RECENT CHANGES IN THE VOWEL SYSTEM IN MODERN RP

Abstract

The article analyzes the vowel sound system of modern British English of younger generation. Youth speech is a kind of indicator of the level of development, interests, tastes and needs of young people. On the one hand, it is fair to say that British youth speech differs from adult speech by a specific sound, melody, manner of speech and a set of new words. Young native speakers are considered to be the leaders of innovations in the language. However, on the other hand, Britons with good education and high-paying jobs try to follow a more normative and standard pronunciation, a kind of «modern» RP, compared to their less educated peers. It is established that RP of young people is characterized by such phonetic features as: centralization of monophthongs, broadening of close vowels and narrowing of open/low vowels, significant reduction of the of diphthong glides and diphthongoids and long vowel sounds become shorter. It has been mentioned that there are lot of international variants of English used by representatives of different ethnic groups. it has caused innovations in language and, as the result, appearance of new accent which is called Multicultural London English or Jafaican accent.

In the article British youth speech has been compared with the pronunciation samples of vowel sounds in RP. The results of the analysis have revealed that RP vowel system tends towards simplification. It means that short and long monophthongs tend to be more central, some of long vowels have become shorter and such monophthongs as /u/ and /o:/ have become less labialized. The research revealed that in the system of diphthongs there is a complete monophthongization. Obtained results contradict the previously done researches and confirm the fact that there are a lot of current changes in the vocal system of the British standard pronunciation.