XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.english.usage
From: nobody@home.com

In article ,
hayesstw@telkomsa.net says...
>
> Yes, I know Shaw specified that the accent of His Late Majesty King
> George V should be the norm, but how many people have access to
> recordings of his speech,

  Shaw merely cited the king as an example, to illustrate
the accent, diction and pronunciation common to the
English ruling, upper and educated classes of the day.
Which everyone in Britain (and its colonies) would know
very well, without ever needing to have heard the king.

 Phonetics, accent and social class in Britain was the
basis of Shaw's play Pygmalion (and many more recent TV
sitcoms).

> and would all schools using English as a
> medium of instruction force all pupils to speak like that?

  In Britain, well within my lifetime, class accent
mattered so much that in the 1950's many schools actively
discouraged regional accents and promoted RP. In my
childhood in north England, school teachers constantly
corrected local accents. Out of school, many parents of my
generation were paying for their child's private
"elocution " lessons.

Janet

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