The standard speech - статья на английском языке

The spoken standard or, as it is sometimes called, the received standard, is something which varies in different parts of the English-speaking world. In England it is a type of English perhaps best exemplified in the speech of those educated in the great public schools, but spoken also with a fair degree of uniformly by cultivated people in all parts of the country. It is a class rather than a regional dialect. This is not the same as the spoken standard of the United States or Canada or Australia. Each of these is entitled to recognition. The spread of English to many parts of the world has changed our conception of what constitutes Standard English. The speech of England can no longer be considered the norm by which all others must be judged. The growth of countries like the United States and Canada and the political independence of countries that were once British colonies force us to admit that the educated speech of these vast areas is just as "standard" as that of London or Oxford. It is perhaps inevitable that people will feel a preference for the pronunciation and forms of expression which they are accustomed to, but to criticize the Englishman for omitting many of his r's or the American for pronouncing them betrays an equally unscientific provincialism irrespective of which side of the Atlantic indulges in the criticism. The hope is sometimes expressed that we might have a word standard to which all parts of the English-speaking world would try to conform. So far as the spoken language is concerned it is too much to expect that the marked differences of pronunciation that distinguish the speech of, let us say, England, Australia, India, and the United States will ever be reduced to one uniform mode.
(From "A History of the English Language" by Albert С Baugh and Thomas Cable)