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British English

British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere".[3][6] More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English. Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity".[7]

British English
Native toUnited Kingdom
EthnicityBritish people
Early forms
Standard forms
Latin (English alphabet)
Unified English Braille
Official status
Official language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3
IETFen-GB[1][2]
An overview of differences in spelling across English dialects

Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, North East England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire, whereas the adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English. The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken[8] and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies and members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as is the case for English used within the European Union.[9] In China both British English and American English are taught.[10]

History

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic—the insular variety of Continental Celtic, which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages (Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages, influence on English was notably limited. However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages.[11]

Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication).

The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like the Germanic schwein) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans.[12] Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef.[13]

Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary.

Dialects

Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of the United Kingdom, as well as within the countries themselves.

The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England, which encompasses Southern English, West Country, East and West Midlands English and Northern English dialects), Ulster English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language), and Scottish English (not to be confused with the Scots language or Scottish Gaelic language). The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages.

Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though.[14]

Research

Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950), the University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects.[15][16]

The team are[a] sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC, in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio".[16] When discussing the award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated:

that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country, or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink".[17]

English Regional

Most people in Britain speak with a regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation[18] (also called "the Queen's English", "Oxford English" and "BBC English"[19]), that is essentially region-less.[20][21] It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period.[21] It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners.[21]

In the South East there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand,[22] although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated.

Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. In London itself, the broad local accent is still changing, partly influenced by Caribbean speech. Immigrants to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. As a result, Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors.[citation needed] An example of thus is Multicultural London English, a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century that is spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London.[23][24][25]

Since the mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian. It is the last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath/grass (i.e. barth/grarss). Conversely crass/plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby, five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by the West Scottish accent.

Features

Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect.

T-stopping

Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in a process called T-glottalisation. National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no[ʔ]". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later, while often has all but regained /t/ .[26] Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p, as in pa[ʔ]er and k as in ba[ʔ]er.[26]

R-dropping

In most areas of England, outside the West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity. In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R. It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar, where the R is not pronounced.

Diphthongisation

British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between.

North

Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in the traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne, 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'.

South

Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with a greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ].

People in groups

Dropping a morphological grammatical number, in collective nouns, is stronger in British English than North American English.[27] This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people.

The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment:

Police are investigating the theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn.[28]

A football team can be treated likewise:

Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City.[29]

This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen, a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813:

All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes.[30]

However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used.

The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence.

Negatives

Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives. Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence.[31] While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows the idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb.[32]

Standardisation

As with English around the world, the English language as used in the United Kingdom is governed by convention rather than formal code: there is no body equivalent to the Académie française or the Real Academia Española. Dictionaries (for example, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Chambers Dictionary, and the Collins Dictionary) record usage rather than attempting to prescribe it.[33] In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time: words are freely borrowed from other languages and other strains of English, and neologisms are frequent.

For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and the East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of a lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence.[33] Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate.[14]

Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform, where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling.[34] By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers.[35]

Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press. The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules, and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style. Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English, the Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house.[36]

Relationship with Commonwealth English

British English is the basis of, and very similar to Commonwealth English.[37] Commonwealth English is English spoken and written in Commonwealth countries, though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia, Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, and South Africa. It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia, and in parts of Africa. Canadian English is based on British English, but has more influence from American English.[38] British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings.[39]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ In British English collective nouns may be either singular or plural, according to context. An example provided by Partridge is: " 'The committee of public safety is to consider the matter', but 'the committee of public safety quarrel regarding their next chairman' ...Thus...singular when...a unit is intended; plural when the idea of plurality is predominant". BBC television news and The Guardian style guide follow Partridge but other sources, such as BBC Online and The Times style guides, recommend a strict noun-verb agreement with the collective noun always governing the verb conjugated in the singular. BBC radio news, however, insists on the plural verb. Partridge, Eric (1947) Usage and Abusage: "Collective Nouns". Allen, John (2003) , page 31.

