RP: Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP), standard speech used in London and southeastern England. It has traditionally been associated with the middle and upper classes and as a mark of public schooleducation. Received Pronunciation (RP) is sometimes referred to as the “Queen’s English,” the “King’s English,” “BBC English,” or “Oxford English.”
The term received pronunciation was coined by phonetician A.J. Ellis in 1869 to refer to an accent used “all over the country, not widely differing in any particular locality…as the educated pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit and the bar.” The definition of received in his use of received pronunciation conveyed the word’s adjectival meaning of “accepted” or “common,” as in the expression received wisdom.
There are many notable phonetic features of RP that differentiate it from other English accents in the United Kingdom, including but not limited to the following
1)RP speakers only pronounce the r sound in words when it is followed by a vowel sound. For example, the RP pronunciation for butter is /ˈbʌtə/, but for buttery /ˈbʌtəri/ the r sound is retained. Other examples of words that drop the r sound include far /fɑː/, mother /ˈmʌðə/, and weather /ˈwɛðə/.
2) RP speakers pronounce the h sound at the onset of words, whereas speakers of some other British accents do not. For example, the RP pronunciation for happy is /ˈhæpi/ and not /ˈæpi/, as it is with other accents. Other examples of words with the vocalized h sound include house /haʊs/, help /hɛlp/, and hello /həˈləʊ/.
3)RP speakers lengthen the short a vowel before some fricative or nasal consonants in a subset of words. This lengthening is referred to as the trap-bath split because trap is pronounced as /træp/ (with short a), but bath is pronounced as /bɑːθ/ (with long a). Words such as back /bæk/, cat /kæt/, and dad /dæd/ retain the short a vowel in trap, but other words that lengthen it in RP include dance /dɑːns/, laugh /lɑːf/, and grass /grɑːs/.
Ladefoged, P., Johnson, K. (2014). A Course in Phonetics 7th edition. Cengage Learning. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Received-Pronunciation