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Estuary English

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Estuary English is a name given to the formulation(s) of English widely spoken in South East England and the East of England; especially along the River Thames and its estuary, which is where the two regions meet. Estuary English is commonly described as a hybrid of Received Pronunciation (RP) and South Eastern Accents, particularly from the London, Kent and Essex area — i.e., the area around the Thames Estuary. The variety first came to public prominence in an article by David Rosewarne in the Times Educational Supplement in October 1984. Rosewarne argued that it may eventually replace RP as the Standard English pronunciation. Studies have indicated that Estuary English is not a single coherent form of English; rather, the reality behind the construct consists of some (but not all) phonetic features of working-class London speech spreading at various rates socially into middle-class speech and geographically into other accents of south-eastern England.

Features

Estuary English shares the following features with Cockney pronunciation:

  • Use of intrusive R.
  • A broad A (ɑː) in words such as bath, grass, laugh, etc. This is often seen as the litmus test of a South-East accent, but it has only spread to rural areas of the south-east in the last forty years.
  • T-glottalisation, i.e., using some glottal stops: that is, "t" is sounded as a glottal occlusion instead of being fully pronounced when it occurs before a consonant or at the end of words, as in "eight" or "McCartney" and it can also occur between vowels, as in Cockney or southern dialects e.g. "water" (pronounced as [wɔːʔə]).
  • Yod-coalescence, i.e., the use of the affricates /ʤ/ and /ʧ/ instead of the clusters /dj/ and /tj/ in words like "dune" and "tune".
  • Diphthong shifts, e.g., the diphthong in words like "I" becomes [ɑɪ] or [ɒɪ], the diphthong in words like "brown" becomes [æʊ], and the diphthong in words like "face" becomes [ɛɪ], or [æɪ].
  • L-vocalisation, i.e., the use of [o] or [ɯ] where RP uses [ɫ] in the final positions or in a final consonant cluster.
  • Use of confrontational question tags. For example, "We're going later, aren't we?", "I said that, didn't I?"

But the following characteristics of Cockney pronunciation are generally not considered to be present in Estuary English :

  • Th-fronting, i.e., replacement of with (e.g. [fɪŋk] for think)
  • H-dropping, i.e., Dropping [h] in stressed words (e.g. [æʔ] for hat)
  • Double negation. However, Estuary English may use "never" in case where "not" would be the Standard. For example, "he did not" [in reference to a single occasion] might become "he never did".
  • Replacement of [ɹ] with [ʋ] is not found in Estuary, and is also very much in decline amongst Cockney speakers.

However, it should be noted that the boundary between Estuary English and Cockney is far from clear-cut , hence even these features of Cockney might occur occasionally in Estuary English.

In particular, it has been suggested that th-fronting is "currently making its way" into Estuary English, e.g. those from Isle of Thanet often refer to Thanet as "Plannit Fannit" (Planet Thanet).

Use of Estuary English

Estuary English is widely encountered throughout the south and south-east of England, particularly among the young. Many consider it to be a working-class accent, though it is by no means limited to the working class. In the debate that surrounded a 1993 article about Estuary English, a London businessman claimed that Received Pronunciation was perceived as unfriendly, so Estuary English was now preferred for commercial purposes.

Some people adopt the accent as a means of "blending in", appearing to be more working class, or in an attempt to appear to be "a common man" — sometimes this affectation of the accent is derisively referred to as "Mockney". For example, Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, has been heard to adopt the accent at times in TV interviews (as in the Des O'Connor show) Diana, Princess of Wales (born 1961) was sometimes said to use elements of Estuary English, though they were quite mild in her case. By contrast the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips (born 1981) speaks with a pronounced Estuary English accent. As some Australian scientists have found out researching the Queen's anniversary speeches, even she has shifted her accent slightly towards what is called Estuary.

References

See also

Further reading

External links

Hudson River is an Estuary.

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Last updated on Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 19:08:55 PDT (GMT -0700)
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