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Conservative Received Pronunciation (Conservative RP) is a conservative standard of pronunciation of British English. Formerly the prestige model of pronunciation, it has declined in favour of other, less-conservative dialects, primarily Contemporary Received Pronunciation. Conservative RP is the standard adhered to in the First and Second Editions of the Oxford English Dictionary, which, starting with the Third edition, has been modelled on Contemporary RP. Other terms for Conservative RP are ''Traditional RP'' and ''Upper RP'' (the latter in reference to the association of the standard to the upper class and aristocracy). Notable speakers of Conservative RP include Queen Elizabeth II and other older members of the Royal Family, Sir Winston Churchill, Dame Vera Lynn and commentators of Pathé News and, prior to the 1960s, the BBC. Received Pronunciation is often termed ''Queen's English'' or ''BBC English'', as a consequence. ==Phonological features== The phonological features of Conservative RP which are distinct from Contemporary RP, the standard of speakers such as Prime Minister David Cameron and historian Kate Maltby, include: Vowels and diphthongs * Happy tensing: this feature concerns the vowel at the end of words ending in //y//, //ie//, //ee//, &c. In Conservative RP, this vowel is /ɪ/ (the same vowel as in //bit//) and in Contemporary RP it is /i/, in common with most other accents (though not the accents of much of Northern England, which have /ɛ/ or /a/). * The short variant of //e// is /e/ is Conservative RP, like it is in Australian and South African English, and /ɛ/ for Contemporary speakers, akin to North American English and the accents of Northern England. The more open phoneme of Contemporary RP is demonstrated in the different realisation of ''Leicester'' and ''bed'' by speakers of the respective standards.〔 * Similarly, the quality of the short variant of //a//, as in terms such as //cat//, //apple// and //battle//, is /æ/ in Conservative RP, akin to North American English. The phonological change which has occurred for a large minority Contemporary RP speakers is to /a/, in common with the phoneme of the speech of Northern England and Scotland.〔 * The quality of the vowel in ''bird'', ''nurse'' and ''curtain'' is realised as /ɐː/ by the most conservative speakers and /ɜː/ by the remaining speakers of Conservative RP. In Contemporary RP, /ɜː/ is the most common, with /əː/ also heard. * Many terms have /ɔː/ in Conservative RP, yet /ɒ/ in the speech of Contemporary RP speakers, including ''cross'', ''often'', ''cloth'', ''salt'', ''because'', ''gone'', etc. Similarly, the term''mass'' (with reference to the Catholic ritual) may be pronounced as /mɑːs/ by Conservative speakers, with ''data'' also possessing this vowel, /dɑːtə/. For Contemporary RP speakers, the former will likely have the short vowel: /æ/ or /a/ and the latter a different diphthong: /ɛɪ/.〔 * In environments where Contemporary RP has a reduced vowel /ə/, Conservative RP preserves an unreduced vowel /ɪ/, for instance, the final vowel in the following: ''devil'', ''kindness'', ''witness'', ''private'', ''toilet'', ''fortunate''.〔 * The diphthong in ''bowl'' and ''boat'' is /əʊ/ in both words in Conservative RP, yet for Contemporary RP speakers, /əʊ/ is realised as /ɔʊ/ before /ɫ/, meaning that ''goal'' is acoustically different from ''goat''.〔 * Three diphthongs which exist in Conservative RP may not in Contemporary RP. The first has disappeared in the speech of all but the most conservative British speakers and some speakers of Southern American English, the hoarse-horse distinction. For speakers who differentiate, ''hoarse'' is realised as /hɔəs/ (/hoəɹs/ for Southern Americans with the distinction) and ''horse'' is /hɔːs/. Words such as ''tour'', ''moor'', ''Boar'', ''sure'' and others are /ʊə/ for all Conservative RP speakers, but have merged with /ɔː/ for many Contemporary speakers. Taking the two mergers into account, results in a number of three-way mergers, which were hitherto distinct, such as ''poor'', ''paw'' and ''pore'' (/pʊə/, /pɔː/, /pɔə/) all becoming /pɔː/. For the final diphthong which exists in terms like ''bear'', ''fair'', ''care'', ''there'', ''millionaire'', etc. Conservative RP maintains a distinctive /ɛə/ diphthong, which has transformed into a pure vowel for Contemporary speakers /ɛː/.〔 * The ''long a'' diphthong is different for Conservative speakers /eɪ/, than for Contemporary speakers /ɛɪ/.〔 Thus, ''play'', ''say'', etc. are acoustically dissimilar in the respective standards.〔 Consonants * Unlike with vowels and diphthongs, consonantal phonemes have not undergone change, with one exception. For speakers of Conservative Received Pronunciation in the mid-19th century until the end of the 19th century, it was standard for the consonant combination //wh// to realised as /ʍ/ (essentially /hw/), as can still be heard in the 21st century in the speech of many speakers in Ireland and Scotland and a large minority in the Southern United States. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the /ʍ/ phoneme ceased to be a feature of Conservative RP, except by the most precise speakers who have learnt to differentiate, meaning it is has ceased to be a native feature of English outside of Ireland, Scotland and the Southern United States. Idiosyncratic features * Dame Vera Lynn can be heard pronouncing ''Christmas'' with the /t/ enunciated, in an early recording of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", which sounds unusual to all contemporary speakers of English. * The days of the week may be pronounced either as /-deɪ/ or /-dɪ/ in Conservative RP, which are always the former in Contemporary RP. Andrew Marr, for example, can be heard pronouncing days of the week with /-dɪ/. In many accents of Northern England, the older practice of ending with a short vowel has been maintained, however the vowel has changed for all accents. One such example is the speech of Merseyside, where days of the week are pronounced with /-di/ or /diː/; another are speakers from Middlesbrough, who terminate days of week with /-də/. This reflects a once more widespread practice, now largely abandoned in favour of a spelling pronunciation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Conservative Received Pronunciation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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