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isdistinction does not apply—the precise quality of the f i2nal vowel in happy is not so i m portant .Yod coalescence . It is the use of [ ts ] ( a ch2sound) rather than [ tj] ( a t2 sound plus a y2 sound) inwords like Tuesday, tune, attitude . Th is m akes the f ir stpart of Tuesday sound iden tical to choose, [ tsu: z ]. Thesam e happens w ith the corresponding voiced sounds: theRP [ d j] of words such as duke, reduce becom es Estuary[ dz ], m ak ing the second part of reduce identical toju ice, [ dzu: s ].
Anyway, the Estuary English is s omething newthat takes p lace in the devel opment of the English lan2guage . It has taken on s ome of the l ocal featureswhichare considered as non2standard . So it is generally con2sidered t o be a new variety . But it is not t otally l ocal .The phenomena of h2 dropp ing and th2 fronting whichare typ ical cockney are not involved in the p r onuncia2ti on of the Estuary English:h2 dropping or om itting [ h ]. Cockney“hand onhea rt”becom es som eth ing like [% { nd Qn A: ]“’ andon ’ eart” .th2 fronting, using labiodenta l fricatives ( [ f, v ] )instead of denta l fricatives ( [ T, D ] ) . This turns“Ith ink”into [A I“f I N k ] and m other into [” mVv@ ].In the same way, the RP is als o taking on s omel ocal features . For examp le, the dr op of the phonetic /j / is very common . Schoenberger . gave us such wordsas“news”or“tune”as examp les . However, this phe2nomenon came int o the RP a l ong ti me ago and it isnow considered t o be part of the RP accent . Other ex2amp les include words such as“abs olute”and“salute”in which the / j / s ound is not p r onounced . In the sameway, it is very common not t o p ronounce the / j / afterthe / s/ in words like“suitable” , “p resume” , “as2sume”and“consume” . This feature is considered t obe non2standard . However, it could als o be arguedthat these are now the established form of the RP ac2cent . I f you still stick t o the rigid standard form andpay no attenti on t o the new form, peop le will think thatyou are superficial and conservative .The p ronunciati on of the / r / s ound in the EstuaryEnglish is t o s ome degree si milar t o the American / r /s ound . But the / r / s ound in the EE does not have ret2roflecti on which is obvi ous in the American English:The realization of / r/ is differen t from tha t in RPand Cockney, bu t si m ilar to the GeneralAm erican r . Forthe r of Genera l RP, the tip of the tongue is held close tothe rea r pa rt of the upper teeth ridge and the central pa rtof the tongue is lowered . In the typica l“Estuary”rea li2za tion the tip of the tongue is lowered and the centra lpart ra ised to a position close to, but not touching, thesof t palate . Vowels in any language are very i mportant . Thevowels in“Estuary English”are als o considered t o bethe p ri mary element of the variety and they lie s ome2where bet ween the vowels of the unmodified regi onalfor ms and those of the General RP . For examp le, the /i : / s ound in the word“me”is a l ong vowel, but in theEstuary English, it becomes l onger than that . And the/ I/ s ound in“city”als o has a greater length . Somepeop le say these vowels have acquired the quality of adi phthong . Whatever they say, the vowels in the Estu2ary English have become l onger than before .Many phonetic features from the cockney have al2s o come int o the Estuary English . And this makes itthe variety easier t o be accep ted by the ordinary peo2p le