Active Users:191 Time:18/05/2024 10:31:49 PM
Back to Messageboard Post New Thread Search Help Stats Rules
I already explicitly referenced RP at least twice in response to you (also: Still not a DIALECT) - Edit 2

Before modification by Joel at 10/08/2015 02:35:59 AM

It would save us both much time if you READ my posts before responding.


View original postIn the mid to late 1800s the British changed the way the spoke their language. In their never ending goal to stratify their society and separate the lower class from the betters British schools began teaching students to speak differently for the commoners. The way most Brits would have sounded in 1800 is much closer to how a kid form Virginia would speak than how a kid from London would speak.

Received Pronunciation was a regional, not class, development largely complete BEFORE the British first colonized America: Brits in 1800 London AND Virginia were about equally likely to have an RP accent. "Equally likely" in this case means "not very," since <10% of the UK uses RP even NOW. It never had anything to do with stratifying society either, rather, with the impossible task of standarizing the language, ironically, by masking and neutralizing a speakers native regional accent (even though RP is itself a mainly regional development.) As one scholar put it, "It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed."

The advent of radio and television (especially the first) encouraged that view because broadcasts throughout whole nations had to be accessible to an entire audience that spoke in myriad dialect and accents. The Middle Atlantic was developed and promoted around that time on BOTH sides of the Pond, for similar reasons, basically, so no one felt like the anchormen and entertainers on whose ratings networks depended were "foreigners." Imagine claims of "liberal media bias" if every anchor sounded like a Kennedy instead of speaking a bland generic English.


View original postAnd sorry including the dialect of non-native English speaker Really isn't valid. While some of the speak English great many speak a very broken English and use none standard structure. According to the arbitrator of all debated on the internet only about 5-8 percent of India are considered fluent in English so if I was to give you them you still are wrong.

We are not talking about pidgin English, but there are many gradations between it and full fluency: According to that same e-arbiter, fluent speakers are only a QUARTER of Indians capable of normal English conversation (i.e. NOT merely broken non-standard English.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

In fact, that e-arbiter has a whole article on INDIAN ENGLISH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English

There is a difference between non-standard speech and the mostly uniform standard of a different DIALECT, which is the crux of this discussion. GLOBALLY, an estimated 1.2 billion people speak English well enough for normal conversation; within the US, 300 million use over THIRTY distinct dialects: At MOST maybe 30 million Americans speak any particular dialect; should we really believe those 30 million a plurality of 1200 million English speakers?

That e-arbiter has a whole article on INDIAN ENGLISH

Return to message