Vidmate 16 july 20191/31/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() I last had cause to update the website in 2007. ![]() But no one followed this up by criticizing my proposals or suggesting anything better.Īll the excitement gradually died down. One thing I did myself was to consider how we might agree on a phonetic transcription scheme, which would be needed for pedagogical purposes if we seriously wanted to teach this putative new accent. It was in response to media and academic interest in the topic that in 1998 I set up a website “to bring together as many documents as possible that relate to Estuary English, as a convenient resource for the many interested enquirers.” Rosewarne’s suggestion that EE “may become the RP of the future” led to credulous excitement in the EFL world, particularly in central Europe and South America. Rather, we have various sound changes emanating from working-class London speech, each spreading independently. Przedlacka demolished the claim that EE was a single entity sweeping the southeast. It was left to my colleague Joanna Przedlacka to demonstrate that it did no such thing (see her 2002 book Estuary English? and this summary). Rosewarne’s original article says “the heartland of this variety lies by the banks of the Thames and its estuary, but it seems to be the most influential accent in the south-east of England” though later writers, particularly Coggle in his Do you speak Estuary? (1993) implied that it covered the entire southeast of the country. The estuary Rosewarne was thinking of was of course the Thames estuary, which in a geographical sense might be interpreted as extending from Teddington near Kingston upon Thames (the point where the river becomes tidal) down to Southend-on-Sea (where the Thames enters the North Sea). But the name he coined, Estuary English, was taken up quite widely, gaining resonance eventually not only with journalists but also with the general public, to such an extent that we can now expect to be readily understood if we describe someone’s speech as “estuarial”. He muddied the waters unhelpfully by referring to details of vocabulary and grammar (which have nothing to do with “a new variety of pronunciation”). So Rosewarne’s observations in a sense contained nothing new. I added the warning It must be remembered that labels such as ‘popular London’, ‘London Regional Standard’ do not refer to entities we can reify but to areas along a continuum stretching from broad Cockney (itself something of an abstraction) to RP. This kind of accent might be referred to as London (or, more generally, south-eastern) Regional Standard. ![]() But the vast majority of such speakers nevertheless have some regional characteristics. Middle-class speakers typically use an accent closer to RP than popular London. We shall refer to this accent as popular London. Two years earlier, in my Accents of English, I had written Throughout, the working-class accent is one which shares the general characteristics of Cockney. Or, putting it a different way, that RP was changing by absorbing various sound changes that previously had been restricted to Cockney or other non-prestigious varieties. In doing so he gave expression to the widespread perception that Daniel Jones-style RP was gradually losing its status as the unquestioned standard accent of educated English people. I was unable to help, since as far as I remember I have only met Rosewarne once, and that briefly the last I heard of him was that he was working in Malaysia, but I do not know where he might be now.ĭavid Rosewarne’s great claim to fame is that in October 1984 he coined the expression “Estuary English”, in an article published in the Times Educational Supplement. The caller thought I might have his contact details. I had a phone call a few days ago from someone trying to get in touch with David Rosewarne. ![]()
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