| ▲ | scheme271 2 days ago |
| I think the deeper question is whose standards and why should we consider them the standard? |
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| ▲ | AdamN 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Some of them of course are invented whole cloth. British Received Pronunciation was invented and needs to be learned and is the standard of the upper class. It's neither right nor wrong but it's there to differentiate. |
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| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | RP isn't really a thing any more, except among some of the older aristocracy and Tories and a few legacy BBC Radio shows. Most people have settled into Estuary, which has split into a high/corporate/media Estuary-tinged dialect, and low street Estuary. The BBC has its own special neutral version. Fifty years ago the difference between upper class/BBC/RP and street English was almost hilariously obvious. Watch a BBC show from the 50s and 60s - even something like Dr Who - and everyone is speaking a unique RP dialect that doesn't exist any more. | | |
| ▲ | madaxe_again 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Idk. I’m in my early 40s, not a Tory, not aristocracy, and I speak with RP, as do many others I know. Maybe a product of schooling, but I wouldn’t say it’s dead. In media, you’re quite correct - it has become rare bar presenters who are now in their 80s or older. |
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| ▲ | Lio 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You say “needs to be learned” but that’s no more so than any other accent. We just grow up with it because it’s how our parents and the parents of our friends speak. If you want to change your accent you can, of course, get elocution lessons but most Brits do not. We just have a large variety of accents of which RP is one. | | |
| ▲ | Lio 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Not sure why this is controversial. RP is just an accent like any other now. I didn’t have lessons for it and I don’t know anyone else that did. It’s just how we speak. | | |
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| ▲ | rahimnathwani 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | "Received Pronunciation was invented" How so? | | |
| ▲ | herewulf a day ago | parent [-] | | It's not the natural evolution of a regional dialect coming to prominence but rather the conscious consensus of a geographically distributed social stratum. Interestingly, the sociolinguistic literature shows that such a consensus is strongest among an aspirationally upward-mobile social group rather than the already social elite. In other words: The aspirational middle class make a big effort to speak how they think the upper class speak in hopes of joining them one day. |
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| ▲ | rglullis 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's the thing with standards: there are so many of them to choose from. You don't have to follow them, but you do you should be ready to accept the consequences of your choice. |
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| ▲ | bee_rider 2 days ago | parent [-] | | There are lots of standards, but some contradict one-another. In the area I grew up in, caring too much about useless aesthetic stuff like “elbows on the table” would have a social cost. |
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| ▲ | vitro 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Maybe some of them may have had a purpose. With this one, if you were used to putting your elbows on the table and there were more people around, you just took up too much space and made it unpleasant for others around you. |
