X Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2018

Estuary English is the term coined by David Rosewarne in 1984. He defines EE as a variety of modified regional speech, a mixture of non-regional and local southeastern English pronunciation and intonation. This English variety is associated with the middle class society.

EE is widely spoken in South East England and the East of England; especially along the River Thames and its estuary, which is where the two regions meet.

Comparing EE with RP and Cockney the phoneticians often say that Estuary is «somewhere in between». In some of its features (but not all), Estuary English is related to the traditional Cockney dialect and accent spoken by people living in the East End of London. But sometimes EE seems more like RP. Some authors use different names for EE closer to Cockney (Popular London) and EE closer to Received Pronunciation (London Regional Standard or South-Eastern Regional Standard).

EE consonants have following phonetic features:

Yod-coalescence, i.e., the use of the affricates /ʤ/ and /ʧ/ instead of the clusters /dj/ and /tj/ in words like "dune" and " Tuesday"

Regular Glottal stops. This is not pronouncing the letter 'T' in most words: statement is pronounced like statemen’

L-vocalisation. This is not pronouncing the letter 'L' in certain words and tends to be ended with a 'w' sound instead: 'fall > faw' and 'milk > miwk'

Intrusive R : pronouncing /r/ in places that etymologically no /r/ is present to prevent consecutive vowel sounds. For instance, drawing is pronounced /ˈdrɔːrɪŋ/

EE vowels:

broad A in words such as bath, grass

But the following characteristics of Cockney pronunciation are generally not considered to be present in Estuary English :

Th-fronting, i.e., replacement of [θ, ð] with [f, v] (e.g. [fɪŋk] for think)

H-dropping, i.e., Dropping [h] in stressed words (e.g.[æ] for hat)

Nowadays even these features of Cockney might occur occasionally in Estuary English. In particular, it has been suggested that th-fronting is "currently making its way" into Estuary English.

EE Intonation

The intonation in Estuary English is characterized by frequent prominence being given to prepositions and auxiliary verbs which are not normally stressed in General R.P:

"Let us get TO the point"

"She HAS played football"

Lots of famous people speak it. Comedians like Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand, presenters like Jonathan Ross and the TV chef Jamie Oliver. Lots of singers too, like Adele and the late Amy Winehouse.

In conclusion I want to say that nowadays EE is very widely-spread so that some linguists even suppose it to replace RP in the near future.

List of references:

http://www.englishgratis.com/1/wikibooks/english/estuaryenglish.htm

https://pronunciationstudio.com/estuary-english/

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/whatis.htm

https://www.thoughtco.com/estuary-english-language-variety-1690611

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