God saves...the Queen's English!

Elizabeth, the British Queen has been ruling the United Kingdom for more than five decades and, for many people worldwide, she and the members of British Royal family are considered to be the speakers of “Standard English”. The language of the Queen stands for the Received Pronunciation (RP), but surprisingly even the Queen’s accent has changed gradually over the years.

But what about the history of Queen’s English?

The Oxford dictionary defines Queen’s English as “the English language as written and spoken correctly by educated people in Britain”, in other words, it is the most accurate, conventional or standard British English. The term though is very controversial. The history of the phrase goes back at 16^th and 17^th centuries, when the souvereign’s language was supposed to be the model version for language use, both in spoken and written forms, that people should be able to use. Also, it was regarded as a language of respect and admiration, a language of great prestige, as it was mainly used from upper classes, aristocratic cycles and court, maybe because of its conservative or more posh forms. The phrase was firstly used as “King’s English” for the king James I, declaring that it is not about the Queen’s usage of the language but it refers mostly to who was the ruler of each period in the country. Nowadays though, the well-known phrase has been associated with the current queen, Elisabeth.

Does the Queen’s English stand for the traditional English?

According to sociolinguists, the speech of older people tends to reflect the state of the language when they had acquired it, and moreover gives us a sense of what the community norms about language where like when he or she was a child (ex.50 years ago). So, one can assume that the Queen’s speech reflects the language standards of another era. But no. As reported by the Australian linguistics experts, Queen’s speech seems to have change through the years. After analyzing her recordings of the annual Christmas messages they noticed the change in her accent.

But how is that possible?

The answer is behind the fact, the changes that happened in the social structure of Britain, had an impact not only on society but on the language as well, and furthermore, this change influenced the “palace’’ as well, as a part of the community that did not remain unaffected. Of course, this is not considered that strange as changes in language, and changes in society are an unavoidable process. Language change is a natural phenomenon and is impossible to prevent it.

Let’s have a closer look.

To begin with, there is a change in the way Queen pronunciates the verb “had”. The analysis of the vowel sounds found in the recordings of her speech reveal the change occurred. More precisely, Queen’s “had” sounded like rhyming with “bed”, rather like the new form, that is rhyming with “bad”. Researchers, support that this shift in vowel sound is a characteristic of younger generations or people who belong to a lower social class. In addition, what  has been observed is a blurring of accents in the Queen’s speech, and also, the dropping of some letters, for instance “l” from the word milk, that made many consider it as an influence of Cockney accent. The –th ending is comparatively rare in her recent recordings too.

So, the next time someone will tell you that he or she speaks the “Queen’s English”, now you know…!

  

Sources:      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1080228.stm

                   http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist1/Rdgs/QueenSpk.pdf

                   http://oxforddictionaries.com/