RP is not the same as Home Counties, though some of the following text I've removed could bve refactored in. -- Tarquin

the pronunciation of English traditionally used by the BBC. It implies use of a Home Counties accent to speak the dialect of English used by the British Government for official purposes. It is otherwise known as the Queen's English, BBC English or British English. The term Standard English is also sometimes used. However this should be used to refer to the written language only.

RP is surely not identical to any of Home Counties accents. However it is so similar that someone from outside those counties would find difficulty in telling the difference. If there is another accent which is more like RP than that of the Home Counties, it would be nice to know what it is. Perhaps that of Cambridge ? I certainly find it easier to name accents which are less like RP.

As for the mark of an educated speaker, that's a matter of opinion: from what I can see, an opinion held mainly by RP speakers themselves. I for one have met enough fools with RP accents to consider that it is no more likely to mark a speaker as educated than any other accent. Rather than characterising RP in such a slanted way, it's better to compare it to the various English accents from which it must have evolved. And you won't find those in Northumbria or Wales. The Home Counties, Oxford or Cambridge seem to be much more likely places of origin.

Despite the statement that RP implies no region, it has much more similarity to southern English accents than it does to Irish or Northern English accents. So there is some implication of region. I realise that people learn it no matter where they come from but then Russians often learn to speak English with an American accent. That hardly means that an American accent has no regional implication. It just means that if the Russian's grammar and vocabulary are good enough, listeners will wrongly assume that the Russian is actually American. Similarly someone who has learned to speak RP English will be assumed to come from the South of England unless there is other evidence to the contrary. That's why I prefer the original opening paragraph to the one which you have replaced it with. Derek 23:32 Sep 9, 2002 (UTC)

Granted, what I wrote needs work. Home Counties accent may seem similar to RP to someone who is not British, but HC is much more clipped with higher vowels than RP. The part about not conveying information about regional origin -- yes, should be clarified about regional origin within the UK -- but that was directly cribbed from David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, I forget the page reference. RP is the "middle ground", the Platonic ideal, if one will. Technically, nobody actually speaks it. The clearest definition might be to say it is the pronunciation which is used in dictionaries. -- Tarquin 10:27 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

Nobody seems to have mentioned that RP got its name because it was the accent that was "received" when people (debs, etc) were presented at Court. As for it being the accent of educated people, that was largely an affectation of the late 19th through mid 20th centuries -- Prime Minister William Gladstone certainly didn't use it, he was noted for speaking with a Scouse accent. It's not even the "Queen's English" anymore, as the Queen's accent has noticeably changed at different points in her life. Arwel 20:11 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

I can half remember being told that there is a US equivalent, something like "Standard Midwestern", that is used by network news presenters etc. If there is can someone more knowledgeable make a page and add a link.

Seems that it is called "General American", as described in http://www.xrefer.com/entry/442194, http://ajet.kghs.kh.edu.tw/www/BAindex/PRONU~1.HTM.

I removed this as it's such a matter of opinion that I don't think it can be rescued.

To speak the dialect generally requires some disciplined use of the mouth, making received pronounciation slightly more work than other common accents (especially North-Country English, some Canadian, and most Australian dialects) which hold and use the mouth in a much more laid-back or lazy way.

I certainly haven't noticed Canadians to be "lazy" speakers. Their pronunciation is easily understood -- by me at any rate. I've left in the other parts of the "Isn't RP wonderful?" section which has been added to the end of the article but tried to balance it by pointing out the consonants for which most RP speakers do "use the mouth in a much more laid-back or lazy way". -- Derek Ross

moved from Received pronunciation:

(Anyone with an understanding of phonetics and the phonetic symbols is invited to add to this page, or offer some guidance on the talk page. I can then work through it and add a better explanation of vowel pronounciation - Chimpa 21:59 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC))

I'm unsure about saying RP "drop" the "r" in "charming". From my POV, it's more a case of some dialects adding it. And who says "chawming"? I don't! This is the problem with make-your-own phonetic transcription... -- Tarquin 12:09 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

Most non-rhotic accents add an intrusive "r" in phrases like "the ideaRis"; I have heard that that is not true of RP. (Rhotic accents generally do not add such intrusive "r"s.) Is that correct?

How old is the British practice of considering non-rhotic pronunciation to be "correct"? Would it be accurate to say that it had not yet happened in 1850? Michael Hardy 21:44 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

I expect that you will find that there is no clear cut date, and non-rhotic pronunciation was accepted in some regions and not others before 1850. Non-rhotic pronunciation is very much a regional thing in Britain, with all(?) of Scotland, Norfolk, and much of the west country using rhotic pronunciation. I would guess that there is about a 50-50 split in rhotic/non-rhotic pronunciation in terms of geographical area, but that in terms of population about 90% of British speakers are non-rhotic.