Citations

  1. ^ "English"; IANA language subtag registry; retrieved: 11 January 2019; subject named as: en; publication date: 16 October 2005.
  2. ^ "United Kingdom"; IANA language subtag registry; retrieved: 11 January 2019; subject named as: GB; publication date: 16 October 2005.
  3. ^ . Lexico.com. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
  4. ^ "British English; Hiberno-English". Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 1989.
  5. ^ British English, Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary
  6. ^ The Oxford English Dictionary applies the term to English as "spoken or written in the British Isles; esp[ecially] the forms of English usual in Great Britain", reserving "Hiberno-English" for the "English language as spoken and written in Ireland".[4] Others, such as the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, define it as the "English language as it is spoken and written in England".[5]
  7. ^ McArthur (2002), p. 45.
  8. ^ Jeffries, Stuart (27 March 2009). "The G2 Guide to Regional English". The Guardian. section G2, p. 12.
  9. ^ New Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. 2016.
  10. ^ Odinye, Sunny (2016). "A study of British and American English for Chinese students". Dezuruigbo Journal.
  11. ^ English and Welsh, 1955 J. R. R. Tolkien, also see references in Brittonicisms in English
  12. ^ . pandora.cii.wwu.edu. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  13. ^ Why You Swear in Anglo-Saxon and Order Fancy Food in French: Registers, archived from the original on 28 October 2021, retrieved 18 March 2021
  14. ^ a b . www.thehistoryofenglish.com. Archived from the original on 9 December 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  15. ^ biography on the Leeds University website
  16. ^ a b , Leeds University website, 25 May 2007.
  17. ^ McSmith, Andy. Dialect researchers given a "canny load of chink" to sort "pikeys" from "chavs" in regional accents, The Independent, 1 June 2007. Page 20
  18. ^ "Received Pronunciation". Retrieved 20 March 2017.
  19. ^ BBC English because this was originally the form of English used on radio and television, although a wider variety of accents can be heard these days.
  20. ^ Sweet, Henry (1908). The Sounds of English. Clarendon Press. p. 7.
  21. ^ a b c Fowler, H.W. (1996). R.W. Birchfield (ed.). "Fowler's Modern English Usage". Oxford University Press.
  22. ^ Franklyn, Julian (1975). A dictionary of rhyming slang. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. p. 9. ISBN 0-415-04602-5.
  23. ^ "UrBEn-ID Urban British English project". from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
  24. ^ "Argot bargy". The Economist. 2 November 2013. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
  25. ^ "How Is Immigration Changing Language In the UK?". www.vice.com. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
  26. ^ a b Trudgill, Peter (1984). Language in the British Isles. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–57. ISBN 0-521-28409-0.
  27. ^ , Oxford Dictionaries website, 2 April 2017.
  28. ^ [2], BBC, 8 January 2017.
  29. ^ [3], BBC, 2 April 2017.
  30. ^ "Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  31. ^ "Double negatives and usage – English Grammar Today – Cambridge Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org.
  32. ^ Tubau, Susagna (2016). "Lexical variation and Negative Concord in Traditional Dialects of British English". The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics. 19 (2): 143–177. doi:10.1007/s10828-016-9079-4. S2CID 123799620.
  33. ^ a b "The Standardisation of English". courses.nus.edu.sg.
  34. ^ "The History of English: Spelling and Standardization (Suzanne Kemmer)". www.ruf.rice.edu.
  35. ^ "New edition of The Complete Plain Words will delight fans of no-frills". Independent.co.uk. 27 March 2014.
  36. ^ "Style Guide" (PDF). University of Oxford. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
  37. ^ Matthews, R. J. (December 1982). "New Zealand English: A Case Study". World Englishes. 2 (2): 75–80. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.1982.tb00525.x. ISSN 0883-2919.
  38. ^ Tirban, N (2012). "The Major Difference between British and American English in Written and Oral Communication" (PDF). Communication, Context, Interdisciplinarity (2012): 985–990. (PDF) from the original on 24 July 2022 – via Google Scholar.
  39. ^ Dash, Niladri Sekhar (2007). "Indian and British English: A handbook of usage and pronunciation (review)". Language. 83 (2): 465. doi:10.1353/lan.2007.0065. ISSN 1535-0665. S2CID 144960858.

Bibliography

  • McArthur, Tom (2002). Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866248-3 hardback, ISBN 0-19-860771-7 paperback.
  • Bragg, Melvyn (2004). The Adventure of English, London: Sceptre. ISBN 0-340-82993-1
  • Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X.
  • Simpson, John (ed.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

External links

  • Sounds Familiar? – Examples of regional accents and dialects across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
  • Accents and dialects from the British Library Sound Archive
  • Accents of English from Around the World 29 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine Hear and compare how the same 110 words are pronounced in 50 English accents from around the world – instantaneous playback online
  • The Septic's Companion: A British Slang Dictionary – an online dictionary of British slang, viewable alphabetically or by category
  • British English Turkey

