In England, many people speak with a cockney accent, to a greater
or lesser degree. It may well be the commonest accent in England.
I grew up near Epsom in Surrey and almost all the people I met
spoke either (like me) with a middle class accent or with a
cockney accent. I found that I could switch between these two ways
of speaking depending on to whom I was speaking.
When it comes to teaching and learning English as a foreign
language, my opinion is that middle-class English should be taught
but that students should be made aware of the cockney way of
speaking, and other variants. I would define middle-class English
as the way of speaking commonly found in English audio books.
Also, having lived my life in France and China, I know how things
are done in those countries: there is an official language that is
imposed by the State. Maybe that is what is needed in England. I
believe that pronunciation should be taught in every school just
like writing. Everyone should know what the sounds of English
actually are, know their names, know their symbols and be able to
pronounce them accurately. They also should be able to switch to,
say, clear American or cockney accents at will: speech training.
If everyone spoke middle-class English accurately, it would
greatly improve communication and, more importantly, eliminate the
negative feelings associated with accent differences.
I suggest that the government takes an active role in promoting a
form of standardised spoken English. This should be a formal
school subject. It should also be the target for English as a
foreign language. The British Government should show some
leadership and stand up for the English language. It should make
it an internationally recognised standard. It is of more value to
the nation than North Sea Oil could ever be. And it would be very
helpful for non-native speakers to know that there is an official
standard.
There needs to be a name for such a standardised way of speaking;
I suggest General British (GB) the name suggested by the
eminent phonetics expert Jack Windsor Lewis. The term 'Received
Pronunciation' begs a lot of questions and its common acronym 'RP'
sounds like the first half of a sentence of which the second half
is "is yellow".
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