Regional variants of received pronunciation in England

Welsh English

Wales is a bilingual area. Both languages are used there. But at the moment nationalistic feelings are rather strong in Wales and we can see the revival (возрождение) of the Welsh language and its spread.

Welsh English at the level of educated speech and writing is not much different from English English. Most differences are found at the level of more localized dialects.

The principal differences between Welsh English and RP are the following: in vowels

1. last, dance, chance, etc. tend to have [96] rather than [a:].

2. unstressed "a" tends to be [96] rather than з e.g: sofa;

3. tune, few [iu] rather than [ju:];

4. bake [b96k], boat [bo:t];

5. girl is produced with rounded lips ap­proaching [o:];

in consonants

1. a flapped [r]. linking [r] do occur.

2. Consonants, when the preceding vowel is short, are doubled: city [‘sitti:].

3. [1] is clear in all positions.

4. Intonation in Welsh English is very much influenced by the Welsh language.

Scottish English

Some linguists say that it is a national variant. Oth­ers say that it is a dialect. English has been spoken in Scotland for as long as it has been spoken in England.

Nowadays educated Scottish people speak a form of Scottish Standard English which grammatically and lexically is not differ­ent from English used elsewhere, although with an obvious Scottish accent.

It is very difficult to understand them for students who learn Received Pronunciation.

At the moment there is currently a strong movement in Scot­land for the revival of Scots.

Vowels

1. Since Scottish English is rhotic: beer – бир, bird –бёрд, hurt – харт, bard – бард, moor - мур

2. Length is not a distinctive feature of Scottish vowels. So pairs like pool— pull, cot—caught are not distinguished.

3. house – хаус-хус

4. do, to are pronounced as дэ, тэ

5. In some accents words such as arm, after, grass may have э rather than [a:]:

Consonants

1. Initial [p, t, k] are usually non-aspirated.

2. [r] is most usually a flap.

3. [l] is dark in all positions.

4. -ing is [In].

5. [h] is present.

6. through [fru:].

Northern Ireland English

Now speaking about Northern Ireland, it is true to say that English here is not homogeneous (однородный). The language distinction doesn’t have the same boundaries as the po­litical division of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Vowels:

1. in words like bay, say the vowel is a monophthong э,

5. realization of [a:] may vary considerably (значительно).

Consonants

1. [l] is mainly clear;

2. city [‘sIdi:];

3. between vowels [ð] may be lost: mother – маэр;

4. [h] is present.