D. The Scottish Dialect.

There exist numerous varieties of pronunciation in any language. The pronunciation of almost every locality in the British Isles has peculiar features that distinguish it from the pronunciation of other localities. Pronunciation is socially influenced. It reflects class distinctions, education and upbringing. The varieties that are spoken by a socially limited number of people and used only in certain localities are called dialects. Dialect speakers have some peculiarities in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammatical structure. Dialect speakers are the less educated part of the population. They enrich the language and make it more lively and fresh. In British E. three main regional types of pronunciation are distinguished in Britain now: Southern, Northern and Scottish. There are also some Irish dialects in Northern Ireland. English has been spoken in Scotland for a long time. Gaelic is still the native language of thousands of speakers from Scotland . Nowadays educated Scottish people speak a form of Scottish Standard English. The orthoepic norm. One of the types of pronunciation which is spoken by the educated people in the capital is recognized as the orthoepic norm. The orthoepic norm is the standard pronunciation adopted by native speakers as the right and proper way of speaking. It is used by the most educated part of the population. The orthoepic norm is based on the variants of pronunciation that are widely used in actual speech, that reflect the main phonetic tendencies and are considered to be acceptable by the educated. Thus, wide currency, conformity to the main phonetic tendencies and social acceptability are the three main conditions that are necessary to be accepted as a norm . The orth.norm must always include a set of stylistic variants of pronunciation. R.P. was accepted as the phonetic norm about a century ago. It is based on the Southern English regional type of pronunciation.

The R. P. is spoken all over Britain by a comparatively small number of Englishmen who have had the most privileged education in the country- public school education. Children are sent there to live at the age 11. They acquire the so–called “ public school accent”, or R.P. As almost all the leading positions in the Cabinet, the armed forces, the judiciary are occupied by those who have had public school education. R. P. is actually a social standard pronunciation of English. It is often referred to as the “prestige accent”. Though R.P. is carefully preserved by the public schools the R.P. of to – day differs in some respects from R.P. used half a century ago. The main changes are as follows: 1. The diphthongization of R.P.[i:] and [u;], see, who. 2. The monophthongization of [ai] and [au], tower, fire. 4. The assimilation of [sj.>s], [zj>z], [tj>ts], [dj>dj]: issue, crozier, situation. 4. The final [b,d.g] are now partially devoiced, but [p, t, k ]] are fortis. 5. The use of intrusive [r], which was carefully avoided before “Asia (r) Africa”, “drama(r) and music”.

They have become well-established nowadays. A. Gimson distinguishes 3 varieties of R.P. to- day. 1) The Conservative R.P., used mainly by the older R.P. speakers. 2) The General R.P. heard on the radio and T.V. that is less conservative and has received all these changes. 3) The Advanced R.P. mainly used by the younger R.P. speakers, (glottal stop). R.P. has accepted many features of the Southern regional type and it is the teaching norm in our country. But there are many educated people in Britain who do not speak R.P., though their E. is good and correct. They speak Standard English with a regional type of pronunciation.

Dialects of England. Roughly speaking dialects of England may be grouped in the following way: Southern dialects (Greater London, Cockney, Kent, Essex and others); 2. Eastern dialects; 3. Northern dialects; 4. Scottish dialects; Western dialects; 5. Dialects of Ireland.

One of the main differences between southern and northern regional types is in the phoneme inventory- the absence or presence of particular phonemes. In most regions there is the ”rhotic”accent. This |r| sound is post-vocalic and is most often heard in Scotland, Ireland and in Southwest of England. In most regions the glottal stop is more widely used than in RP. Many non-speakers use |n| in the suffix “ing “. In most regions “j “is dropped after |t, s|: student,suit, news, tune. Cockney dialect Cockney is a social accent- the speech of working class areas of the Greater London. It has the following peculiarities: lady |laidi|, bag |beg|; city |siti:|; blood |bleid|; oh, no |eu neu|. The sound |h|is very often absent but sometimes appears where they don’t use it in RP: horse |o:s|, have |ev|, but |h| atmospere , honest; the contrast between |th| and |f| , |th| and |v| , |th| and |d| is practically lost ; the sound |l| is often replaced by |v|, in the suffix “ing” they use |n|. the sounds |p,t,k| are strongly aspirated. The sound |t|is strongly aspirated: top |tsop|.