The Northern regional type of English pronunciation

 

The Northern regional type of English pronunciation is characterized by features that are common to all the dialects used in the northern part of Eng­land.

The main distinctions of the Northern type of English pronunciation, as opposed to RP, are as follows:

(a) /æ/ is more open and more retracted back, as in /a/ (e.g."back","bad").

(b) /ɑ:/ is fronted compared with RP /ɑ:/ and it approximates to /æ/ in
words which do not contain "r" in spelling (e.g. "glass", "after"),

(c) /ʊ/ is used instead of /ʌ/ (e.g. "cup", "love", "much"), so there is no
distinction between words like "could" and "cud", "put" and "putt".

(d) / ǝʊ / is pronounced as a monophthongal / ɔ:/ (e.g. "go", "home").

(e) /e/ or are pronounced instead of /ei/ (e.g. "may", "say", "take").

(f) / ɒə/ is widely used, so they distinguish words like "pore" and "paw"

(g) All tones are drawled and speech is generally slower than in Southern English. The Low Rising Tone is used much oftener than in RP. For example, "Lancashire is the most thickly populated county in England" is pronounced with the Low Rise on the word “Lancashire “. All that tends to give a sing—song quality to speech.

(h) The Scottish type of English Pronunciation

The Scottish type of English Pronunciation is also based on the dialects spoken in Scotland which vary among themselves in some respects. Their common features, which distinguish the Scottish type of pronunciation from RP, are as follows:

(a) / ɜ:/ is not used in the Scottish type of pronunciation, instead of RP /ɜ:/ they use the sequences /ir/, /er/ or /ʌr/ (e.g. "bird"/bird/ "heard /herd/, "word" /wʌrd/. Similarly monophthongs are used instead of diphthongs in "beard", "there", "pure", "poor", "sure", etc.

(b) /u/ is used instead of /au/ (e.g. "down" /dun/).

(c) The Scottish pronunciation does not distinguish between /æ/ and / ɑ:/; words like "bad", "path", "grass", "dance", "half", "part" are pronounc­ed with /æ/, /a/ or /ɒ/.

(d) All vowels are short. There is no distinction in the length of the vo­wels in words like "pull" and "pool", "cot" and "caught", with the exception that the vowel in inflected words is not as short as the vowel in non—inflec­ted words ("road" — "rowed", "greed" — "agreed")

(e) /r/ is an alveolar flap not only between and before vowels, as in "hurry" and "brown", but also after vowels, as in "word", "born".

(f) A voiceless labiovelar fricative / m/ is used to distinguish between "which" and "witch", "whine" and "wine", e.g. /hwiʧ/ for which, etc.

(g) In the Scottish type of pronunciation there appears a backlingual fricative /x/, which resembles the corresponding Russian sound (e.g. "loch"). There are certain peculiarities in the intonation of the Scottish type of English pronunciation, such as

(a) Special Questions may end with a high level tone after a fall on the interrogative word, e.g.

RP 'Who's 'having the `grape fruit?

Scot. `Who’s having the 'grape fruit?

(b) A final vocative does not necessarily continue the tune of the General Questions, e.g.

RP 'Will you be 'in to ′lunch, Mr.'Brown?

Scot. ֽWill you be ֽin to ′lunch ֽMr.ֽBrown?

15. AMERICAN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

English is spoken not only in Britain. It is the national language in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and of a great part of the population in Canada. Each of those nations has its own orthoepic norm which exists alongside of regional types and numerous dialects.

Though the national languages have peculiar features of their own, which differentiate them from British English (BE) and from each other, they have much more in common. That is why they are considered to be variants of the same language, the English language.

American English (AE), which is a variant of the English language, has developed its own peculiarities in vocabulary, grammatical structure and pro­nunciation. American English embraces a wide range of pronunciation varie­ties. With the beginning of the 19th century the mobility of the population in the USA increased greatly: there was migration to the west of the country, and with the growth of industrial centres a considerable proportion of the farm population moved to the cities. As a result of that, dialectal differences have been reduced to fewer, more or less general, regional types. The most wi­dely used regional types of AE pronunciation are the Eastern, the Southern, and the General American types, the latter spoken mainly in the Middle Atlan­tic States Region.

The GA (General American) pronunciation is usually referred to as the standard pronunciation of AE, though it is often debated whether there is a standard pronunciation in the USA. Nevertheless it is the GA that has the greatest "acceptability" if not prestige, in the United States.

The peculiarities of GA lie in 1) the pronunciation of sounds and sound combinations; 2) differences in the stress patterns of words, and 3) diffe­rences in intonation.

1) Peculiarities of pronunciation of GA sounds and sound combinations as compared to those of RP.

(a) /r/ in GA is retroflexive, i.e. the tip of the tongue is curled back;

(b) /t/ is voiced between a vowel and a sonorant (as in "battle", "twen­ty"), or between two vowels the second of which is unstressed (as in "pity", better"). But the distinction between /t/ and 1d1 is not neutralized, because the voiced [t] is extremely short and resembles a one—tap alveolar /r/. Ameri­cans easily distinguish between "writer" and "rider", "latter" and "ladder";

(c) /l/is always dark, even before vowels (e.g. "film, look");

(d) /ʃ/ is voiced in words like "excursion" l ʒ nl, "version" /ʒn/;

(e) /h/ is often dropped in weak syllables, but it is retained when the syl­lable is stressed (e.g. "I saw him"/ai 'so:im/, but "him" /him/);

(f) /j/ is omitted before /u/ (e.g. "duty" /duti/, "student" /studnt/,
"new"/nu:/);

(g) /d/ is dropped after /l/ and /n/(e.g. "cold", "old", "individual");
(h) /k/ is omitted before /t/ (e.g. "asked")

(i) The glottal stop /?/ is used instead of /t/ before /m, n, I, r, j, w/ (e.g. "certainly" / S3:^? nli/, "that one" / ða?wA n/, etc.)

All American vowels are long.

(f) / æ / instead of /a:/ in words which do not contain "r" in spoiling (e.g. "path", "glass", "laugh", "can't", "last", "grass" etc. Exceptions: "father, palm, balm, alms")'

(I) / æ / in GA is wider and longer than RP / æ /, the Americans pronounce it with a twang (e.g. "man", "pass");

(m) /o u / is much less diphthongal than in RP. It may be represented as /o:/. Thus to represent Englishmen on the American stage the actors very often exaggerate the diphthongal character of /ou/,

(n) /u ǝ/ tends to be monophthongized. (e.g. "usually" / juʒali/, "rural"/'rural/).

The GA / ǝ/phoneme occurs both in stressed syllables (as in "but", "son", "blood") and in unstressed syllables (as in unstressed "of", "was", "does").

2) Peculiarities in the stress patterns of words in GA as compared to RP.

American speakers make much greater use of secondary stress in polysyl­labic words than British speakers do. In words which end in "-ary", "-ory". "—ery", "—mony", "-ative" the first syllable in the suffix bears tertiary stress (i.e. stress which is somewhat weaker than secondary stress).

E.g.'dictioֽnary, 'terriˌtory.