Peculiarities of regional varieties of the English language. Standard English, variants and dialects

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Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования

«СИБИРСКИЙ ФЕДЕРАЛЬНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»

Институт Филологии и Языковой Коммуникации

Кафедра лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации

РЕФЕРАТ

Peculiarities of regional varieties of the English language. Standard English, variants and dialects

Студент Сиренко М. С.

Преподаватель канд. фил наук, доц. Кругликова Е. А.

Красноярск 2011



Contents

Introduction

1. Regional varieties and non-regional varieties

2. Local varieties of English on the British Isles

3. British and American English

3.1 Differences of spelling

3.2 Differences in pronunciation

4. Canadian, Australian and Indian variants

5. What is a Standard English?

6. Dialects of English

7. Features of traditional dialects

8. Contemporary changes to modern dialects

Conclusion

Bibliography



Introduction

Every language allows different kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form of the standard national language and others.



1. Regional varieties and non-regional varieties

The traditional dialects are varieties spoken by people in a given geographical area - the speech of the Black Country, East Yorkshire or Cardiff as a traditional, regional dialect.

The modern dialects are varieties spoken in urban areas.

On the one hand, there is a standardizing tendency, or dialect levelling - so the urban dialect shares more features with standard spoken English.

On the other hand, the urban dialects still retain features that are distinctive to the area where they are spoken - so Hull and East Yorkshire dialect retains distinctive

sounds (like the "er" vowel [close to /?:/] where standard English has the diphthong /??/)

lexis (non-standard forms, like beer-off for an off-licence or tenfoot for the access road behind a house, and standard forms with non-standard meanings, like the use of while in the sense of until)

grammar (such as I aren't for Standard English I'm not)



2. Local varieties of English on the British Isles

On the British Isles there are some local varieties of English, which developed from Old English local dialects. There are six groups of them: Lowland /Scottish/, Northern, Western, Midland, Eastern, Southern. The local population uses these varieties in oral speech. Only the Scottish dialect has its own literature (R. Berns).

One of the best-known dialects of British English is the dialect of London - Cockney. Some peculiarities of this dialect can be seen in the first act of «Pigmalion» by B. Shaw, such as : interchange of /v/ and /w/ e.g. wery vell; interchange of /f/ and /0/, /v/ and / /, e. g/ fing /thing/ and fa:ve / father/; interchange of /h/ and /-/ , e.g. «'eart» for «heart» and «hart» for «art; substituting the diphthong /ai/ by /ei/ e.g. «day» is pronounced /dai/; substituting /au/ by /a:/ , e.g. «house» is pronounced /ha:s/, «now» /na:/ ; substituting /ou/ by /o:/ e.g. «don't» is pronounced /do:nt/ or substituting it by / / in unstressed positions, e.g. «window» is pronounced /wind/.

Another feature of Cockney is rhyming slang: «hat» is «tit for tat», «wife» is «trouble and strife», «head» is «loaf of bread» etc. There are also such words as «tanner» /sixpence/, «peckish» /hungry/.

Peter Wain in the «Education Guardian» writes about accents spoken by University teachers: «The English, public school leavers speak, is called «marked RP», it has some characteristic features: the vowels are more central than in English taught abroad, e.g. «bleck het» for «black hat»/, some diphthongs are also different, e.g. «house» is pronounced /hais/. There is less aspiration in /p/, /b/, /t/ /d/.



3. British and American English

British and American English are two main variants of English. American English begins its history at the beginning of the 17th century when first English-speaking settlers began to settle on the Atlantic coast of the American continent. The language which they brought from England was the language spoken in England during the reign of Elizabeth the First.

Besides Englishmen, settlers from other countries came to America, and English-speaking settlers mixed with them and borrowed some words from their languages, e.g. from French the words «bureau» (a writing desk), «cache» (a hiding place for treasure, provision), «depot'» ( a store-house), «pumpkin» (a plant bearing large edible fruit). From Spanish such words as: «adobe» (unburnt sun-dried brick), «bananza» (prosperity), «cockroach» (a beetle-like insect), «lasso» (a noosed rope for catching cattle) were borrowed.

There are some differences between British and American English in the usage of prepositions, such as prepositions with dates, days of the week BE requires «on» (I start my holiday on Friday), in American English there is no preposition (I start my vacation Friday). In BE we use «by day», «by night/at night», in AE the corresponding forms are «days» and «nights». In BE we say «at home», in AE - «home» is used. In BE we say «a quarter to five», in AE «a quarter of five». In BE we say «in the street», in AE - «on the street». In BE we say, «to chat to somebody», in AE «to chat with somebody». In BE we say «different to something», in AE - «different from something». There are also units of vocabulary which are different while denoting the same notions, e.g. BE - «trousers», AE -«pants»; in BE «pants» which in AE is «shorts». While in BE «shorts» are outwear. This can lead to misunderstanding. There are some differences in names of places:

British English	American English	British English	American English
passage	hall	cross-roads	intersection
pillar box	mail-box	the cinema	the movies
studio	bed-sitter	one-room	apartment
flyover	overpass	zebra crossing	Pxing
pavement	sidewalk	tube	underground

Differences in the organization of education lead to different terms. BE «public school» is in fact a private school. It is a fee-paying school not controlled by the local education authorities. AE «public school» is a free local authority school. BE «elementary school» is AE «grade school» BE «secondary school» is AE «high school». In BE « a pupil leaves a secondary school», in AE «a student graduates from a high school» In BE you can graduate from a university or college of education, graduating entails getting a degree.

3.1 Differences of spelling

The reform in the English spelling for American English was introduced by the famous American lexicographer Noah Webster who published his first dictionary in 1806.

Those of his proposals which were adopted in the English spelling are as follows:

a) the deletion of the letter «u» in words ending in «our», e.g. honor, favor;

b) the deletion of the second consonant in words with double consonants, e.g. traveler, wagon,

c) the replacement of «re» by «er» in words of French origin, e.g. theater, center,

d) the deletion of unpronounced endings in words of Romanic origin, e.g.catalog, program,

e) the replacement of «ce» by «se» in words of Romanic origin, e.g. defense, offense,

d) deletion of unpronounced endings in native words, e.g. tho, thro.



3.2 Differences in pronunciation

In American English we have r-coloured fully articulated vowels, in the combinations: ar, er, ir, or, ur, our etc. In BE the sound / / corresponds to the AE /^/, e.g. «not». In BE before fricatives and combinations with fricatives «a» is pronounced as /a:/, in AE it is pronounced / / e.g. class, dance, answer, fast etc.

There are some differences in the position of the stress: BE AE BE AE add`ress adress la`boratory `laboratory re`cess `recess re`search `research in`quiry `inquiry ex`cess `excess

Some words in BE and AE have different pronunciation, e.g.

BE AE BE AE/`fju:tail/ /fju: tl/ /`dousail / /dosl//kla:k/ /kl rk/ /`fig / /figyer//`le3 / /li:3 r/ /lef`ten nt/ /lu:tenant//nai / /ni:r/ /shedju:l/ /skedyu:l/

But these differences in pronunciation do not prevent Englishmen and American from communicating with each other easily and cannot serve as a proof that British and American are different languages.

Words can be classified according to the period of their life in the language. The number of new words in a language is always larger than the number of words which come out of active usage. Accordingly we can have archaisms, that is words which have come out of active usage, and neologisms, that is words which have recently appeared in the language.



4. Canadian, Australian and Indian variants

Each of these variants has developed a literature of its own, and is characterized by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Canadian English is influenced both by British and American English but it also has some specific features of its own. Specifically Canadian words are called Canadianisms. They are not very frequent outside Canada, except shack 'a hut' and to fathom out 'to explain'.

The vocabulary of all the variants is characterized by a high percentage of borrowings from the language of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonizers came. Many of them denote some specific realia of the new country: local animals, plants or weather conditions, new social relations, new trades and conditions of labour. The local words for new not ions penetrate into the English language and later on may become international, if they are of sufficient interest and importance for people speaking other languages. The term international w о г d s is used to denote words borrowed from one language into several others simultaneously or at short intervals one after another. International words coming through the English of India are for instance: bungalow n, jute n, khaki adj, mango n, nabob n, pyjamas, sahib, sari.

Similar examples, though perhaps fewer in number, such as boomerang, dingo, kangaroo are all adopted into the English language through its Australian variant. They denote the new phenomena found by English immigrants on the new continent. A high percentage of words borrowed from the native inhabitants of Australia will be noticed in the sonorous Australian place names.

At present there is no single "correct" English and the American, Canadian and Australian English have developed standards of their own.



5. What is a Standard English?

Standard English -- the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognised as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood.

Standard English is simply one variety of English among many. It is a sub-variety of English. Sub-varieties of languages are usually referred to as dialects, and languages are often described as consisting of dialects. As a named dialect, like Cockney, or Scouse, or Yorkshire, it is entirely normal that we should spell the name of the Standard English dialect with capital letters.

Standard English is a purely social dialect. Because of its unusual history and its extreme sociological importance, it is no longer a geographical dialect, even if we can tell that its origins were originally in the southeast of England. It is true that, in the English-speaking world as a whole, it comes in a number of different forms, so that we can talk, if we wish to for some particular purpose, of Scottish Standard English, or American Standard English, or English Standard English. And even in England we can note that there is a small amount of geographical variation at least in spoken Standard English, such as the different tendencies in different parts of the country to employ contractions such as He's not as opposed to he hasn't. But the most salient sociolinguistic characteristic of Standard English is that it is a social dialect.

Historically, we can say that Standard English was selected (though of course, unlike many other languages, not by any overt or conscious decision) as the variety to become the standard variety precisely because it was the variety associated with the social group with the highest degree of power, wealth and prestige. Subsequent developments have reinforced its social character: the fact that it has been employed as the dialect of an education to which pupils, especially in earlier centuries, have had differential access depending on their social class background.

regional local varieties english dialect



6. Dialects of English

Dialects can be usefully defined as "sub-forms of languages which are, in general, mutually comprehensible". British linguists distinguish dialect from accent, which refers only to pronunciation. Thus, any educated English speaker can use the vocabulary and grammar of Standard English, but different speakers use their own local words for everyday objects or actions, regional accent, or Received Pronunciation, which within the U.K. is considered an accent distinguished by class rather than by region. American linguists, however, include pronunciation differences as part of the definition of regional or social dialects. The combination of differences in pronunciation and use of local words may make some English dialects almost unintelligible from one region to another. The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into the three general categories of the British Isles dialects, those of North America and those of Australia and Oceania.



7. Features of traditional dialects

Any dialect will yield numerous examples. These are a few:

Grammar

Use of noun plurals formed with -n: shoon "shoes", een "eyes", kine "cows"

Use of a T/V pronoun system: thee, thou/tha and thy, as well as you, your andyours.

Use of object pronoun form her in subject case contexts.

Use of reflexive me for “myself”: I washed me; I laid me down.

Use of redundant auxiliary do: she do go there every day.

Variant forms of the verb to be: I is (Northwest), I are (Midlands and East Yorkshire), I be (Southwest), I am (North and East)

Lexis

Scotland: luin "boy", quine "girl", greet "cry", gang "go"

Yorkshire: beck "stream", bairn "child" (These are Paul Kerswill's examples; Barrie Rhodes notes that they are not specific to Yorkshire, but common in the north generally. Bairn is widespread in Scots, while the modern.

Phonology

Scotland: nicht "night", dochter "daughter", hame "home"

North: spian "spoon", bian "bone", reet "right"

North-east: fower "four", sivven "seven"

South-east Midlands: fut "foot", umman "woman"



8. Contemporary changes to modern dialects

These are recent changes, recorded by Cheshire et al. (1989) and Williams and Kerswill (1999):

Grammar

Use of was in the affirmative, but weren't in the negative:

I was; I weren't

you was; you weren't

she was; she weren't

we was; we weren't

they was; they weren't

Phonology

Use of glottal stop [?] for /t/ at the end and in the middle of words:

before a consonant: let [?] me

before a vowel: get [?] over

before a pause: street [?]

in the middle of a word between vowels: lett [?] er

Replacement of the two th sounds by f or v, so that thin is the same as fin, and brother rhymes with lover. The order of spread, Paul Kerswill says, seems to be as follows:

London area > Southeast: e.g., Reading, Milton Keynes > Central England (Midlands, East Anglia, South Yorkshire): e.g., Birmingham, Derby, Norwich and Sheffield > Northern England: e.g., Hull > North-east of England and Lowlands of Scotland: e.g., Newcastle, Glasgow.

Paul Kerswill concludes:

In sum, the outcome has been levelling: a convergence of accents and dialects towards each other. In some cases, this leads to southern features being adopted in the whole country. For other features, particularly vowels, this is not so: levelling, instead, is regional in character, usually centred on a big city like Glasgow or Newcastle or Leeds.



Conclusion

English is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia and some provinces of Canada. It was also at different times imposed on the inhabitants of the former and present British colonies and. protectorates as well as other Britain- and US-dominated territories, where the population has always stuck to its own mother tongue.

British English, American English and Australian English are variants of the same language, because they serve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural pecularities, especially morphology, syntax and word-formation, as well as their word-stock and phonetic system are essentially the same. American and Australian standards are slight modifications of the norms accepted in the British Isles. The status of Canadian English 'has not yet been established.

The main lexical differences between the variants are caused by the lack of equivalent lexical units in one of them, divergences in the semantic structures of polysemantic words and peculiarities of usage of some words on different territories.

The British local dialects can be traced back to Old English dialects. Numerous and distinct, they are characterized by phonemic and structural peculiarities. The local dialects are being gradually replaced by regional variants of the literary language, i. e. by a literary standard with a proportion of local dialect features.

The so-called local dialects in the British Isles and in the USA are used only by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication. In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, less conspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.

Local variations in the USA are relatively small. What is called by tradition American dialects is closer in nature to regional variants of the national literary language.

From an educational point of view, the position of Standard English as the dialect of English used in writing is unassailable. As far as spoken Standard English is concerned, we could conclude that the teaching of Standard English to speakers of other dialects may be commendable - as most would in theory agree, if for no other reason than the discrimination which is currently exercised against nonstandard dialect speakers in most English-speaking. Either way, however, there is clearly no necessary connection at all between the teaching of formal styles and technical registers, on the one hand, and the teaching of the standard dialect, on the other.



Bibliography

“Standard English: what it isn't” (Tony Bex & Richard J. Watts eds. Standard English: the widening debate. London: Routledge, 1999, 117-128.)

Dr. C. George Boeree “Dialects of English”

Standard English variants and dialects

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