Estuary English
From Teflpedia
Estuary English is a variety of Standard English, spoken with a regional accent and, according to the linguist John Wells, "somewhere between traditional RP and Cockney".[1] It includes the "form(s) of English widely spoken in and around London and, more generally, in the southeast of England — along the river Thames and its estuary".[2]
It was first referred to in 1984 by David Rosewarne in an article for the Times Educational Supplement.[3][4]
Some features of Estuary English are as follows:[5]
- Phoneme /eɪ/ pronunced as [ʌɪ]: face as [fʌɪs].
- Phoneme /aɪ/ pronunced as [ɑɪ]: price as [prɑɪs].
- Phoneme /aʊ/ pronunced as [æʊ]: mouth as [mæʊθ].
- Phoneme /əʊ/ pronunced as [əʊ], [ɒʊ] or [ʌʊ]: holy as ['həʊlɪ], goat as [gɒʊt] and loaf as [lʌʊf]
- Phoneme /uː/ pronunced as [ʉ:]: goose as [gʉ:s].
References[edit]
- ↑ Wells, John, "Our changing pronunciation",
- ↑ UCL (University College London) Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, Web documents relating to Estuary English
- ↑ Rosewarne, David, 1984. ‘Estuary English’. Times Educational Supplement
- ↑ Crystal, David. Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language, 1995, p. 327
- ↑ Wells, John, Transcribing Estuary English, 1994.
