Standard British accent?

Speak Up is an Italian magazine written in English and aimed at EFL students. For several years now it's had its own website where videos are posted of interviews with all sorts of English native speakers. Even world-famous linguist David Crystal has more than once contributed to the magazine: listen to the free podcasts here. 

One of this month's clips (and articles) features comedian John Peter Sloan, whose name will probably not sound entirely new to regular readers of this blog. (See my articles here and here.) The author(s) of the post define(s) his accent as "Standard British". Of course this is absolutely not true! His speech is indeed British but not 'standard'. It could be better described as "Regional British English" or – to use Cruttenden's terminology in his new Gimson's Pronunciation of English (Routledge, 2014) – "Regional General British (RGB)" (pp. 81-82). Cruttenden defines RGB as 

"the type of speech which is basically GB except for the presence of a few regional characteristics which may well go unnoticed even by other speakers of GB".

Among these characteristics are, for

Some of John Peter Sloan's regional features in this interview include the following:

i) he pronounces have and having a beer without h; 

ii) he seems to say with as wɪf rather than GB wɪð or wɪθ;

iii) he says ˈlɪʔl̩ instead of GB ˈlɪtl̩ or ˈlɪtəl for little; 

iv) he says here iʔ is instead of GB here it is; 

v) the first time he pronounces the word sitting he says it with glottal stop instead of t, and then he 'corrects himself';

vi) his KIT vowel sometimes sounds as close as FLEECE, as in one of his renderings of the word English. (This is typical of some Midland accents in England. John is in fact originally from Birmingham. Listen to how he says fun, cut, nut and us by clicking the link here under "Block 1 - Pronunciation" named "13 Dita in gola; p. 25".)

(A little digression… Recently, there has been talk on the web about the use of the glottal plosive ʔ being perfectly acceptable in today's GB before syllabic l. See for example this article by Pronunciation Studio teacher Maria Kozikowska. She claims that pronunciations like ˈbɒʔl̩ and ˈlɪʔl̩ for bottle and little are "now more and more widely acceptable in an RP (= GB) accent". Again this is blatantly false. Here's what Cruttenden writes on p. 184 of his new Gimson's:

For more on the gaffes made by Pronunciation Studio, see this article by Jack Windsor Lewis, this post and comments on Kraut's English phonetic blog, and this other post on the same blog.)

One final note about the magazine Speak Up: its Language Blog is riddled with incorrect statements and howlers concerning the pronunciation of English. See, for instance, this post, where a reader asks how the two t's in department are to be pronounced; and this brief description of the characteristics of a New York accent.  

Medical rant

On 29th June 2014, a Camilla Cerrai, probably a nurse, posted the following comment on the website http://www.amazon.it/ under the section devoted to my book:

"È un libro che tratta prettamente la pronuncia. Se cercate un testo che vi aiuti con il lessico, la fraseologia e simili, questo non è adatto."

('It's a book that's only about pronunciation. If you're looking for something on the lexis, phrases etc. typical of medical English, then this book is not good.')

Dear Camilla, the criticism you made is simply unjustifiable. Did you read the title of my book before purchasing it? Did you have a look at the contents page on the publisher's website before posting such an uninformed and adverse comment? What exactly do you mean by "la fraseologia e simili"? Are you sure your English is so good you don't need any help with pronunciation?

Also, what you say about the technical terminology and phrases there is totally untrue. My book contains nearly 2,000 examples of words and phrases commonly used in medical science. Most of them are translated into Italian and all their pronunciations are carefully explained (including variants not normally found in dictionaries). See here, for example, here, or see pp. XV-XVI. The latter contain exactly 100 terms, all of them used in medicine and with their corresponding recorded pronunciation(s).

On the market there are now all sorts of books on medical and nursing English for Italians (see for instance here). Most of these books, though, only contain information about the grammar of English; some include info on the lexis; but none, as far as I know, deal with the pronunciation of medical terms and expressions. Also, no book in Italy explains to students how to cope with English native speakers' spoken language in the context of medicine. My book does. 

Criticisms are most welcome, Camilla, but damaging and unfair ones are not!    

