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[Abstract] Estuary English, as a new variety of English, lies s omewhere in the middle bet ween the Received Pronunciati on (or RP) and London speech . It has p r ominent phonetic and grammatical features, and iswidely sp read in England . Some peop le say itmay rep lace the Received Pr onunciati on in the future while others argue it is i mpossible for this t o happen . Itmay be safe t o p ropose that Estuary English is si mp ly a regi onal dialect and can never rep lace the Received Pronunciati on .
    I . I n troducti on
    It is commonly acknowledged that the English lan2guage is the mostwidely s p read language in the world .On the other hand, there are many varieties of Englishthat are s poken by different gr oup s of peop le . Nowa2days a s pecial variety of English, “Estuary English” ,iswidely s p read in England, and experts and teachersof English are paying a l ot of attenti on t o this phenome2non . However, this phenomenon is not an entirely newmatter . It has been going on for a l ong ti me . It is a va2riety of modified regi onal s peech and a mixture of non2regi onal and l ocal s outh2 eastern English p r onunciati onand int onati on . I f one i magines a continuum with theRP and London s peech at either end, Estuary Englishs peakers are t o be found gr ouped in the middlegr ound .
   As the name suggests, the ter m“Estuary Eng2lish”was ass ociated with the banks of the Thames Riv2er and its estuary . This variety of English is mainlyused by peop le al ong the banks of the Thames . Atp resent, it seems that the variety is becoming the mostinfluential accent in the s outh2 east of England and evenin other parts of the country . You can hear many peo2p le s peaking this accent in England nowadays . It is of2ten found t o be s poken by higher classes such thestates men and rich business men as well as l ower2 classpeop le in England .     II . Character isti cs of Estuary Engl ish
   1 . At the phonetic level
    The Received Pr onunciati on is held t o be thestandard accent and is widely s p read and used in uni2versities and T V stati ons . On the other hand, the Lon2don s peech, als o known as Cockney, is a l ocal dialectand is usually ass ociated with a l ow s ocial status . Thet wo varieties have their res pective characteristics . Thenew variety, Estuary English, is seen t o have featuresfrom both of them. The foll owing characteristics areconsidered t o be typ ical of the l ocal London s peech .According t o Wells, nowadays these characteristics areals o found in the p r onunciati on of the Estuary English:l2 vocalization, pronouncing the l2 sound in certainpositions al m ost like [ u ], the use of w where the RP uses l in the f inal position or in a f inal consonant cluster .
    For exam ple, “m ilk2 bottle”is pronounced like“m iuk2bottoo” , and h ill is pronounced as [ h I U ].HappY2tensing, using a sound m ore si m ilar to the[ i : ] of beat than to the [ I ] of bit a t the end of wordslike happy, coffee, valley . M any recent works on Eng2lish phonetics transcribe this weak vowel as [ i ], whichcan then be interpreted in various ways according to thespeaker’ s accent . In strong sy llables ( stressed, or po2tentially stressed) it is crucial to distinguish tense long[ i : ] from lax short [ I ], since green m ust be distinctfrom grin and sleep from slip . B ut in weak sy llables th