occasional observations on English pronunciation features, phonetics, teaching and learning
Thursday, 18 April 2013
/smuːðd brɪtɪʃ fɑːpɑː/
Listen to this short sound clip taken from a speech by the retired Major General Patrick Cordingley, who speaks about the Iraqi war. (Sorry; I can't use proper IPA symbols in blog titles - or at least I don't know how to do this.)
This is a good clip. It shows that some people merge /aɪə/ and /aʊə/. The late Margaret Thatcher had a lot of smoothing in her speech. This is interesting as she was an Adoptive RP speaker and John Wells says in Accents of English that Adoptive RP has less smoothing (p.285).
On another note, are you sure that this is not about the Gulf War? I believe that Cordingley had already retired by the 2003 Iraq War, as he was publicly opposed to it.
Nice one, Krauty!
ReplyDeleteTa, Limey!
ReplyDeleteThis is a good clip. It shows that some people merge /aɪə/ and /aʊə/. The late Margaret Thatcher had a lot of smoothing in her speech. This is interesting as she was an Adoptive RP speaker and John Wells says in Accents of English that Adoptive RP has less smoothing (p.285).
ReplyDeleteOn another note, are you sure that this is not about the Gulf War? I believe that Cordingley had already retired by the 2003 Iraq War, as he was publicly opposed to it.
Ed, you may be right! The clip is a short scene within a longer film on and with P. Cordingley.
DeleteI would say he says ˈfaəˌpaə, where a would be a centralized vowel. Or maybe just a bit more back.
ReplyDelete