Is there a kind of pronunciation of American or British English, which could be described as standard?

If there is not, what kind of pronunciation is taught to the pupils in the U.S. or the U.K.?

If there is, where does it come from? Does it come from the native people in the U.S. or the U.K.? Or in other words, do some native people have the standard pronuciation, just the standard pronuciation?

Or the so-called standard pronunciation of English is invented and prescribed by some authorities (such as the government or some experts) according to the general pronuciation of most native people, with some modificatons? If it is so, who are the authorities? and what are the official documents concerned with the standard pronuciation made by these authorities?

Thanks a lot!

Hi,

This reads as if Canada is a part of the United States, although I'm sure you were not suggesting that.

As you can see,some  Canadians are touchy about such matters.

Best wishes, Clive

Hi,

No prob.

Clive

Thank you very much!

My another problem is that I have two dictionaries: LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English (2005) and COLLINS COBUILD Essential English Dictionary (1988). The LONGMAN provides the British pronunciation while COLLINS COBUILD declared that it uses the Received Pronunciation, but I have found there some differences between the dictionaries in the pronunciations of the following words (the differences has been blued):

bed:   bed/(LONGMAN);    /bεd/(COLLINS)

actual:  /æktSuəl/(LONGMAN);  /æktS�əl/(COLLINS)

hair:   /heə/(LONGMAN);   /hεə/(COLLINS)

peculiar:  /pIkju:liə/(LONGMAN);    / pIkju:lIə/(COLLINS)

Is the British pronunciation different from the RP? If yes, then the different authorities provide different standards of pronunciation (here it means the ones provided by dictionaries) in U.K.? If not, then where do the differences come from? And why are there different standards? Or the pronunciation has changed over the past years?

Thank you very much!

Hi,

It has been my experience that students become lost when consulting dictionaries with regard to phonetic symbols as many times each one uses different phonetic symbols. This has caused much grief and I just tell my online students to stay away from it and try to spell the pronunciation out in English.

Example:

worked ( t)

played (d)

motivated (id)

Now this does become more complicated with vowel sounds and vowel sound combinations(dipthongs), but be creative!!!!!!

e.g. 'about' ( the ' ou ' is just the same as saying cow or now)

 If you intend to teach English or linguistics, then by all means please continue with the phonetics. If not, save yourself some time.

Regards,

Steve Ford

Online English Teacher

Private English Portal