sets of mining machinery, such as Vibrating screen,Flotation cell, it is always doing the best in products and service.