3.British regional features

• Northern /u/ in cut, much, love

• Scottish /u/ in soot, took, book

• /a/ in bad, bath

• /hw/ in which, where

• /x/ in Loch Ness, Loch Lomond

• /c/ in licht

• trilled /r/ in murder

• Irish /r/ in all positions: river

• clear /1/ in people, milk

All the regional types of British accents are characterized by a narrow­er (compared with RP) pitch range which gives the effect of more monotonous speech. The most common pitch patterns are level and rising-falling. In big cities, such as Edinburgh in Scotland and Cardiff in Wales, educated people show a specific combina­tion of Gaelic (Celtic by origin) and English intonation patterns when they start a tone group with a very high rise-falling tone and then drop to a mid-level continuation. Russian learners of English also do the same in reading an English text but manage to drop their pitch level still lower, to the very bottom of the pitch range, then rise again. RP is unique in having a very wide pitch range and smoothly, gradually descending pitch pattern, at least in reading and formal speech. Regional speech is described as monotone because of its narrow pitch range.

4. Содержание

   • National Standards
   • Regional Standards
   • Local Accents
   • 2. Major accent types: British and American
   • American English lacks the short vowel /o/, it is replaced by a vowel /a:/ which is similar to rp vowel in father:
   • The rp vowel /o/ can also be replaced by a long vowel /o:/:
   • Consonants
   • Word stress
   • Intonation
   • 3.British regional features
   • American regional features
   • 5. Social Variation: Social factors and social markers.
   • 6. Language change in progress
   • Processes almost complete
   • Changes well-established,
   • Recent innovations