STANDARD PRONUNCIATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
STANDARD PRONUNCIATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Summary/Abstract: The problem of pronunciation standards of a given language is certainly a most interesting and important one, and it is surely the first that a person wishing to acquire an acceptable pronunciation of a foreign language has to solve. Exposure to a number of varieties of the foreign language may play an important and useful part in the study, and the question arises as to which of the various forms of pronunciation to choose. As regards the English language, this question is even more serious, for it is a fact that nowa days over 400 million people speak English as their first language. Along with them, millions of others learn and speak English as a second or a foreign language all over the world. The fact that the majority of English speakers use some form of American pronunciation does not make the problem smaller at all, for it is impossible to find two persons belonging to the same nationality who pronounce their own language in the same manner. These differences may result from a great number of causes, such as: locality, early influences, social surroundings and often individual characteristics which may be numerous and different themselves. However, the issue of perfection is not that relevant for foreign learners of English who visit Great Britain, or the United States of America. What matters is being able to understand what they are told.

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