 There are two main varieties spoken in the United Kingdom. They are associated with England and Scotland. In this e-lecture, we will concentrate on the English spoken in England and its main phonological dialect, received pronunciation. We will look at the history first, then we will provide, or at least we will try to provide, a definition. We will hopefully answer the question whether RP is a regional or social dialect and we will eventually look at the sound system of received pronunciation. Let's start with the historical aspects. The origin of English goes back to the 5th century after Christ, when Germanic tribes invaded Britain. Linguistically, this first period of English, referred to as Old English, is defined as from 600 to 1100. Old English was used in the area that was approximately identical with England today. There were already some varieties of Old English differing geographically and historically. Here they are, Northumbrian, Martian, Kentish and West Saxon. The most important dialect for modern scholars is West Saxon, in which the majority of texts were written. And its 10th century form became something of a standard for texts written across much of England. During the Middle English period, which lasted from 1100 to 1500, dialectal differences were becoming greater than during the Anglo-Saxon times. The new standard was based on London speech, essentially an East Midland dialect. Today, there are many phonological dialects in England. The most well-known and best researched one is called received pronunciation. Now, early in the 20th century, Daniel Jones, who you can see here, described received pronunciation as the accent spoken by the socially and economically dominant London society. This clearly reflects the social considerations of his time. He initially named this variant of English public school pronunciation. Now, by 1926, this label had become received pronunciation, so let's add 1926 here. Later, it has also been referred to as, well, BBC English, public school English, or even standard English. By the way, the term received, this is quite interesting. The term received originally meant that which is generally accepted, so it is equivalent to accepted, accepted by the best society. RP is also the accent that Americans and possibly other foreigners would probably refer to as the typical British accent. Over the years, a number of distinctions have been added. Here they are. Well, mainstream RP, upper-cross RP, adoptive RP, near RP, conservative RP, and so on. Regardless of the differences within these variations of RP, RP is a phonological dialect commonly recognized and one that has been taught as the standard English pronunciation model in schools for years. Thus, it can be considered as a reference system for all other phonological dialects used in England. A question that is often asked is, is RP a regional or a social dialect? Well, considering England, it clearly is a regional dialect since it is associated with England and not with other countries or parts of Great Britain, so in this context it is clearly regional. However, it is not associated with any particular location within England, if at all perhaps well with the wealthier south of England. Since RP is what might be thought of as an educated accent, it appears characteristically in upper and upper middle class speakers and is more sociologically defined rather than geographically. So, here is the symbol for sociological definition. Up until the 1970s, RP was the accent that was required, for example, to become a BBC announcer or someone who was employed by BBC television or BBC radio. Hence the term BBC English was used as an equivalent of RP. For this reason RP is an accent that is not localizable but is very much recognizable as being the standard, the neutral accent of society. Let's now look at the sound system of RP. RP has 12 monophthongs, we will look at them in a second, 8 diphthongs and 24 consonants. Well and in terms of roticity, it is very very low, perhaps one of the lowest phonological dialects of English around the world. Now here are the monophthongs of RP. The set of monophthongs can be subdivided into 5 tense monophthongs. See, bra, caught, to, fur and 7 lax monophthongs. Bit, vet, bat, caught, put, but, letter. Even though there is no phonemic length distinction in RP, the tense monophthongs are marked by a colon, since they are generally longer than the lax ones. Let's now look at the diphthongs. Depending on the tongue position of the second vowel, the 8 diphthongs can be grouped into front closing diphthongs or up gliding diphthongs. So here are the 3 up gliding ones. Into back closing or back up gliding consonants, here they are. And into the centering or in gliding diphthongs, those diphthongs where the second element is a central vowel, here they are. Finally, the system of the consonants. Now, in this unit on the virtual linguistics compass that you see right here, we have presented all consonantal phonemes of RP, including their allophones. We cannot show them all in this e-lecture, but let's look at some of them. For example, quite interesting is the configuration of the R phoneme, red. Now, as you can see, we have four allophones, the standard alveolar approximate, which is sometimes devoiced, after voiceless plosives, as in trick. Or it can sometimes interocalically be replaced or be realized by an alveolar flap, as in ferry, as a typical realization of RP. Another interesting phoneme is the alveolar lateral leg. Now, as you might know, it has three central allophones, the palatalized version at the beginning or before vowels, the velarized version as in pill. And finally, the devoiced variant after voiceless plosives such as p and k. Here is another phoneme, the labiovela approximate, as in wet. And this is sometimes, and this is a peculiarity of RP realized by a devoiced variant, as in examples such as witch. Most of the phonemes have no remarkable allophones they use, like in many other languages of the world. Here is perhaps some interesting one, the bilabial nasal, as in man, which has an interesting variant, especially if it is followed by a labial dental fricative, for example in words like comfort, where it is realized by an allophone that is a mixture between bilabial alveolar, namely a labiodental nasal. Let's return to our collection of phonemic and phonetic properties. Now, we said that roticity in RP is pretty low, whereas linking as in father and son is a feature that applies to most phonological dialects of present day English. The phenomenon of intrusion or the so-called intrusive R is a special phenomenon of RP. The phoneme R is inserted between two vowels, they must be back vowels though, even if it is not represented orthographically. An example would be something like the idea is India and China and so on. Let's summarize. Even though RP has often been critically judged as a social dialect, which is not used by a large percentage of the population, it is still the accent that most learners of present day English use as a reference model for the pronunciation of British English, even in the context of English as a global language. In our e-lecture, English in England beyond RP, you will not only see that there are other phonological dialects in England, but you will find out that there are recent developments that may even result in a new attitude towards what is the standard phonological variety of British English. See you then.