Consonants /h/

Pronunciation of initial is socially stratified in most areas of the North, as in most of England. Petyt’s study of West Yorkshire (1985: 106) shows that h-dropping is near-categorical for working-class males in casual speech style (93% in class V), but that class I males in the same speech style only have 12% h-dropping. The one area of the North in which initial <h> is retained, at least in stressed syllables, is the North-East. Trudgill (1999: 29) shows the isogloss for  (hill) just north of the Tees, but Beal (2000a) demonstrates that h-dropping is perceived as a salient feature of Sunderland speech within Tyne and Wear. In fact, close examination of the SED material shows a set of very loosely bundled isoglosses for individual words, with that for home as far north as mid-Northumberland, and those for house, hear and hair following the Tees. Recent studies indicate that the h-dropping isogloss is moving further north, with even younger speakers as far north as Newcastle providing some evidence of this. Given that h-dropping is the most stigmatized feature of non-standard speech in England, this is a surprising development, but in the context of the spread of other pan-northern features such as the monophthongal pronunciation of GOAT and FACE, it is perhaps more understandable. Young north-easterners are converging with their northern peers rather than with RP speakers.

مواضيع ذات صلة

Spelling and Pronunciation SUMMARY

American English vs. British English

Morphological Basis of English Spelling

Phoneme–Grapheme Correspondences in English Vowels

Phoneme–Grapheme Correspondences in English Consonants

Spelling and Pronunciation Irregularity of English Spelling

Structural Factors in Second Language Phonology SUMMARY

Perception

Optimality Theory (OT)

Ontogeny Phylogeny Model (OPM)

Markedness

Hypercontrast