british, english, according, oxford, dictionaries, english, used, great, britain, distinct, from, that, used, elsewhere, more, narrowly, refer, specifically, english, language, england, more, broadly, collective, dialects, english, throughout, british, isles, . British English BrE en GB or BE is according to Oxford Dictionaries English as used in Great Britain as distinct from that used elsewhere 3 6 More narrowly it can refer specifically to the English language in England or more broadly to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English Welsh English and Northern Irish English Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares all the ambiguities and tensions with the word British and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways more broadly or more narrowly within a range of blurring and ambiguity 7 British EnglishNative toUnited KingdomEthnicityBritish peopleLanguage familyIndo European GermanicWest GermanicIngvaeonicAnglo FrisianEnglishBritish EnglishEarly formsProto Indo European Proto Germanic Old English Middle English Early Modern EnglishStandard formsReceived Pronunciation Standard Scottish English Standard Hiberno EnglishWriting systemLatin English alphabet Unified English BrailleOfficial statusOfficial language inUnited Kingdom originally England United Nations with Oxford spelling Language codesISO 639 3 IETFen GB sup id cite ref wikidata db6aa4cd71e98871be7bb80f20a410240db4b647 v3 1 0 class reference a href cite note wikidata db6aa4cd71e98871be7bb80f20a410240db4b647 v3 1 1 a sup sup id cite ref wikidata 779344da0a43e71d36df86833b103dc474927ef0 v3 2 0 class reference a href cite note wikidata 779344da0a43e71d36df86833b103dc474927ef0 v3 2 2 a sup An overview of differences in spelling across English dialects Variations exist in formal both written and spoken English in the United Kingdom For example the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland North East England Northern Ireland Ireland and occasionally Yorkshire whereas the adjective little is predominant elsewhere Nevertheless there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom and this could be described by the term British English The forms of spoken English however vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken 8 and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language Globally countries that are former British colonies and members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English as is the case for English used within the European Union 9 In China both British English and American English are taught 10 Contents 1 History 2 Dialects 2 1 Research 2 2 English Regional 3 Features 3 1 T stopping 3 2 R dropping 3 3 Diphthongisation 3 3 1 North 3 3 2 South 3 4 People in groups 3 5 Negatives 4 Standardisation 5 Relationship with Commonwealth English 6 See also 7 References 7 1 Notes 7 2 Citations 7 3 Bibliography 8 External linksHistory EditMain article History of the English language English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic the insular variety of Continental Celtic which was influenced by the Roman occupation This group of languages Welsh Cornish Cumbric cohabited alongside English into the modern period but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages influence on English was notably limited However the degree of influence remains debated and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages 11 Initially Old English was a diverse group of dialects reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of England One of these dialects Late West Saxon eventually came to dominate The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries the second was the Normans in the 11th century who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo Norman These two invasions caused English to become mixed to some degree though it was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication The more idiomatic concrete and descriptive English is the more it is from Anglo Saxon origins The more intellectual and abstract English is the more it contains Latin and French influences e g swine like the Germanic schwein code deu promoted to code de is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo Saxons and pork like the French porc code fra promoted to code fr is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans 12 Another example is the Anglo Saxon cu meaning cow and the French bœuf code fra promoted to code fr meaning beef 13 Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo Frisian core of English the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government Thus English developed into a borrowing language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary Dialects EditSee also Manx English and Channel Island English This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of the United Kingdom as well as within the countries themselves The major divisions are normally classified as English English or English as spoken in England which encompasses Southern English West Country East and West Midlands English and Northern English dialects Ulster English in Northern Ireland Welsh English not to be confused with the Welsh language and Scottish English not to be confused with the Scots language or Scottish Gaelic language The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages Around the middle of the 15th century there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though 14 Research Edit Following its last major survey of English Dialects 1949 1950 the University of Leeds has started work on a new project In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects 15 16 The team are a sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the Voices project run by the BBC in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson s team both for content and for where it was reported Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio 16 When discussing the award of the grant in 2007 Leeds University stated that they were very pleased and indeed well chuffed at receiving their generous grant He could of course have been bostin if he had come from the Black Country or if he was a Scouser he would have been well made up over so many spondoolicks because as a Geordie might say 460 000 is a canny load of chink 17 English Regional Edit Most people in Britain speak with a regional accent or dialect However about 2 of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation 18 also called the Queen s English Oxford English and BBC English 19 that is essentially region less 20 21 It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period 21 It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners 21 In the South East there are significantly different accents the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation RP Cockney rhyming slang can be and was initially intended to be difficult for