Rant over.

Homophones and homographs in medical science

On p. 32 of the book you can see below, which is essentially about the origins and use of medical terms in English, the author Antonella Distante, who is Lecturer in Medical English at the Università "La Sapienza", Rome, writes as follows:

She claims that the words affect, flow, recall, relapse, burn, consent, transplant, implant and insert are all homophones and homographs when pronounced as nouns and verbs. Of course this is only true for flow, burn and consent, which keep the same pronunciation both when they're nouns and when they're verbs. For the rest, there's quite a lot of variation:

1) affect always has stress on the second syllable when it's a verb; the corresponding noun, on the other hand, is normally pronounced ˈaffect, though aˈffect is also sometimes to be heard in both GB and GA; 

2) recall (v.) is reˈcall both in GB and in GA, though ˈrecall is also sometimes possible in GA; recall (n.) is pronounced with the same stressing as the verb, although the variant ˈrecall is also heard in GB;

3) relapse is reˈlapse when a verb and a noun, though relapse (n.) can also be ˈrelapse in both GB and GA;

4) transplant is ˌtransˈplant when it's pronounced as a verb and ˈtransplant when it's a noun (In GA ˈtransplant is also sometimes to be heard for the verb.);

5) implant (n.) is always ˈimplant in GA and GB while the verb is mostly imˈplant (LPD also acknowledges ˈimplant for the verb in RP (= GB).);

6) insert (v.) is always inˈsert and the corresponding noun is ˈinsert. Also notice that the s in both the verb and noun can be pronounced either as s or z.  

Why don't some authors check with a good dictionary before offering incorrect information in their books? I wonder.

Grazie di tutto, Bev!

It's so desperately sad to hear you are no longer with us, Bev! The field of phonetics has lost a great man and a very knowledgeable phonetician.

I first met you at SCEP (Summer Course in English Phonetics) in 2011. On that occasion, between one coffee break and another, we had the chance to get to know each other and discuss what to include in the third edition of Practical Phonetics and Phonology as far as Italian pronunciation was concerned. Our discussions continued on Skype for a couple of months between January and February 2012. These resulted in the publication in 2013, together with Inger Mees, of a fascinating account of the pronunciation of current Italian.  

Practical Phonetics and Phonology was the first book that really sparked my interest in phonetics in 2003, when I was only 20. Back then, I kept repeating to myself "I hope one day I'll be able to write an article for this book". Well, the dream came true in 2013, thanks to your help (and that of Inger, of course!).

I was so happy when you decided to send me a copy of the book you had written with Anne-Marie Vandenbergen Modern English Pronunciation: A Practical Guide for Speakers of Dutch (2000; 2nd edition; Academia Press, Gent): I treasure it a lot and I want you to know that it very much provided the inspiration for my very own L'inglese medico-scientifico: pronuncia e comprensione all'ascolto (EdiSES, 2014). 

I'll never forget the extremely kind words you wrote to me in your last email you sent me on 16th February 2014, soon after you received a copy of my book:

"Hi Alex –

Many thanks for sending me your new book – which arrived here safely a couple of days ago. I must say it looks top-class, inasmuch as I can judge it through the dense mist of Italian! You've scored with a most impressive first publication. And you've hit upon an area where pronunciation is really crucial. After all, for doctors and their patients it's truly a matter of life and death. […]

It really is a piece of work to be proud of. Well presented in all ways, good diagrams, much pertinent illustrative exemplification, and appropriate translation where necessary. In about a hundred years from now, Alex, linguistic historiographers will be searching desperately for extra biographical detail about you – you'll appear to have risen dramatically on to the early 21st century articulatory phonetic scene from virtually nowhere!

I'm quite sure the book will achieve the success it deserves. 

Very best wishes,

Bev"

These words moved me to tears on that cold evening in February, and they still do today, especially when I think that you have gone forever and are no longer with us. 

Thank you very much for everything, Beverley! Rest in peace and pray for us – phoneticians need your support!

Grazie di tutto! 

NB: Readers of this blog might also like to have a look at Jack Windsor Lewis' personal remarks on the death of Beverley Collins here.