研究：英国女王式发音逐渐消失

　　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。

　　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。

　　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。

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

　　他说：“就我所知，一般人是没有类似的演说记录档案的。”

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

　　他说，几十年来女王的贵族式元音发音已逐渐消失。

　　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。”

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

　　“女王口音的变化主要和社会等级结构的变化有关。”