outsiders to understand 22 although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades it has some features of RP and some of Cockney In London itself the broad local accent is still changing partly influenced by Caribbean speech Immigrants to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city s schoolchildren As a result Londoners speak with a mixture of accents depending on ethnicity neighbourhood class age upbringing and sundry other factors citation needed An example of thus is Multicultural London English a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century that is spoken mainly by young working class people in multicultural parts of London 23 24 25 Since the mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions it has become a source of various accent developments In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian It is the last southern Midlands accent to use the broad a in words like bath grass i e barth grarss Conversely crass plastic use a slender a A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender a becomes more widespread generally In the town of Corby five miles 8 km north one can find Corbyite which unlike the Kettering accent is largely influenced by the West Scottish accent Features EditPhonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect T stopping Edit Once regarded as a Cockney feature in a number of forms of spoken British English t has become commonly realised as a glottal stop ʔ when it is in the intervocalic position in a process called T glottalisation National media being based in London have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings not being heard as no ʔ It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions such as later while often has all but regained t 26 Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p as in pa ʔ er and k as in ba ʔ er 26 R dropping Edit In most areas of England outside the West Country and other near by counties of the UK the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel lengthening the preceding vowel instead This phenomenon is known as non rhoticity In these same areas a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel This is called the intrusive R It could be understood as a merger in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently This is also due to London centric influences Examples of R dropping are car and sugar where the R is not pronounced Diphthongisation Edit British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them As a comparison North American varieties could be said to be in between North Edit Long vowels iː and uː are usually preserved and in several areas also oː and eː as in go and say unlike other varieties of English that change them to oʊ and eɪ respectively Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval iː and uː that give rise to modern aɪ and aʊ that is for example in the traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne out will sound as oot and in parts of Scotland and North West England my will be pronounced as me South Edit Long vowels iː and uː are diphthongised to ɪi and ʊu respectively or more technically ʏʉ with a raised tongue so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement The diphthong oʊ is also pronounced with a greater movement normally eʊ eʉ or eɨ People in groups Edit Dropping a morphological grammatical number in collective nouns is stronger in British English than North American English 27 This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular a perceived natural number prevails especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people The noun police for example undergoes this treatment Police are investigating the theft of work tools worth 500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn 28 A football team can be treated likewise Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City 29 This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century For example Jane Austen a British author writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice published in 1813 All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes 30 However in Chapter 16 the grammatical number is used The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence Negatives Edit Some dialects of British English use negative concords also known as double negatives Rather than changing a word or using a positive words like nobody not nothing and never would be used in the same sentence 31 While this does not occur in Standard English it does occur in non standard dialects The double negation follows the idea of two different morphemes one that causes the double negation and one that is used for the point or the verb 32 Standardisation EditAs with English around the world the English language as used in the United Kingdom is governed by convention rather than formal code there is no body equivalent to the Academie francaise or the Real Academia Espanola Dictionaries for example the Oxford English Dictionary the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English the Chambers Dictionary and the Collins Dictionary record usage rather than attempting to prescribe it 33 In addition vocabulary and usage change with time words are freely borrowed from other languages and other strains of English and neologisms are frequent For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century the form of language spoken in London and the East Midlands became standard English within the Court and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law government literature and education in Britain The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of a lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence 33 Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid 15th century In doing so William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate 14 Samuel Johnson s A Dictionary of the English Language 1755 was a large step in the English language spelling reform where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling 34 By the early 20th century British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades These include most notably of all Fowler s Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers 35 Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart and were at the time 1893 the first guide of their type in English they were gradually expanded and eventually published first as Hart s Rules and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English the Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house 36 Relationship with Commonwealth English EditBritish English is the basis of and very similar to Commonwealth English 37 Commonwealth English is English spoken and written in Commonwealth countries though often with some local variation This includes English spoken in Australia Malta New Zealand Nigeria and South Africa