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  3. Queen Elizabeth II’s pronunciation of English has been infected by her subjects. Aussie scientists say. Phoneticists from Sy

Queen Elizabeth II’s pronunciation of English has been infected by her subjects. Aussie scientists say. Phoneticists from Sy

admin2013-07-02  76
问题     Queen Elizabeth II’s pronunciation of English has been infected by her subjects. Aussie scientists say.
    Phoneticists from Sydney’s Macquarie University studied archive recordings of the Queen’s annual Christmas message to the Commonwealth from the 1950s to 1980s, analyzing her Majesty’s towels.
    They then compared those vowels with the standard accent of southern England, as used by female British broadcasters on the BBC in the 1980s, to see how the royal accent had changed.
    Their conclusion: the cut-glass speech of the early years of the Queen’s reign has become—how shall we say—somewhat commoner over the years.
    That in itself subtly mirrors the changes is Britain, from a country with a rigid social hierarchy four decades ago to one where class differences have blurred and in some areas disappeared.
    "The Queen’s pronunciation of some vowels has been influenced by the standard southern -British accent of the 1980s which is more typically associated with speakers who are younger and lower in the social hierarchy," the researchers say.
    Standard speech in southern England has been influenced by Cockneys, whose accent was initiated by Dick Van Dyke in the Walt Disney movie "Mary Poppins".
    Purists will be reassured that the Queen’s "Hice (house) of
    Windsor" will not become the "Ouse of Windsor" (by dropping the’h’) in the foreseeable future.
    However, there have been changes in .10 out of the 11 vowel sounds in the standard English.
    These changes bring her speech closer to that of her Cockney subjects,the researchers found.
    An example of this is the way in which she pronounces "had". In the 1950s, the royal pronunciation of this word almost rhymed with "bed". But 30 years later, it had migrated halfway to the standard southern English pronunciation, which rhymes "had" with "bad".
    The Australian team say the pronunciation of all languages alters subtly over time, mainly because of influence from the young, and it is foolish for anyone to try to prevent change.
    "The chances of societies and academies successfully preserving a particular form of pronunciation against the influence of community and social changes are unlikely," they say.
    The research was published December 21 in Nature, the British science weekly.
By saying that the change in the Queen’s English mirrors the social changes in Britain, the writer means . (  )
选项 A、the rigid social hierarchy 40 years ago has collapsed
B、the Queen’s accent has been influenced by the lower class
C、the Queen’s accent is associated with the younger speakers
D、the social differences in Britain are no longer as distinct as before
答案D
解析 推理题。题干意为如何理解“女皇发音的变化反映出英国的社会变革”，这是文章第五段第一句的前半句。实际上，后半句就是它的解释。而A选项的说法错误，等级制度并没有完全瓦解(collapsed)，文章只是说在部分地区等级制度消失了。
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