Received Pronunciation - Historical Variation

Historical Variation

Like all accents, RP has changed with time. For example, sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was usual for speakers of RP to pronounce the /æ/ sound, as in land, with a vowel close to, so that land would sound similar to a present-day pronunciation of lend. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even Queen Elizabeth II has changed her pronunciation over the past 50 years, no longer using an -like vowel in words like land.

Some changes in RP during the 20th century include:

• Words such as cloth, gone, off, often were pronounced with /ɔː/ (as in General American) instead of /ɒ/, so that often sounded close to orphan (See lot–cloth split). The Queen still uses the older pronunciations, but it is rare to hear them on the BBC any more.
• There was a distinction between horse and hoarse with an extra diphthong /ɔə/ appearing in words like hoarse, force, and pour.
• Any final y on a word is now represented as an /i/ – a symbol to cover either the traditional /ɪ/ or the more modern /iː/, the latter of which has been common in the south of England for some time.
• Before the Second World War, the vowel of cup was a back vowel close to cardinal but has since shifted forward to a central position so that is more accurate; phonetic transcription of this vowel as ⟨ʌ⟩ is common partly for historical reasons.
• In the 1960s the transcription /əʊ/ started to be used for the "GOAT" vowel instead of Daniel Jones's /oʊ/, reflecting a change in pronunciation since the beginning of the century.

The change in RP may even be observed in the home of "BBC English". The BBC accent of the 1950s was distinctly different from today's: a news report from the 1950s is recognisable as such, and a mock-1950s BBC voice is used for comic effect in programmes wishing to satirise 1950s social attitudes such as the Harry Enfield Show and its "Mr. Cholmondley-Warner" sketches.