Pronunciation Variations Between the RP Speakers And Sri Lankan Speakers of English.

Received Pronunciation (RP) is a regionally neutral middle-class accent of English used in

several parts of Britain. This is often referred to as Oxford English or BBC English. Ever since
World War II ended, the usage of the RP accent has significantly declined due to migration and
other globalization reasons. Similarly, Sri Lanka has a historical story of how English came to
the country. This Sri Lankan accent of English has a unique pronunciation with an evident touch
of the country's national languages, culture, and history. The Sri Lankan English accent and RP
pronunciation of the British English accent have a variety of differences, majority of these
differences are due to the influence of the Sinhala Language and Tamil Language in Sri Lanka
and its socio-cultural background. These differences can be categorized into two; (1) vowel &
consonant pronunciations and (2) Stress patterns
In the Sri Lankan English accent, the vowel /i/ is often exaggerated, for example, "video" is
pronounced as "veedio" but in RP pronunciation it is /vɪdioʊ/. And there is a significant
difference between these pronunciations.
Comparatively, the RP pronunciation of words with the vowels /o/, and /ɔ/differ from the Sri
Lankan pronunciation. This is also called the "Not Pot English" due to the "mispronunciation."
For example, British speakers tend to open their mouths wider than Sri Lankan speakers, because
of the influence of Sinhala and Tamil. This "O" has different forms such as short /o/ as in “long”,
“hot”; long /o/ as in “ball”, “law”; and diphthong /o/ as in “bowl”, “go.”
In certain situations, RP pronunciation uses /a/ as in “bath” but Sri Lankan speakers replace /a/
with /æ/. So that would be /bæθ/ in the Sri Lankan accent and /ba:θ/ in RP pronunciation. Here
/a:/ is a long, mouth-wide vowel but /æ/ is a short and sharp vowel.
In Sri Lankan accent the letter /th/, which is written as /θ/ /ð/ voiceless and voiced consonant
respectively, is often mispronounced without a distinction. In the RP accent /th/ is a dental
fricative but Sri Lankan speakers mispronounce it as a stop instead of a fricative.
Often in the Sri Lankan accent /v/ and /w/ is used interchangeably because of the influence of the
only “ව” in Sinhala Language. According to their pronunciation "water" can become "vater" in
speech.
Another significant difference in both accents is stress patterns. All the accents have distinctions
in stress and unstressed syllables. For example, in the word "International", a RP speaker would
stress the third syllable, /ˌɪntəˈnæʃnəl/ (in-ter-NA-al) but a Sri Lankan speaker, would stress the
second syllable /ˌɪnˈtənæʃnəl / (in-TER-na-al). Furthermore, RP speakers stress the second
syllable /kənˈtrɒvəsi/ (con-TRO-ver-sy) but Sri Lankan speakers emphasize the first syllable
/ˈkɒntrəvɜːsi/ (CON-tro-ver-sy).

In conclusion, the pronunciation variation in both accents showcases how rich English is as a
language. The RP accent mirrors the traditional standard British English while, the Sri Lankan
accent features its native language influences and subtlety.