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A scientific analysis of her famous Christmas broadcasts found that Queen Elizabeth II's famous cut-glass accent, the Queen's English, is now sounding less upper-class.
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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.
Researchers analysed each of her messages to the Commonwealth since her 1952accessionusing digital technology to track the shift in her pronunciation from thearistocraticUpper Received to the less plummy Standard Received.
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.
"As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast archive," he said.
He said the aristocratic way of pronouncing vowels had gradually ceased to be a class apart over the decades.
"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.
"We may be able to relate it to changes in the class structure."
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'.
"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."
The queen's annual broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth.
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.
The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics quarterly magazine.
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(AFP)
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研究人员通过分析英女王伊丽莎白二世发表的著名圣诞致辞发现，她那著名的“女王式发音”如今已少了些“贵族”的味道。
研究人员对女王1952年即位以来的每个圣诞致辞进行了分析，并采用数码技术对她的贵族式发音向标准发音的转变进行了追踪记录。
德国慕尼黑大学的语音学教授乔纳森·哈林顿试图通过研究发现，一个人的口音在50年内是否会发生变化。
他说：“就我所知，一般人是没有类似的演说记录档案的。”
他说，几十年来女王的贵族式元音发音已逐渐消失。
哈林顿教授解释说：“女王的口音和50年前相比已经没有明显的贵族味，但这一变化十分细微而且很缓慢，我们几乎察觉不到。”
“女王口音的变化主要和社会等级结构的变化有关。”
他在接受《每日电讯》的采访时说：“1952年，女王说thet men in the bleck het，而现在她则会说成that man in the black hat。”
“同样，女王过去会说'the citay' and 'dutay'，现在则是'citee' and 'dutee'。上世纪50年代，她会说lorst，但到了70年代就变成了lost。”
每年圣诞节，女王都会向整个英联邦发表圣诞祝辞。
这个10分钟的圣诞祝辞已成了英国的圣诞习俗，会在每年圣诞节的下午3点通过电视台向英国民众播放，此时大多数家庭已经吃完传统的圣诞火鸡午餐了。
这项研究结果在《语音》季刊上发表。
（英语点津姗姗编辑）
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