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I am an non native English speaker in where the some pronunciations taught have been obsolete in British English . Recently, I've got some time to do my research and discovered something called yod-coalescence.

Yod-coalescence sometimes occurs with clusters, like /dj/ and /tj/ which coalesce into /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ respectively.

For example, during would be pronounced as /dʒʊərɪŋ/ instead of /djʊərɪŋ/, and Tuesday would be pronounced as /tʃuːzdeɪ/ instead of /tjuːzdeɪ/.

How common is it in modern RP?

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  • The difficulty is with "modern RP" - there isn't really a well-defined RP any longer. As far as the yod-coalescence is concerned, it is very common indeed in all but the most careful speech.
    – Greybeard
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 16:40
  • Everyone speaks like a barrow-boy these days; even younger royalty.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 21:48
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    But I don't agree that RP is altogether dead.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 21:49
  • One of my favourite jokes riffs on this tendency: "Why was Anne Boleyn found with Henry VIII's toothmarks all over her?" "Because he's Tudor."
    – Prime Mover
    Commented Jun 14, 2020 at 22:32

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It is increasingly common.

As some commenters pointed out, it is not necessarily easy to find out what constitutes "modern RP", or whether such a thing exists, but as concerns the standard varietie(s) based on southern English speech used as a model for learners, yod coalescence at the beginning of stressed syllables traditionally pronounced with /tj, dj/ is now accepted as part of the standard, if not more common.

John Wells marked pronunciations with coalescence as "non-RP" in the 2000 edition of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, but he dropped it for the 2008 edition (here's a video of him explaining it).

The 2011 edition of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary went so far as to give priority to pronunciation with /tʃ, dʒ/ over /tj, dj/, saying "it now seems /tʃuːn/ and /dʒuːn/ are more widely used and these pronunciations are given priority for most such words, with the /tj/ and /dj/ pronunciations as second choice" (pp. xviii–xix).

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