Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation (/rᵻˈsiːvd prəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/; RP) is the accent of Standard English in the United Kingdom and is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as "the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England", although it can be heard from native speakers throughout England and Wales.Peter Trudgill estimated in 1974 that 3% of people in Britain were RP speakers, but this rough estimate has been questioned by the phonetician J. Windsor Lewis.

RP enjoys high social prestige in Britain, being thought of as the accent of those with power, money, and influence, though it may be perceived negatively by some as being associated with undeserved privilege. Since the 1960s, a greater permissiveness towards regional English varieties has taken hold in education.

The study of RP is concerned exclusively with pronunciation, whereas Standard English, the Queen's English, Oxford English, and BBC English are also concerned with matters such as grammar, vocabulary and style. An individual using RP will typically speak Standard English, although the converse or inverse is not necessarily true. The standard language may be pronounced with a regional accent and the contrapositive is usually correct. It is very unlikely that someone speaking RP would use it to speak a regional dialect.

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