Levende Talen. Jaargang 1935

[p. 201]

Some tendencies of modern English pronunciation.

In ‘the Commemorative Volume, issued by “The Institute for Research in English Teaching” on the Occasion of the tenth annual conference of English Teachers held under its Auspices’ (Tokyo 1933) vond ik onderstaand artikel van de hand van Prof. Daniel Jones, dat misschien door de leden van onze vereniging met belangstelling zal worden gelezen.

Malang.

H. BONGERS.

The pronunciation of English appears to be undergoing a number of changes just now, and it may be of interest to those studying English in remote parts of the world to have a short account of some noteworthy features of the speech of young people in the South of England. In what follows I refer to the speech of educated people not speaking with any marked local dialect. The pronunciations to which I refer are quite common in the speech of those less than 30 years old. Some, however, may be heard from older people; and, on the other hand, one does also come across young people who use a pronunciation similar to that to which I am accustomed and which was recorded by the older phoneticians (Sweet, Wyld, Soames, etc.). So it must not be thought that the new pronunciations are necessarily going to be permanent alterations in the language. We cannot foretell what permanent changes will take place. It is quite possible that the forms of speech described below are merely passing fashions, and that the pronunciation of the older generation has still a long life before it.

At the same time it is the business of the phonetician to take note of the modern innovations, and to call the attention of students to them.

Among the consonants I am continually struck by the modern prevalence of a new kind of [s] which has, besides a tonguearticulation, an articulation by the lower lip against the upper teeth. I have found by experiment that if a person is sounding this variety of [s] and the lower lip is removed from the teeth, the resulting sound is not an ordinary [s] at all, but a sound resembling [ϸ].

The use of a strongly labialized [r], too, seems to be becoming increasingly common.

[p. 202]

Another modern tendency is the discontinuance of the use of [r] at the ends of words when the following word begins with a vowel. Thus it is quite common nowadays to hear people pronounce ignore it, hear it, far off, Sir Arthur Evans, for example as [ignɔ:it, hiəit, fɑɔ:f, səɑ:ϸəɛvənz, fəigzɑ:mpl] where I should pronounce: [ignɔ:rit, hiərit, fɑ:rɔ:f, sərɑ:ϸərɛvənz, fərigzɑ:mpl].

It is well known that changes are taking place in the lengths of vowels, and in particular that certain of the traditionally short vowels are now sounded long by many people. This tendency has undoubtedly been in progress for quite a long time, at any rate in the case of the vowel [ae]. (I do not know who first noticed this, but, as far as I remember, the first reference to this subject was in the article on Individual Pecularities by H.O. Coleman, which appeared in Le Maître Phonétique in July 1911.) At the present day one may hear all the traditionally short vowels pronounced long in final stressed syllables; the lengthening occurs mainly, though not exclusively, before voiced consonants. Thus I have heard young people pronounce fog as [fα:g], bed as [bɛ:d], this as [δi:s]. When the word good is used as an interjection, it is very commonly pronounced [gu:d] or with an unrounded vowel /gɯ:d/.

The conditions under which modern speakers lengthen the traditionally short vowels are obscure, and appear to vary from one person to another.

Then there are some recent developments in vowel quality. One that has been in progress for many years in the South of England is the ‘fronting’ and ‘lowering’ of the vowel [ᴧ]. Today one often meets with Southern English people who pronounce such words as cup, run, with a vowel approximating to cardinal [a].¹⁾ (Several phoneticians have advocated writing [a] in phonetic transcriptions, on account of the commonness of this latter sound.)

Another development which is doubtless much more modern is to use an almost quite monophthongal sound in words like day, away. This sound is a variety of long [ɛ:], sometimes accompanied by a trace of diphthongization in the direction [e]. It is apparently kept distinct from the lengthened ‘short’ [ɛ]

1) The normal French vowel in patte.

[p. 203]

of bed, etc., etc. but I am not at present prepared to say precisely what the difference is. This monophthongal pronunciation takes the place of the older diphthongal pronunciation with [ei]. It is particularly frequent in final position (thus [dɛ:, plɛ:]), but may also be heard elsewhere, for instance in take, game, [tɛ:k, gɛ:m] instead of [teik, geim]). The use of this sound is perhaps the most notable of all the modern innovations.

One further modern form is deserving of mention here. Young people very commonly use a ‘retracted’ variety of [ɛ] in words like red, set, ten, where the older pronunciation has ordinary ‘forward’ [ɛ].¹⁾ The use of this retracted sound dates back a good many years in the case of the single word yes (I often use it myself in this word), but its use in other words is apparently quite modern.

I have the impression that some modern speakers treat [i] in a similar way, but I have not yet made special observations of this sound.

The existence of these modern variants rather complicates the problem of transcribing English phonetically. The question is: what kind of English are we to transcribe? If the modern variants are to be taken into account, as well as the traditional Southern English pronunciation recorded by Sweet, etc., it means that we are embarking on some rather detailed comparative work. For this purpose a fairly ‘narrow’ form of transcription will be required - narrower even than that used by Palmer or that used by me in this article. If on the other hand some person or body were in a position to set up a pronunciation that could be regarded as a standard, whether based on modern or or on older pronunciation, then a ‘broad’ (simplified) system of transcription could be used to represent that definite form of speech; all other forms might be simply ignored by the practical language teacher. As things are, no one at the present time has the requisite authority; it is indeed in some ways a good thing that we have no standard pronunciation imposed by authority. On the other hand, the lack of a standard adds to the difficulties of the practical language-teacher, and among other things provides a justification for the use of ‘narrow’ transcription.

1) By a ‘retracted’ [ɛ] is meant a sound intermediate between [ɛ] and [ə].