1431: Received Pronunciation Nov 11, 2018

Received Pronunciation, or RP, is considered a standard way of speaking in Britain, and yet it doesn’t have the same characteristics as many other standard dialects. Namely, it isn’t a dialect; RP only refers to the accent but has no actual relation to grammar or lexicon, so theoretically someone could speak RP but use the grammar and vocabulary or a totally different region or even country. Also, even though it has standard status, it is spoken by a small percentage—about 3-5%—of the population of the UK. This is not so surprising, but what is odder is that being a speaker of Standard British English or Southern British English doesn’t necessarily include speaking in RP, even though it is largely taken to be the case that RP would include being a speaker of Standard British English.
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