h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

rp english is indeed a posh sounding accent. the reason for this is becausewhen it was being formalised, all of the linguists were posh, as posh people were the only ones with the time and money to do the job.

however, it does have one advantage that you seem to have missed. That is that it is designed so that if someone somewhere learns rp, anyone else anywhere can understand it. this is more than can be said for most accents.

Point taken, although, with a pinch of salt...

... it is dangerous to start talking about 'posh' and ... well, what is the opposite?

What I have put up for the moment doesn't even begin to cover the subject, so I don't really want to defend it. Really, I just wanted to get going a bit too quickly and put a few ideas up to see what would happen.

I'm delighted to find that someone has taken the time to make a comment! Thanks.

I hope to talk about some of the socio-linguistic aspects of RP and Estuary English in the course of the article. I really mean what I say at the beginning that what I have put up is only a 'stab in the dark'.

I'll have to get on to it soon.

Spiff

I am not really using posh in the conventional meaning of high class, with it's inherent value judgements, but in a more restrictive descriptive sense which just describes the users as being of the "upper classes".

As regards RP being better, I only mean in the sense of being defined to use easily understandable versions of the common phonemes.

Any other set which is clearly differentiated and pronounced would do just as well, but rp tends to be used in language teaching due to the fact that it has a long history of being used in this way.

Hi

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A657560

I have made a start on this entry on RP.

As always, any comments are welcome, though I would ask people to bear in mind that it is not intended to be finished.

Spiff