How the English accents have changed through history? What are the arguments for and against a non-native speaker pronunciation model?
Introduction
"Today, English is used by at least 750 million people,
and barely half of those speak it as a mother tongue. Some
estimates have put that figure closer to 1 billion. Whatever the
total, English at the end of the twentieth century is more widely
scattered, more widely spoken and written, than any other
language has ever been. It has become the language of the planet,
the first truly global language." If the diversity of forms taken
by English has provoked considerable, and increasing, academic
interest, then, so has the diversity of its speakers.
(Graddol et al, 1996:12)
The English language has played a significant role with
respect to the progress of the countries in general; however,
this language due to different factors has been changing some
issues like the pronunciation, for instance. Present-day
pronunciation patterns reflect that changes which have taken
place, modifying earlier pronunciation patterns.
The topic concerning the pronunciation of the English
language, how the accents might vary and why, have been subject
of analysis of many researchers around the world.
This essay will report some information about the
English accents in general terms. First of all there will be
brief historical information about different "Englishes", the
social and cultural perceptions of accents.
The next level of the analysis will determine some
classification of accents concerning different authors and will
make reference to three accents of English.
After that, this essay will briefly remark some
arguments for and against a non-native speaker pronunciation
model.
The final level of the essay will assume the author"s
opinion about English accents in general.
The main purpose of this essay is to describe and
analyse the variety of English accents.
Development
When we talk of English language as an international
language or as a universal language, we are talking of an
abstract concept. Actually, there are a number of Englishes
present in the world. The all-embracing concept of the
English-–sing speech community entails a strong
generalization, since this speech community includes a number of
sub communities which may be divided in various ways.
The first broad division may be in terms of the
English-speaking nations of the world, American English,
Australian English, British English, Jamaican English, Canadian
English, among others. The second group will be the countries in
which the English language is spoken but as a second language
(Kachru, 1986:128)
This essay will make reference to the countries in which
the English language is spoken as the mother tongue. However, it
has varied due to the human development and as a result;
different accents and varieties of English have emerged. Many
authors have seen the evolution as a progress towards Standard
English.
In this sense, Knowles (1997:9), points out that Modern
English was standardized from the fourteenth century on by people
who had the power to impose their own kind of English, and the
process was completed by a wide range of people including
schoolmasters, Anglicans, scholars, pedants and gentlemen.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the process by which it came
about, the practical result is that, for the first time in
history, millions of people literally all over the world have an
effective means of communicating with each other.
So, due to the interaction among people, the English
language began to become more powerful and suddenly it was
imposed by the society and other languages did not play a
significant role.
In this sense Fennel (2001:259), argues that, "the idea
of having English as a national language developed only gradually
even within Britain, arising at first as the country emerged from
hundreds of years of French domination. French and Latin were
completely replaced by English as a language of learning, law,
literature and commercial activity. Gradually, with the rise of
Standard English, the nation came to associate one particular way
of speaking with the identity of the nation."
Despite the fact the English language become the link
among the people and at the very beginning it was unique, the
mixture of different cultures from other regions and countries in
Britain provoked some changes in it, mainly in its dialects and
accents. Concerning this point Culpeper (2005: 84) argues that
"in the nineteenth century Britain was sparsely populated.
It had perhaps 1 million inhabitants around the time of the
Norman Conquest. And before late EMod. E, there was no "national"
media. What all this means is that different varieties of English
developed relatively independently of each other. These
differences were increased by the fact that different things
happened to different parts of the country. Britain has
considerable diversity in its accents and dialects, and this
diversity begins with the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes
speaking various Germanic dialects."
With respect to English accents some authors like Wells
(1982:1) have provided the definition of it. According to Wells
(1982:1), it is "a pattern of pronunciation used by a speaker for
whom English is the native language or, more generally, by the
community or social grouping to which he or she belongs. More
specifically, I refer to the use of particular vowel or consonant
sounds and particular rhythmic, into national, and other prosodic
features; to the syntagmatic (structural) and paradigmatic
(systemic) interrelationships between these, and to the more
abstract (phonological) representations which can be seen as
underlying the actual (phonetic) articulations, together with the
rules which relate the one to the other; and to the relationship
between all of these and the individual words or other items
which constitute the speaker"s mental lexicon or
vocabulary."
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