研究：英國女王式發音逐漸消失大綱

Queen Elizabeth II's famous cut-glass accent, the Queen's English, is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific analysis of her famous Christmas broadcasts found.

研究人員通過分析英女王伊麗莎白二世發表的著名聖誕致辭發現，她那著名的“女王式發音”如今已少了些“貴族”的味道。

Researchers analysed each of her messages to the Commonwealth since her 1952 accession using digital technology to track the shift in her pronunciation from the aristocratic Upper Received to the less plummy Standard Received.

研究人員對女王1952年即位以來的每個聖誕致辭進行了分析，並採用數碼技術對她的貴族式發音向標準發音的轉變進行了追蹤記錄。

Jonathan Harrington, professor of phonetics at Germany's University of Munich, wanted to discover whether dialect changes recorded over the past half-century would take place within one person.

德國慕尼黑大學的語音學教授喬納森?哈林頓試圖通過研究發現，一個人的口音在50年內是否會發生變化。

As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast archive, he said.

他說：“就我所知，一般人是沒有類似的演說記錄檔案的。”

He said the aristocratic way of pronouncing vowels had gradually ceased to be a class apart over the decades.

他說，幾十年來女王的貴族式元音發音已逐漸消失。

Her accent sounds slightly less aristocratic than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very subtle and slow changes that we don't notice from year to year, he explained.

哈林頓教授解釋說：“女王的口音和50年前相比已經沒有明顯的貴族味，但這一變化十分細微而且很緩慢，我們幾乎察覺不到。”

We may be able to relate it to changes in the class structure.

“女王口音的變化主要和社會等級結構的變化有關。”He told The Daily Telegraph newspaper: In 1952 she would have been heard referring to 'thet men in the bleck het'. Now it would be 'that man in the black hat'.

他在接受《每日電訊》的採訪時說：“1952年，女王說thet men in the bleck het，而現在她則會說成that man in the black hat。”

Similarly, she would have spoken of 'the citay' and 'dutay', rather than 'citee' and 'dutee'. In the 1950s she would have been 'lorst', but by the 1970s lost.

“同樣，女王過去會說'the citay' and 'dutay'，現在則是'citee' and 'dutee'。上世紀50年代，她會說lorst，但到了70年代就變成了lost。”

The queen's annual broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth.

每年聖誕節，女王都會向整個英聯邦發表聖誕祝辭。

A Christmas institution, the 10-minute broadcast is televised at 3:00 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch.

這個10分鐘的聖誕祝辭已成了英國的聖誕習俗，會在每年聖誕節的下午3點通過電視臺向英國民衆播放，此時大多數家庭已經吃完傳統的聖誕火雞午餐了。

The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics quarterly magazine.

這項研究結果在《語音》季刊上發表。