It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia in English varieties in Southeast Asia and in parts of Africa Canadian English is based on British English but has more influence from American English 38 British English for example is the closest English to Indian English but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings 39 See also EditAmerican English American and British English spelling differences Australian English British Sign Language Canadian English Commonwealth English Hiberno English Newfoundland English New Zealand English South African EnglishReferences EditNotes Edit In British English collective nouns may be either singular or plural according to context An example provided by Partridge is The committee of public safety is to consider the matter but the committee of public safety quarrel regarding their next chairman Thus singular when a unit is intended plural when the idea of plurality is predominant BBC television news and The Guardian style guide follow Partridge but other sources such as BBC Online and The Times style guides recommend a strict noun verb agreement with the collective noun always governing the verb conjugated in the singular BBC radio news however insists on the plural verb Partridge Eric 1947 Usage and Abusage Collective Nouns Allen John 2003 BBC News style guide page 31 Citations Edit English IANA language subtag registry retrieved 11 January 2019 subject named as en publication date 16 October 2005 United Kingdom IANA language subtag registry retrieved 11 January 2019 subject named as GB publication date 16 October 2005 BRITISH ENGLISH Meaning amp Definition for UK English Lexico com Archived from the original on 12 November 2020 Retrieved 18 February 2022 British English Hiberno English Oxford English Dictionary 2 ed Oxford England Oxford University Press 1989 British English Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary applies the term to English as spoken or written in the British Isles esp ecially the forms of English usual in Great Britain reserving Hiberno English for the English language as spoken and written in Ireland 4 Others such as the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary define it as the English language as it is spoken and written in England 5 McArthur 2002 p 45 Jeffries Stuart 27 March 2009 The G2 Guide to Regional English The Guardian section G2 p 12 New Oxford Style Manual Oxford University Press 2016 Odinye Sunny 2016 A study of British and American English for Chinese students Dezuruigbo Journal English and Welsh 1955 J R R Tolkien also see references in Brittonicisms in English Linguistics 201 History of English pandora cii wwu edu Archived from the original on 18 October 2017 Retrieved 29 July 2017 Why You Swear in Anglo Saxon and Order Fancy Food in French Registers archived from the original on 28 October 2021 retrieved 18 March 2021 a b The History of English Early Modern English c 1500 c 1800 www thehistoryofenglish com Archived from the original on 9 December 2014 Retrieved 28 July 2017 Professor Sally Johnson biography on the Leeds University website a b Mapping the English language from cockney to Orkney Leeds University website 25 May 2007 McSmith Andy Dialect researchers given a canny load of chink to sort pikeys from chavs in regional accents The Independent 1 June 2007 Page 20 Received Pronunciation Retrieved 20 March 2017 BBC English because this was originally the form of English used on radio and television although a wider variety of accents can be heard these days Sweet Henry 1908 The Sounds of English Clarendon Press p 7 a b c Fowler H W 1996 R W Birchfield ed Fowler s Modern English Usage Oxford University Press Franklyn Julian 1975 A dictionary of rhyming slang London Routledge and Kegan Paul p 9 ISBN 0 415 04602 5 UrBEn ID Urban British English project Archived from the original on 19 March 2021 Retrieved 23 May 2016 Argot bargy The Economist 2 November 2013 ISSN 0013 0613 Retrieved 15 April 2021 How Is Immigration Changing Language In the UK www vice com Retrieved 16 April 2021 a b Trudgill Peter 1984 Language in the British Isles Cambridge England Cambridge University Press pp 56 57 ISBN 0 521 28409 0 1 Oxford Dictionaries website 2 April 2017 2 BBC 8 January 2017 3 BBC 2 April 2017 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen www gutenberg org Retrieved 27 February 2020 Double negatives and usage English Grammar Today Cambridge Dictionary dictionary cambridge org Tubau Susagna 2016 Lexical variation and Negative Concord in Traditional Dialects of British English The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 19 2 143 177 doi 10 1007 s10828 016 9079 4 S2CID 123799620 a b The Standardisation of English courses nus edu sg The History of English Spelling and Standardization Suzanne Kemmer www ruf rice edu New edition of The Complete Plain Words will delight fans of no frills Independent co uk 27 March 2014 Style Guide PDF University of Oxford Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Retrieved 14 June 2019 Matthews R J December 1982 New Zealand English A Case Study World Englishes 2 2 75 80 doi 10 1111 j 1467 971X 1982 tb00525 x ISSN 0883 2919 Tirban N 2012 The Major Difference between British and American English in Written and Oral Communication PDF Communication Context Interdisciplinarity 2012 985 990 Archived PDF from the original on 24 July 2022 via Google Scholar Dash Niladri Sekhar 2007 Indian and British English A handbook of usage and pronunciation review Language 83 2 465 doi 10 1353 lan 2007 0065 ISSN 1535 0665 S2CID 144960858 Bibliography Edit McArthur Tom 2002 Oxford Guide to World English Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 866248 3 hardback ISBN 0 19 860771 7 paperback Bragg Melvyn 2004 The Adventure of English London Sceptre ISBN 0 340 82993 1 Peters Pam 2004 The Cambridge Guide to English Usage Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 62181 X Simpson John ed 1989 Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition Oxford Oxford University Press External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to British English Sounds Familiar Examples of regional accents and dialects across the UK on the British Library s Sounds Familiar website Accents and dialects from the British Library Sound Archive Accents of English from Around the World Archived 29 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine Hear and compare how the same 110 words are pronounced in 50 English accents from around the world instantaneous playback online The Septic s Companion A British Slang Dictionary an online dictionary of British slang viewable alphabetically or by category British English Turkey Portals United Kingdom Language Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title British English amp oldid 1132629771, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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