Talk:Received Pronunciation

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The content of this article has been derived in whole or part from File:Phonetic and phonemic transcriptions of audio record of Received Pronunciation.jpg. Permission has been received from the copyright holder to release this material under both the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license and the GNU Free Documentation License. You may use either or both licenses. Evidence of this has been confirmed and stored by VRT volunteers, under ticket number 2014022210011201. This template is used by approved volunteers dealing with the Wikimedia volunteer response team system (VRTS) after receipt of a clear statement of permission at permissions-enwikimedia.org. Do not use this template to claim permission. The content of Conservative Received Pronunciation was merged into Received Pronunciation on 6 October 2018. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

Vowel length

Is vowel length in RP contrastive? I've always been at a loss to find the scholarly consensus on this. I suppose it sometimes is or can be. In especially older RP, I assume STRUT could contrast basically just in terms of length with PALM/START. The same could be true of LOT versus THOUGHT/FORCE, and perhaps others (is KIT versus FLEECE a long shot?). Does anyone have any definitive takes on this? And/or sources? Wolfdog (talk) 15:19, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DRESS/SQUARE can be said to be a quantitative contrast nowadays. But I doubt you'll find anything definitive because even in languages that are considered to have vowel length contrast, there can always be subtle differences in quality, not to mention they're always changing. What's certain about RP is that the durational differences in the "tense" vs "lax" vowels are robust, if not solely distinctive (hence the debate on qualitative vs quantitative transcriptions, especially until Gimson sort of settled it by combining both), unlike in GA. Nardog (talk) 02:40, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My quick online searching a few days/weeks ago seemed to suggest that some of the GA-style length conditioning was common too, of the type where "bid" could be longer than "beat" due to the following consonant. I forget if that was an exact example off the type of my head. Still, like you said, the sources seemed to avoid any definitive conclusions. Wolfdog (talk) 15:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bit of quantitative evidence in this article's section in Vowels (see "long and short vowels", 3rd para. RoachPeter (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course RP has pre-fortis clipping too, but that's allophonic. Nardog (talk) 23:23, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"General British" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect General British has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 17 § General British until a consensus is reached. Thepharoah17 (talk) 05:58, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Christopher Eccleston?

Surely Christopher Eccleston is a pretty terrible example of a Notable Speaker of RP? He makes a point of using his working-class Northern accent in his work. The linked reference is also about his resistance to using a "posh" accent. 82.30.119.39 (talk) 09:13, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Like many other refs, the source for this is hidden behind a paywall so nobody can check it without paying up. It's really annoying and I don't understand why WP allows it. This section has far too many entries anyway. RoachPeter (talk) 08:18, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:PAYWALL. By your logic most books and papers (including yours) would be ineligible for citation, which would severely affect article quality. Like it or not, the truth is paywalled but the lies are free as they say, and if an online source is free to you it was paid for by your personal information. I don't object to your reversion because it was not a good source, but please never revert an edit with the reason you cited again. If you need access to a source, you may try Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. Nardog (talk) 01:38, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Terms broader than Received Pronunciation

"Received Pronunciation" mainly refers to a pronunciation of upper-class Englanders, so the terms The Queen/King's English, General British English should not be redirected thereto, as they cover the overall usage (writings, grammar, etc.), beyond pronunciation.

Besides, "General British English" is actually a mixture of a number of British Englishes, including RP/OED (i. e. RP for pronounciation, OED for written forms), if GBE exists.

--西城東路 (talk) 02:00, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At least the latter clearly doesn't redirect here, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Do you have citations corroborating this redirection—especially given, you know, the article is already fairly mature and well-cited in its corroboration of its own scope. Remsense 🌈 论 02:31, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]