XIV Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2022

Summary: The report touches upon the topic of Estuary English. Special attention was paid to David Rosewarne who first described this phenomenon in terms of continuum in 1984. According to Rosewarne it is somewhere between the Received Pronunciation and Cockney accent. Nowadays Estuary English is spread in the South East of England. It is also important to mention that it has almost the same distinctive features as Cockney has but only Estuary English affects the Received pronunciation. And that is why many scientists believe that one day Estuary English will become the Received Pronunciation of the future.

According to John C. Wells “Estuary English is Standard English spoken with the accent of the south east of England” Estuary English is an accent associated with the area along the river Thames and its estuary including London. In this report we will find out the history of Estuary English, the places where people speak Estuary English and the distinctive features of this accent.

The phenomen of Estuary English was first described in 1984 by David Rosewarne (at that time he was a post-graduate student in London). He described it as a new variety of modified regional speech. Rosewarne claims that Estuary English is to be heard in the House of Commons, the City, the Civil Service, local government, the media, advertising, and the medical and teaching professions in the south-east. David Rosewarne described Estuary English in terms of continuum where it is, in fact, somewhere in the middle between the two extremes: Received Pronunciation and Cockney local London speech.In 1993 the London Sunday Times reported that Estuary English was 'sweeping southern Britain'. A few months later Paul Coggle published his popular paperback “Do You Speak Estuary? , triggering another bout of media publicity.

The geographical location of Estuary English is one of the few things that linguists, phoneticians and other writers have agreed upon; that it has its origin around the river Thames and has spread through the South-East of England. However, further descriptions of the spread of Estuary English vary. Schmid gives a detailed description in her Masters thesis, where she observed that Estuary English “is a new accent variety in the south-east of England, which comprises the sub-areas of the South Midlands, East Anglia and the Home Counties.” Furthermore, “[t]he Home Counties area centres on the counties immediately around London, but includes also parts of Hampshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire” (Schmid 1999: 53).

Estuary English is not a new phenomenon. It is the continuation of a trend that has been going on for five hundred years or more - the tendency for features of popular London speech to spread out geographically (to other parts of the country) and socially (to higher social classes). The erosion of the English class system and the greater social mobility in Britain today means that this trend is more clearly noticeable than was once the case.

Unlike Cockney, EE is associated with standard grammar and usage. But like Cockney it shows tendencies towards such phonetic characteristics as the following:

l-vocalization, pronouncing the l-sound in certain positions almost like [w], so that milk becomes [mIwk]

glottalling, using a glottal stop [?] (a catch in the throat) instead of a t-sound in certain positions, as in quite nice [kwaiʔ nais]. This is not the same as omitting the t-sound altogether, since plate [pleiʔ] still sounds different from play [plei].

happy-tensing, using a sound more similar to the [i:] of beat than to the [I] of bit at the end of words like happy, coffee, valley.

yod coalescence, using [tʃ] rather than [tj] (a t-sound plus a y-sound) in words like Tuesday, tune, attitude. This makes the first part of Tuesday sound identical to choose, [tʃ u:z].

Estuary English has through time affected the Standard English pronunciation, RP, and will continue to do so. However, the terminology and description of how pronunciation of the English language “should” sound will have no effect on the future of the pronunciation in London, since this terminology and the rules do not reflect what is actually going on in society. Received Pronunciation has long served as a leading variety of English in England. Estuary English may now be taken over this function. For large and influential sections of the young Estuary English is used as a new reference model for the pronunciation of English in England. Thus may be Estuary English will eventually become the Received Pronunciation of the future.

Bibliographic list

1. Wells J. What Is Estuary English? / J. Wells // English Teaching Professional, 1998. URL: https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/whatis.htm

2. Wells J. Questions and Answers about Estuary English, 1998-99 / J. Wells– : http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/ee-faqs-jcw.htm

3. Coggle P. Estuary English FAQs, 1998 – 99 / P. Coggle. –URL:http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/estufaqs.htm

4. Gudlaug H. Estuary English – the New Classless Accent? – BA Dissertation, 2006. URL: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/gudlaug.pdf