As for the question of whether RP speakers use an "r" between words, I think that there is a fairly wide definition of what RP is, with some people considering Tony Blair's accent to be RP and others confining it to the aristocracy and 1930s BBC presenters. The tighter definition of RP I think would not allow "r" between words, but I think many people would see the use of the "r" as within the acceptable variations of RP. There is a TV presenter who announces the TV series "Law and Order", who I would consider to speak RP but who uses the "r" between words. This greatly amuses my (American) wife, as to her ears it sounds like "Lore and Awder"! -- Chris Q 06:30 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

I'm still not happy about the article saying RP drops the 'r' in "charming". It's not there in the first place, as my dictionary attests. -- Tarquin 22:22 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

This traditional idea was certainly not just confined to England (or even Britain), but was seen in other Commonwealth countries too. My wife tells me that even in the USA, rich families will often have an accent which has many characteristics of RP, and that if I were to move to the USA my accent is close enough to RP to be considered an asset! -- Chris Q 06:43 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

Well, I'm feeling bold. I'm going to risk war with Mr. Maverick by moving this from Received pronunciation to Received Pronunciation. Haha! Do I need to justify this? I mean, that's how it's written whenever I've seen it written. See e.g. Britannica and dictionary.com and the OED... oh, wait, that last one doesn't back me up. Well, that's the first time I've seen it uncapitalised, I'm sure! Maybe I'd better not be so bold after all, and wait to see what other people say. Still, I should point out that "Received Pronunciation" is just as much a proper noun as the name of any language, and of course more so than the names of bird species and dog breeds, which aren't proper nouns at all... -- Oliver P. 22:00 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

War! Did I hear the w-word spoken? Well anyway - I don't have much of an issue with this move. There are always exceptions to any rule of grammar (and that includes capitalization). --mav

What if they had an edit war and nobody showed up? -- John Owens

Okay... but maybe I will wait for another opinion or two, just to see. I'm not feeling very bold any more... -- Oliver P. 02:05 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Boy, this page leaves me wishing for sound files of examples. How do you pronounce "Wales" and " whales" diferently? Rmhermen 23:13 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

"Wales" and... "hwales". The latter is an older pronunciation, still used by some, such as one of my maths teachers at school... I gather that in Old English these words used to be pronounced with a "khw" - where I am using "kh" to represent something like the "ch" in "loch" - and I think back in Proto-Indo-European it was all "k^w"... But don't quote me on that. :) -- Oliver P. 02:05 May 3, 2003 (UTC) P.S. - Oh yes, I've just remembered - I read somewhere that the PIE word for wheel had been reconstructed as k^wek^wlos. I remember some strange things sometimes. :)

Wales starts with a voiced consonant; whales with an unvoiced one. It's the same as the difference between veils and fails, between bails and pails, between dales and tales or between Zales and sails. It's obvious if you know what you're listening for. -- Derek Ross

Surely the difference is in aspiration, not in voice? Well, this person agrees with me... And if you follow the link from the bottom of that page to some posts by proper linguists, you'll find that they write "wh" phonetically as /hw/, i.e. /h/ followed by /w/, rather than as a single voiceless consonant. -- Oliver P. 02:39 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Interesting little article! I know how the writer feels. I think it's arguable whether the difference is voicing or aspiration and that it depends a bit on accent in any case. As a test you could try whispering each of the word pairs and see if a partner with their eyes shut can tell which one you are saying. They should be able to tell the difference between aspirated/unaspirated but not between voiced/unvoiced. -- Derek Ross 02:56 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Removed : == Loss of distinctions between words ==

Received Pronunciation has more homophones than most other English pronunciation systems. For example, most English-speaking people pronounce "formerly" differently from "formally", but in Received Pronunciation they are pronounced the same.

I do not believe that RP has more homophones than most other English pronunciation systems, though I can see why it might sound like that to Americans. American English uses consonants to differentiate between words in places where RP usas voewls; RP has mone destinct voewl sounds than most other forms of English. In the example above, to comensate for the lack of the "r" sound the RP speaker pronounces formally as fOm@li, but formerly as fOm3li, which sound quite destinct to most British English speakers (See SAMPA/English). This might sound like a homophone to an American, most of whome are not used to so many different vowel sounds.

Whereas there are words which are homophones in RP (e.g. Lore, Law), I have no evidence that there are more than in other English dialects, for example Harry and Hairy , Carry and Kerry are homophones in most US dialects but didtint in RP and most British dialects.

It is very difficult for anyone not used to a pronunciation system to detect the differences, for example I lived in Yorkshire for five years before I relised that the Yorkshire pronounciation of "look" and "luck" are not homophones. -- Chris Q 09:58 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, I agree that the claim that RP has more homophones than most other English pronunciation systems was a bit dodgy, but the claim that RP speakers have more distinct vowel sounds doesn't sound any more plausible to me. I consider my pronunciation to be near enough RP, but I pronounce formally and formerly in exactly the same way, and I've never noticed any other "r-dropper" distinguishing between those words, either. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the same representations for both words in its pronunciation guides: see formally and formerly. And, as far as I can remember, I've never seen any other dictionaries distinguishing in similar cases. If we change "most" to "some" in the paragraph you've removed, I think it would be accurate.

On the other hand, I'm not sure about the claims that RP speakers are more careful to enunciate sounds than anyone else. I suppose it depends on how you are defining RP - if you're talking about the speech traditionally used by the BBC, then it's obviously true, as people speaking in public broadcasts need to speak clearly, but of course that's true regardless of their accent. If you mean the way people speak in real life, I doubt there is much correlation between accent and clarity of speech. After all, wouldn't you classify the speech of Rowley Birkin, Q.C. as RP? ;) -- Oliver P. 18:37 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to say fOm3li. It comes out sounding as "form early"... the shortness of the second syllable forces a schwa. -- Tarquin

There is a greater number of distinct vowel sounds, for example "caught", "cot", "cart" are different in RP.

Greater than in what, exactly? A comparative only makes sense if you know what it is being compared to. Aren't those words pronounced distinctly by most (or even all?) British people? -- Oliver P. 13:46 25 May 2003 (UTC)