Pronunciation varieties of bitish English

RHYTHM

Tempo. Pauses.

Timbre is a special colouring of the voice in the pronouncing sentence which shows the speakers attitude and emotional to the object of speech. It’s that quality of the voice which allows us to determine in what state of living is the man standing. E.g. Behind the door when we can’t see him but we can understand whether he smiles or is sad while speaking.

Tempo is the speed with which sentences and their parts are pronounced. It’s inseparable from sentence stress. It determines the number and length of sense groups. Rhythm is closely connected with tempo of speech.

Why can we say that pauses fulfill a linguistic function?

It is well known that with stuttering and the breaking of speech intonation, speech rhythm also breaks. That is why pause is an important thing. A pause is connected with the need to make an inhalation, to relax a little during the speech act, and possibly to draw the attention of an interlocutor by particular intonation.

Tempo. The tempo is moderate, mostly constant in reading descriptive and scientific prose and in newspapers, it is quicker in parenthetic and absolute constructions. It is changeable and moderate in drama. It is constant and slow in poetry. The tempo of public speeches depends on the size of the audience and the topic. The climax of a speech is characterized by a change in tempo, range and loudness.

Pauses. They are mostly logical, In poetry the line usually ends in a pause (if there is no enjambement). In reading drama pausation depends on the structure and rhythmic organization. In public speeches pauses not only divide the utterance into sense-groups, but make certain units prominent. There are hesitation pauses..Long pauses often anticipate the main information and isochronous units — lines. It is the main lexico-grammatical and intonational unit of poetry. Lines constitute a stanza. Poetry is characterized by the following intonational peculiarities: 1. A wide use of simple tones. The Level Tone is often combined with the High Level Scale. 2. The most typical tones are: Fall + Fall, Fall + Level, Rise + Fall.

Rhythm is inseparably connected with stress and time. By rhythm we understand the recurrence or alternation of stressed syllables in a sense group at certain intervals of time. The peculiarity of English rhythm consists in the fact that the intervals between the stressed syllables in a sense group are the same or tend to be equal, irrespective of the number of unstressed syllables between them. Consequently if there are many unstressed syllables between the stressed one they are pronounced more rapidly. If the unstressed syllables between the stressed ones are few they are pronounced more slowly.

E.g. ‘John ‘went to ‘london

‘John has ‘gone to ‘London

‘John must have ‘gone to ‘London

Rhythm influence word stress and sentence stress in English. This influence is especially clear in polysyllabic words with 2 primary stresses or a primary and secondary stress. Because of the neighboring stressed syllables the stress in a polysyllabic word can be changed: there may be only 1 primary stress left in the word.

E.g. the word ‘fifteen’ has 2 primary stresses by but in the sentence ‘He is just fifteen’. Because of the stressed word ‘just’ the first part of the numeral is unstressed. But in the sentence ‘He is fifteen years old’ the final part of the word ‘fifteen’ is unstressed because of the following stressed word ‘years’.

Rhythm effects sentence stress. It shows itself in the fact that notional words may become unstressed while form words may be stressed dui to rhythm.

E.g. ‘How \much?

‘How much \water?

British pronunciation standard is the norm of pronunciation of the English language in Britain. Within the orthoepic norms there may be different regional variants of pronunciation considered to be equally correct.

Large regional types can be distinguitive from local dialects. In English at present these are the following types of cultivated English: southern English pronunciation, northern English pronunciation, standard pronunciation.

The first is known as standard English pronunciation. It’s recognized as such all over the world. Second is spoken in regions between Birmingham and the border of Scotland.

It’s not shapely separated from the first, for it has some common features with it, but it has some differences too. And they are considered to be regional variants of the British pronunciation standard speech in 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. These earlier type was carried to America that’s why there are many features in common between American and Northern English:

1) instead of [a:] they pronounce [x] (chance, glass, France)

2) instead of [/\] they pronounce [u] (cup, love)

3) instead of [ei] they pronounce [e], [e: перевернутое] (take, may)

4) instead of [x] становится [a] (man, cat)

Standard English of Scotland differs from received pronunciation both in qualities of phonemes and their use. For example: 1) instead sound [r] they pronounced it with the vibrating tip of the tongue(brother, born), 2) dark sound [l] is used in all positions (look), 3) the non-existent in British received pronunciation back lingual fricative sound similar to the Russian [x] (caught), 4) in some words they pronounce the sound close to the German [h’] (light), 5) instead of [x] they pronounce [/\] (man), 6) instead of [a] they pronounce [x] (after, glance).

In speech of young people the word “soft” is pronounced with the short [o]. In the speech of elderly people with the long [o:].

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