

Received pronunciation - __
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10601444

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bootload
_"... the Bantu languages of Africa, the Indo-European group from Eurasia and
the Austronesians of the Pacific ..."_

While it was a good read it had absolutely nothing to do with RP. RP cuts
through the Commonwealth nations marking those who speak it, as _"English
educated"_. It doesn't matter if you are from Calcutta, or Canberra, Kingston
or Kowloon. If you have received RP training you can still be understood.

RP or _"Received pronunciation"_ is a technique that provides accentless
enunciation of _"Standard English"_. Taught to foreigners (mostly
Commonwealth) as an effective means of communication across language barriers.
It is most often (mistakenly) associated only with the English upper class ,
classically trained Shakespearian actors and BBC World service announcers.

 _"... To do so he looked at three well-studied parts of the linguistic family
tree: the Bantu languages of Africa, the Indo-European group from Eurasia and
the Austronesians of the Pacific. ..."_

Who are _"Austronesians"_?

Without looking at Dr. Pagels original work [0] I don't know if he used this
term but in terms of language, the term "Austronesians" is a nonsense word. In
Australia there are over 800 non english langauges. Probably about the same in
New Guinea. [1] This is not even including the Indonesia Archipelago which
spreads 5000km across 1700 Islands. So to use such a term in a study of
languages is a bit far fetched.

 _"... Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel and his colleagues at the University
of Reading, UK, used a comparative database of Indo-European languages to
trace the words used to express 200 different meanings in 87 different
languages ..."_

In New Scientist I found a better summary of what the study was about. [2]

[0]
[http://www.ams.rdg.ac.uk/Staff/academic/Professor%20Mark%20P...](http://www.ams.rdg.ac.uk/Staff/academic/Professor%20Mark%20Pagel.htm)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guinea>

[2] [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12772-language-
mutatio...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12772-language-mutations-
affect-leastused-words.html)

