Which pronunciation to model your speech on

KickingCat wrote:

But in swedish schools are RP standard. I agree that it sounds silly but that's the way it is. Nowadays it is allowed to use GA (general american) accent also but only if you can stick with that and not mixing dialects. I don't think I sound like Queen Elizabeth II, nor aristocratic either. I know that I would never sound lika a native speaker but close enough anyway. Our Prime Minister Göran Persson sounds like the Swedish Chef in the Muppet Show. Do you what I mean? That is unacceptable! What do you guys think?

I think RP is the standard in many countries where English is taught as a foreign language. However, the RP you hear on ESL/EFL-tapes is less likely to be 'remarked RP'; you're much more likely to come across tapes with a 'modified RP' which is very close to the accent of English spoken by upper middle class Londoners.

I personally wouldn't say that any particular accent is more acceptable than another. We all have an accent, and I think we should accept and encourage diversity. If someone wants to speak like the Queen, let them do it, but don't blame anyone who sounds like George Bush, either.

MichalS wrote:

In my opinion, foreign students are taught the pronunciation of words according to the their first entry in the Pronunciation Dictionary (John Wells' Pronunciation Dictionary or Daniel Johns' English Pronouncing Dictionary - these two hold a good reputation in the field).

I suppose you mean that foreign students are to be taught pronunciation as per the Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary which is an edited version of Daniel Jones's pronouncing dictionary. Jonesian RP is archaic.

Hi all,

This thread really caught my attention, since I am weighing the same issues in my teaching (and speaking) of the English Language.

As an undergraduate architecture student at UCL (London) from 1993 onwards, I came into contact with may different accents.  Some of my friends were Scottish, a classmate was from York, and the many Southeasterners spoke anything from Cockney to Estuary to Standard English. 

Nobody I studied with spoke pure RP, nor did any of my teachers.  Only once did I meet an identifiable group of "extreme RP" speakers.  It was at a party held my a friend of mine who studied law. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by people who spoke precisely like the queen does!

These days, I am back in Chile, and sometimes I meet colleagues who have modeled their speech on the queen, even though they have never been to England, and have no idea about the cultrural baggage that their particular accent carries.  Myself, I attempt to steer my students towards a standard English accent, and try to keep them away from an overty RP pronunciation.

However, I strongly feel that those of us who prefer British English are at a disadvantage: General American English seems to carry much less baggage in terms of assigning social classes to accents.  Suppose I had to teach English to a plumber, an artist and a lawyer, all of them about to leave for London to find jobs.  They probably would need to learn three different accents (one each) to enhance their chances at finding employment...