Re: Brit. pronunciation-- RP?

Roger Mills wrote:

> At this very moment, the _Diane Rehm_ show on American NPR (NPR.org) is
> interviewing a British author (woman); I missed the introduction so don't
> know her social or academic background, but to me she sounds RP or perhaps
> Oxbridge with very precise enunciation.  In any case, she is very clearly
> pronouncing "were" as something between [wE@] ~ [we@].
If I had RealPlayer, I could listen to the show at
<http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/>, but I don't, and I have no
intention of acquiring it. So I can't comment directly.

But in my Australian accent, that would be the pronunciation of
_where_ or _wear_. I'm not very good at imagining accents in my head
other than those that I'm particularly familiar with, but trying out
the sentence "Put them back where they were" I don't find your
description *too* difficult to imagine.

Adrian.