Date of Birth: July 24, 2000

Place of Birth: London, England, United Kingdom

Nationality: British

Ethnicity: African Asian (Afro-Asian)

Occupation: Student
University: Anglia Ruskin University

Major: Medicine

Year: 4 (Practical year)

Samiha is a British who is of African Asian descent. She is also a 4th-year medical student at Anglia Ruskin University and a native English speaker who practices the modern and mainstream Received Pronunciation accent simultaneously. Having attended the same primary school and high school as Masturina in London, they have become good friends ever since.

There are also many other remarkable inheritances that cast a reflection of London’s ancient art and culture.

/aɪ juzd tu hʌnt ɛm ˌmaɪˈsɛlf ænd sɛl ðə skɪn./

/ɪt wʌz ə gʊd-saɪzd ˈæləˌgeɪtə[r], aɪ gɛs, əˈbaʊt eɪt fit./

According to the 2020 U.S. census, White Americans made up 57.1 percent of the total population, while Black or African Americans made up 31.4 percent, American Indians and Alaska Natives made up 0.7 percent, Asians made up 1.9 percent, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders made up 0.0 percent, other races made up 3.1 percent, and people of two or more races made up 5.9 percent.

/jɔl rɪˈmɛmbər wɛn bɪl ˈklɪntən wʌz ˈprɛzəˌdɛnt?/

/jæ, ðɛrz ˈplɛnti. ðɛr juzd tu bi mɔr ðæn ðeɪ gɑt bʌt ˈpipəl hʌnt ɛm./

/ˈæləˌgeɪtə[r] kɔt [h]ɪm baɪ ðə θroʊt ænd ðə noʊz ænd ˈɔlˌmoʊst kʌt [h]ɪz noʊz./

Next, in London, various languages are spoken, among which English is spoken by 77.9% of the population as their first language. Even so, some of the residents are unable to speak the English language or they preferred to speak their national or native languages. Thus, 1.9% of them speak Polish, 1.5% converse in Bengali, 1.3% make communications via Gujarati and many more.

Moreover, the people of London have varied religions and beliefs. The ratio of major religions being followed in London is: 

This linguistic phenomenon is known as rhoticity. To simply put, the pronunciation of the consonant /r/ is referred to as rhoticity (Nordquist, 2019).

Within the context of the speaker who was from Mississippi, he is applying a non-rhotic pronunciation in his accent in which the enunciation of the consonant /r/ is not present. This phenomenon is similar to the word ‘alligator’ that was pronounced by the speaker.

To be more specific, the /r/ sound in ‘alligator’ which is from the transcription [ˈæləˌgeɪtə[r]] is being dropped instead of being emphasised and highly accentuated. The bracketed /r/ in the transcription is to highlight the deletion of /r/.

In research from Carmichael (2019), the deletion of /r/ or r-dropping is commonly found in a variety of non-standard English dialects, including African American English and various New Orleans English dialects.

Some researchers argue that the original distinction of the non-rhotic accent within Southern American speakers originated in the mid-1700s, when affluent British tradesmen began eliminating the /r/ sound from their speech as a class differentiation between similar products or people (Pool, 2021).

In this particular context, the prosodic variation of stress is on how the speaker pronounce the word ‘skin’ [skɪn]. This can be notably heard in the recording that the speaker emphasised on the stress towards the last syllable of the word [ɪn] in ‘skin’.

The speaker applied the use of word stress whereby one speaks a syllable with more emphasis or force than the other syllables. Despite being heavily influenced by French, Cajun English has absolutely little resemblance to the accent of a current French individual.

However, Cajun English emphasises the last syllable of words, which is similar to how words are pronounced in French.

The first documented use of the term dates from 1824, and it was most likely coined in the South. According to one idea, 'y'all' may have sprung from the Scots-Irish word 'ye aw', which means 'you all'. Many Scots-Irish travelled to the southern United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, proving the notion. 'Y'all' has been synonymous with Southern American English, although it is steadily making its way north (Devlin, 2019). Since the speaker is a native English speaker from the South, it is very likely that he uses the word 'y’all' as part of his lexicon.

/naʊ, aɪ tɛl juː ɔːl ðɪs ə lɒt ɒv taɪmz, smɑːʔt ˈpiːpl duː kuːjɔːn θɪŋz./

The second variation of th, the /θ/ sound, has the following features:

The omission of the prevocalic /h/ is prevalent in Cajun English; the deletion of /h/ could suggest Yat and Cajun French influences. Most people who use this linguistic feature are predominantly of the older generation since it was especially common in areas where the plantation culture had previously predominated before the Civil War (Abad-Santos, 2017). 

When the pitch of voice falls on the most important syllable, it is called the Falling Intonation. Whereas when the pitch of the voice rises on the most important syllable, it is called Rising Intonation.

Pertaining to this matter, the prosodic variation of the selected sentence is that the rising intonation was utilised in the speech of the Received Pronunciation speaker. She perceived it to be a yes-no question when reading the script. The reason is that on the nucleus word “coffee”, her voice starts on a high pitch, then rises even higher when it gets to "yeah?", e.g. You like some coffee, yeah?↗ (The upward arrow indicates the rising intonation).

Rising intonation is usually practised in the following situations:

In general, British speakers have a distinctive and noticeable tendency for higher pitch intonation in their speech pattern to avoid miscommunication (Grabe et al., n.d.). Hence, another reason why the Received Pronunciation speaker uses the rising intonation while reading the sentence is to make her point noticeable and avoid ambiguity in her speech style.

Note that Received Pronunciation is a non-regional accent, which is an approximate description of one's speech style, rather than being an exact specification. This also applies to the classification of other accents because speech style varies subtly between individuals and between social groups and areas. Thus, in this case, there is no correct or incorrect way of pronouncing the /t/ sound.

/naʊ, aɪ tɛl juː ɔːl ðɪs ə lɒt ɒv taɪmz, smɑːʔt ˈpiːpl duː kuːjɔːn θɪŋz./

You remember when Bill Clinton was president?

/juː rɪˈmɛmbə wɛn bɪl ˈklɪntən wɒz ˈprɛzɪdənt?/

The top five languages (other than English) spoken in England are: 

Polish dominate the non-English speaking Language due to the immigrant population.

The religion and beliefs that makeup of England are: