Main Comparative Peculiarities of American and British English Standards

English language in England refers to the English language as spoken in England, part of the United Kingdom.         There are many different accents and dialects throughout England and people are often very proud of their local accent or dialect, however there are many associated prejudices - illustrated by George Bernard Shaw's comment:

"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him" [86]

Other terms used to refer to the English language as spoken in England include: English English, Anglo-English, English in England. The related term British English has "all the ambiguities and tensions in 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"[6] but is usually reserved to describe the features common to English English, Welsh English, Scottish English, and Hiberno-English.

1.2.1 Regional differences

The British Isles are one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the English-speaking world. Significant changes in dialect (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary) may occur within one region. The four major divisions are normally classified as Southern English dialects, Midlands English dialects, Northern English dialects, and Scottish English—and the closely-related dialects of Scots and Ulster Scots (varieties of Scots spoken in Ulster). There is also Hiberno-English (English as spoken in Ireland) and the form of English used in Wales. The various English dialects differ in the words they have borrowed from other languages. The Scottish and Northern dialects include many words originally borrowed from Old Norse; the Scottish dialects include words borrowed from Scots and Scottish Gaelic. Hiberno-English includes words derived from Irish.  An important feature of English regional accents is the bundle of isoglosses, which separate different pronunciations and grammar in different areas. The most prominent one is the north-south split in the pronunciation of words such as cut, strut, etc., which runs geographically running roughly from mid-Shropshire to south of Birmingham and then to The Wash — separating Northern and Southern accents. However, there are several other isoglosses in England, and it is rare for them to coincide with each other.       Accents throughout Britain are influenced by the phoneme inventory of regional dialects, and native English speakers can often tell quite precisely where a person comes from, frequently down to a few miles. Historically, such differences could be a major impediment to understanding between people from different areas. There are, furthermore, several cases where a large city has a very different accent from a surrounding rural area (e.g. Bristol and Avon, Hull and the East Riding).           However, modern communications and mass media have reduced all these differences significantly. In addition, speakers may modify their pronunciation and vocabulary towards Standard English, especially in public circumstances. In consequence, the accent best known to many people outside the United Kingdom as English English, is that of Received Pronunciation (RP).    Until recently, RP English was widely believed to be more educated than other accents and was referred to as the Queen's (or King's) English, or even "BBC English" (due to the fact that in the early years of broadcasting it was very rare to hear any other dialects on the BBC). However, for several decades, regional accents have been more widely accepted and are frequently heard. Thus the relatively recent spread of Estuary English is influencing accents throughout the south east. RP is also sometimes called "Oxford English", and the Oxford Dictionary gives RP pronunciations for each word.     The form of English most commonly associated with the upper class in the southern counties of England is called Received Pronunciation (RP).  [11] It derives from a mixture of the Midland and Southern dialects which were spoken in London in the early modern period[11] and is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners.[11] Although speakers from elsewhere in England may not speak with an RP accent it is now a class-dialect more than a local dialect. It may also be referred to as "the Queen's (or King's) English", "Public School English", or "BBC English" as this was originally the form of English used on radio and television, although a wider variety of accents can be heard these days. About two percent of Britons speak RP, [12] and it has evolved quite markedly over the last 40 years.

In the South East there are significantly different accents; the London Cockney accent is strikingly different from RP and its rhyming slang can be difficult for outsiders to understand. In the South Eastern county of Surrey, where RP is prevalent, closer to London it approaches Cockney, further south it becomes more rural, and this continues through Sussex and Hampshire where the accents and language are even more rustic. In fact the accents and dialect of the south coast can range from the classic South Eastern RP through rustic and gradually to a West Country accent as one passes through Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon and finally into Cornwall, where the Celtic language of Cornish is also spoken by some people. The Cornish language had a considerable influence on the traditional Cornish accent and dialect, which is still evident today among older Cornish people, for example saying "I do go" for "I go".           

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. Communities migrating 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 school children. As a result, Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors.   Since the mass immigration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and its close accent borders, it has become a source of various accent developments. There, nowadays, one finds an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a mixture of many different local accents, including East Midlands, East Anglian, Scottish, and Cockney. In addition, in the town of Corby, five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite, which unlike the Kettering accent, is largely based on Scottish. This is due to the influx of Scottish steelworkers.

Outside the South East there are, in England alone, other families of accents easily distinguished by natives, including:

West Country (South West England)

East Anglian

West Midlands (Black Country, Birmingham)

East Midlands

Liverpool and Wirral (Scouse)

Manchester (Mancunian) and other east Lancashire accents

Yorkshire (Varies significantly in each region.)

Newcastle (Geordie) and other northeast England accents

Major differences in Scottish accents include:

Glasgow and Strathclyde (Glaswegian/West Scotland Accent or "Weegie")

Edinburgh and Lothian (East Scotland Accent)

Aberdeen and Grampian (Aberdonian/North East Accent)

Dundee and Fife

Inverness and Highlands

Although some of the stronger regional accents may sometimes be difficult for some anglophones from outside Britain to understand, almost all "British English" accents are mutually intelligible amongst the British themselves, with only occasional difficulty between very diverse accents. However, modern communications and mass media[citation needed] have reduced these differences significantly. A small number of British films have been dubbed when released in America as Americans struggle to understand certain dialects (e.g. Kes in the Yorkshire dialect, Trainspotting in the Edinburgh dialect).     In addition, most British people can to some degree temporarily 'swing' their accent towards a more neutral form of English at will, to reduce difficulty where very different accents are involved, or when speaking to foreigners. This phenomenon is known in linguistics as code shifting.

1.2.2 Standardization

As with English around the world, the English language as used in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland is governed by convention rather than formal code: there is no equivalent body to the Académie française or the Real Academia Española, and the authoritative dictionaries (for example, Oxford English Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Chambers Dictionary, Collins Dictionary) record usage rather than prescribe it. 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 9th 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 within Britain. Largely, modern British spelling was standardised in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), although previous writers had also played a significant role in this and much has changed since 1755. Scotland, which underwent parliamentary union with England only in 1707 (and devolved in 1998), still has a few independent aspects of standardization, especially within its autonomous legal system.

Since the early 20th century, numerous books by British authors intended as guides to English grammar and usage have been published, a few of which have 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. 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, and others. 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, most recently (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, to which writers can turn in the absence of any specific document issued by the publishing house that will publish their work.

 

1.3 Accents in England

Received Pronunciation (RP)

Received Pronunciation (RP), also called the Queen's (or King's) English,[1] Oxford English, [2] or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England,[4] with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms.[5] Although there is nothing intrinsic about RP that marks it as superior to any other variety, sociolinguistic factors give Received Pronunciation particular prestige in England and Wales.[6] However, since World War II, a greater permissiveness towards allowing regional English varieties has taken hold in education[7] and in the media in England.       Researchers generally distinguish between three different forms of RP: Conservative, General, and Advanced. Conservative RP refers to a traditional accent associated with older speakers with certain social backgrounds; General RP is often considered neutral regarding age, occupation, or lifestyle of the speaker; and Advanced RP refers to speech of a younger generation of speakers. [18]   The modern style of RP is an accent often taught to non-native speakers learning British English [19]. Non-RP Britons abroad may modify their pronunciation to something closer to Received Pronunciation in order to be understood better by people unfamiliar with British regional accents. They may also modify their vocabulary and grammar to be closer to Standard English, for the same reason. RP is often used as the standard for English in most books on general phonology and phonetics and is represented in the pronunciation schemes of most dictionaries published in the United Kingdom     Traditionally, Received Pronunciation was the "everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons whose men-folk [had] been educated at the great public boarding-schools"[20] and which conveyed no information about that speaker's region of origin prior to attending the school.      It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed.       In the 19th century, there were still British prime ministers who spoke with some regional features, such as William Edward Gladstone. [21]

From the 1970s onwards, attitudes towards Received Pronunciation have been changing slowly. The BBC's use of announcers with strong regional accents during and after World War II (in order to distinguish BBC broadcasts from German propaganda) is an earlier example of the use of non-RP accents.

Estuary English

Estuary English is a dialect(s) of English widely spoken in South East England, especially along the River Thames and its estuary. Phonetician John C. Wells defines Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". [1] The name comes from the area around the Thames Estuary, particularly London, Kent and south Essex. The variety first came to public prominence in an article by David Rosewarne in the Times Educational Supplement in October 1984. [2] Rosewarne argued that it may eventually replace RP (Received Pronunciation) in the south-east. Studies have indicated that Estuary English is not a single coherent form of English; rather, the reality behind the construct consists of some (but not all) phonetic features of working-class London speech spreading at various rates socially into middle-class speech and geographically into other accents of south-eastern England     Estuary English is widely encountered throughout the south and south-east of England, particularly among the young. Many consider it to be a working-class accent, though it is by no means limited to the working class. In the debate that surrounded a 1993 article about Estuary English, a London businessman claimed that Received Pronunciation was perceived as unfriendly, so Estuary English was now preferred for commercial purposes. [13]      Some people adopt the accent as a means of "blending in", appearing to be more working class, or in an attempt to appear to be "a common man" – sometimes this affectation of the accent is derisively referred to as "Mockney". A move away from traditional RP is almost universal among upper and upper middle class young people. The term "Estuary English" is sometimes used with pejorative connotations: Sally Gunnell, a former Olympic athlete who became a television presenter for Channel 4 and the BBC, quit the BBC, announcing she felt "very undermined" by the network's lack of support after she was widely criticized for her "uninspiring interview style" and "awful estuary English   

The term "Estuary English" is a euphemism for a milder variety of the "London Accent". The spread of the London Accent extends many hundreds of miles outside London and all of the neighbouring home countries around London have residents who moved from London and took their London Accent with them. The London Accent or its Londonised variant, called “Estuary English”, can be heard in all of the New Towns and coastal resorts and in the larger regional cities in the southern half of England

 

"Queen’s" English

The notion of the "Queen’s" English or "King’s" English, depending on who is the ruler of the time, can be traced back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where the idea that the monarch’s usage of the language should be a model in speech and writing (Wales, 1994). During these times there was a development of a prestigious speech associated with the court and aristocracy. Wales, (1994) also points out that the phrase "The King’s English" was first used during the reign of James I.

The British Royal Family would generally be considered to be speakers of the standard English, RP, discussed in the Received Pronunciation section. However, Wales, (1994) differentiates between the way the older "royals" speak and the changes that can be seen in the younger members of the royal family   The accents of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret (the Queen’s sister) reflect the conservative RP as epitomized by the old British films and Pathe newsreels of the first part of the century. The younger members of the royal family such as Prince Edward, Prince Andrew and the in-laws of the family, the Duchess of York (Fergie) as well as the late Princess of Wales (Diana), all speak an RP closer to "advanced" RP than to the conservative, more traditional accent. The distance between the Royal Family and the "subjects" of the country was seen to be enhanced by the traditional speech of the royals. As the younger members of the Royal Family attempt to close the gap between the two, their speech reflects the changes. Wales, (1994) also cites examples of linguistic features traditionally associated with Cockney being found in the speech of this younger generation. Word-final glottal stops (there’s a lo’ of I’ about’) have been heard in the speech of Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Edward, the queen’s youngest son.

 

Features of "Queen’s" English:

General pronunciation

The Queen and Older Royals might pronounce the following words as noted.

Examples:

house = hice

off = orf

tower = tar

refined = refained [80]

 

Younger royals might exhibit the following types of pronunciations:

really = rairly

milk = miuk

yes = yah

St. Paul’s = St. Pauw’s [80]

The "Royal ONE"

Wales, (1994) discusses the pronominal usage of "one" that is not only stereotypically associated with the upper classes, and especially the Royal Family, but that is also used frequently in their real life. There are a number of ways that the word "one" used in place of "I" and it has also been seen to be commonly used in those people connected with the Royal Family. Friends of the family as well as household help like the Queen’s dresser or an ex-cook have been heard to use the phrase "one" in place of "I."

Examples:

"One says to oneself: "Oh God, there’s one’s daughter."  [80]

(Father of the Duchess of York – quoted from The Star, July 1986)

Cockney English

 Due to the fact that London is both the political capital and the largest city within England, Wells, (1982b) doesn’t find it surprising that it’s also the country’s "linguistic center of gravity." Cockney represents the basilectal end of the London accent and can be considered the broadest form of London local accent.(Wells 1982b) It traditionally refers only to specific regions and speakers within the city. While many Londoners may speak what is referred to as "popular London" (Wells 1982b) they do not necessarily speak Cockney. The popular Londoner accent can be distinguished from Cockney in a number of ways, and can also be found outside of the capital, unlike the true Cockney accent.    

The term Cockney refers to both the accent as well as to those people who speak it? The etymology of Cockney has long been discussed and disputed. One explanation is that "Cockney" literally means cock's egg, a misshapen egg such as sometimes laid by young hens. It was originally used when referring to a weak townsman, opposed to the tougher countryman and by the 17th century the term, through banter, came to mean a Londoner (Liberman, 1996). Today's natives of London, especially in its East End use the term with respect and pride - `Cockney Pride'.)            Cockney is characterized by its own special vocabulary and usage, and traditionally by its own development of "rhyming slang." Rhyming slang, is still part of the true Cockney culture even if it is sometimes used for effect. More information on the way it works can be found under the Cockney English features section            London, the capital of England, is situated on the River Thames, approximately 50 miles north of the English Channel, in the south east section of the country. It is generally agreed, that to be a true Cockney, a person has to be born within hearing distance of the bells of St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside, in the City of London. This traditional working-class accent of the region is also associated with other suburbs in the eastern section of the city such as the East End, Stepney, Hackney, Shoreditch Poplar and Bow      The Cockney accent is generally considered one of the broadest of the British accents and is heavily stimatized. It is considered to epitomize the working class accents of Londoners and in its more diluted form, of other areas. The area and its colorful characters and accents have often become the foundation for British "soap operas" and other television specials. Currently, the BBC is showing one of the most popular soaps set in this region, "East Enders" and the characters’ accents and lives within this television program provide wonderful opportunities for observers of language and culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion to Chapter I

Concerns to West-German group Indo-European of languages. In English speak and use in state office-work, literature and science, about 200 millions the person - in Great Britain and Ireland, in USA, Canada, Australia New of Zealand, partially in Southern Africa and India. One of five official and working languages accepted UN. The English language conducts the beginning from language Old German племен, moved in V-VI centuries from continent in Britain. The complex interaction Old German tribe`s of adverbs brought in Britain, occupied celtes tribes, and formation, developing in conditions, English nationality, has resulted in formation territorial dialects on old tribe`s to a basis. Due to economic and political influence Wessecs kingdom in IX-X centuries in cultural life of England the greatest meaning has got wessecs a dialect.       The ambassador penetration into England in VI century of a christianity the latin alphabet has replaced Old German runes, and the influence of latin language was reflected in English lexicon. From subdual Anglosaxons celts of the population of Britain, thus, geographical names were kept. Forays Scandinavians, finished by submission of England in 1016 to the Danish king, have caused creation of Scandinavian settlements in the country. The interaction kindred of languages - English and Scandinavian - had an effect available in modern English language, significant quantity of words of a Scandinavian origin, and also some fanatical features describing dialects of northern England.     During formation a nation there was a formation of national English language developing on the basis of a London dialect, which combined in itself southern and western-central dialect features. The introduction in England book-printing (1476) promoted fastening to distribution of the London forms, to that popularity of product of a large writer D. Choler (1340-1400) writing on a London dialect has helped much.

In second half XVII century and especially in XVIII century is issued sets of managements on and normative grammar, which authors aspire to order grammatic norms of language: one - on the basis of rational grammar, others - proceeding from the alive use of the forms of language.       Colonians the expansion of England in XVII-XVIII centuries has caused distribution of English language outside Great Britain and has resulted in occurrence of some regional differences.        It is possible to explain differences of American variant of English language from British to that first settler in northern America of the profit from London and his vicinities, and laster were birthes from northern Great Britain and Ireland. The distinction between American and British variants of English language most of all has an effect in lexicon and somewhat in phonetics; difference in grammar insignificant.