Received Pronunciation

The reference accent of England, the standard in pronunciation if you like, is what is termed Received Pronunciation (a term deriving from the phonetician Daniel Jones at the beginning of the 20th century) and labelled RP for short. Looser terms such as Queen’s English, BBC English, Oxford English are also found but are quite inaccurate and should be avoided in linguistics. The features of RP are those described in any English introduction to the phonetics of English and it is the guideline used for pronunciation in major English dictionaries. RP is spoken natively by only a small percentage of people in England and by virtually none in other parts of the British Isles, let alone in the rest of the anglophone world.

   Sample sound file