Page 283 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 20: Difference in R.P. and Indian English

Self-Assessment Notes

1. Choose the correct option:
(i) The credit of making the East-midland dialect standard English goes to
(a) Milton (b) Chaucer
(c) Gimson (d) None of these
(ii) Radio broadcasting began in
(a) 1920s (b) 1930s
(c) 1915s (d) 1940s
20.7 Summary

• Most of the dialect of English languge use twenty four distinctive consonant sounds. Let us
examine these sounds and their symbolic representation and also their detailed description.
• In due course, R.P. came to symbolic a person’s high posotion in society. During the 19th century,
it became the accent of public schools, such as Eton and Harrow, and was soon the main sign
that a speaker had received a good education. It spread rapidly throughout the Civil Service of
the BritishEmpire and the armed forces, and became the voice of authority and power. Because
it was a regionally ‘neutral’ accent, and was thought to be more widely understood than any
regional accent, it came to adopted by the BBC, when radio broadcasting began in the 1920s.
During WW2, it became linked inmany minds with the voice of freedom, and the notion of a
“BBC pronunciation” grew.
• To understand the occurrence and functioning of vowel sounds, it is important to introduce the
concept of ‘cardinal’ vowels. To help identify vowels in different languages, phoneticians use a
seriesof reference vowels, called cardinal vowels with which to compare them. These consist of
four vowels produced at each extremity of the vowel producing area: /i/, /a/, /a/ and /u/,
plus four in intermediate positions which sound equidistant between /i/ and /a/ the front and
/u/ and /a/ at the back.
• Faulty pronunciation of the sounds of English, replacements of English sounds by their Indian
equivalents, wrong accentual pattern, leaving important words unaccented in connected speech,
faulty rhythmic patterns, faulty division of a long utterance into tone groups, wrong location of
nucleus or the tonic syllable in a tone group are the main reasons of the unintelligibility of
Indian English to native speakers of English in the U.K. and the U.S.A.
20.8 Key-Words

1. Plosion : The articulators quickly move away from each other. An explosive burst of air
rushes through the opening, involving energy in most or all of the audiable
spectrum.
2. Aspiration : The articulators are now further apart, and the air pressure at the site of the
obstruction has fallen so that the speech sound is no longer a burst with energy in
all frequencies, but bands of aspiration which are more narrowly concentrated
and which move toward the formant values in the next phoneme.
20.9 Review Questions

1. State the main difference between British R.P. and General Indian English.
2. How can Indian English be made internationally intelligible?
3. What standard of pronunciation would you like to aim at in India?
4. Write short note on the ‘Received pronunciation’ of England.

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