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Posts: 635
Sep 2 13 11:00 AM
Rachepol with a new pair of earrings
Matt Hughes wrote:Both. The technical term for the accent is Received Pronunciation, or RP. It's the accent of the "home counties" -- that part of England where the upper classes tend to congregate, but it's also a class signature. If you spend your school days at Eton, you're liable to come out speaking like that, wherever you came from. David Cameron, the current Prime Minister, is ethnically Scots (at least on his father's side), but sounds indistinguishable from all the other posh boys.But it's a mutable accent. Up until the 1960s, there was a creaky, back-of-the-throat sound to RP -- you can hear it in old movies and BBC broadcasts -- but since then the creak has disappeared and the vowel sounds have become more Cockneyfied. Your average toff now sounds a litttle like Michael Caine. Also the 'T' sound has been affected, not only in RP but in British English as a whole. This is another Cockneyfication; medial 'T's are replaced by a glottal stop - water becomes wa'er - and terminal 'T's disappear entirely.
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