Learn British accents and dialects – Cockney, RP, Northern, and more! The Primary Differences Among Major International English Dialects. The British Empire hasn’t been in existence for almost three-quarters of a century.
At the peak of its might, it covered close to a quarter of the world’s land area and ruled a fifth of its population. But the empire changed, transformed, and passed as all things pass. When the territories Britain had conquered gained freedom, there was one thing that remained as evidence of how grand the empire once was—the English language.
It’s the second most common language in the world in terms of the number of native speakers; it’s the most widely spoken language of all when you include people who use it as a second language. It’s an international language, and as such, it has developed various dialects around the world. Dialect - English varieties of the British Isles. Introduction This guide is written for students who are following GCE Advanced level (AS and A2) syllabuses in English Language.
This resource may also be of general interest to language students on university degree courses, trainee teachers and anyone with a general interest in language science. Please look at the contents page for a full list of specific guides on this site. Back to top The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) has made this a subject for examination within a general area of study described as Language and Social Contexts. British English and American English. British English and American English British people and American people can always understand each other – but there are a few notable differences between British English and American English Grammar Americans use the present perfect tense less than speakers of British English and a British teacher might mark wrong some things that an American teacher would say are correct.
US Did you do your homework yet? Brit. In British English, ‘have got’ is often used for the possessive sense of ‘have’ and ‘have got to’ is informally used for ‘have to’. British and American terms. British and American English often spell the same word differently, for example: labour/labor, enthrall/enthral, or centre/center.
You can find out more about these differences here. There are also many cases in which the two varieties of English use different terms to describe the same thing. Here’s a list of various British words and expressions together with their American equivalents. Back to usage. You may also be interested in Shall or will? Commonly confused words Can or may? British vs American Terminology - UK. Pidgin, patois, slang, dialect, creole — English has more forms than you might expect. There are probably as many terms for different kinds of English vernacular as there are vernaculars themselves: pidgin, patois, slang, creole dialect and so on.
But while we usually think of the vernaculars as oral versions of the English language, they're making their way into the written word as well. “There's a really interesting paradox going on, where you're taking something that's constantly changing — and that people don't expect to see written down — and you're making it codified and setting it down for a wider audience," says Dohra Ahmad, editor of an anthology of vernacular literature called "Rotten English. " M. NourbeSe Philip, one of the authors included in the anthology, speaks and writes Trinidadian Creole but points out that the process of getting the language on the page is much the same as writing in Standard English. “You can’t write it exactly as the person speaks it," she says. “When I grew up [the vernacular] was called ‘bad English,’" she remembers. TEDxEastEnd - Paul Kerswill - Who's an Eastender now?
British Accents and Dialects. Wikimedia The United Kingdom is perhaps the most dialect-obsessed country in the world.
With near-countless regional Englishes shaped by millennia of history, few nations boast as many varieties of language in such a compact geography. (NOTE: This page uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For information about this notation, please visit my page of IPA Resources.) Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents? In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same.
At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English. It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly. Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely "rhotic. " Rhotic speakers pronounce the "R" sound in such words as "hard" and "winter," while non-rhotic speakers do not. It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and around London.
Why Do Brits and Americans Spell Words Differently? Two people, one common language… sort of.
Center vs. centre, color vs. colour, realize vs. realise — a seemingly endless list of spelling divergences have cropped up in the 250 years since the colonies and United Kingdom were ruled by one and the same king. Why are there so many differences in British and American spelling, and how did they creep in? Each word has its own unique history, but the primary mover and shaker in this transatlantic drama is the nineteenth century American lexicographer Noah Webster, he of dictionary fame. According to "A History of English Spelling" (Manchester University, 2011) by D.G. Australian English. Australian English (AusE, AuE, AusEng, AustralE, en-AU) is a major variety of the English language, used throughout Australia.
Although English has no official status in the Constitution, Australian English is the country's de facto official language and is the first language of the majority of the population. Australian English began to diverge from British English after the founding of the Colony of New South Wales in 1788 and was recognised as being different from British English by 1820. It arose from the intermingling of early settlers from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British Isles and quickly developed into a distinct variety of English. History
American English. English language prevalence in the United States.
Darker shades of blue indicate higher concentrations of native English speakers in the corresponding states American English, or United States (US) English, is the set of dialects of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and is the common language used by the federal government, considered the de facto language of the country because of its widespread use. English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments. As an example, while both Spanish and English have equivalent status in the local courts of Puerto Rico, under federal law, English is the official language for any matters being referred to the United States district court for the territory. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. Regional variation East Coast Midwest North American English.
North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the broadest variety of the English language as spoken in North America, including all dialects of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and cultures and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken dialects are often grouped together under a single category. Due to historical and cultural factors, Canadian English and American English retain numerous distinctions from each other, with the differences being most noticeable in the two languages' written forms.
Canadian spellings are primarily based on British usage as a result of Canada's longer-standing connections with the United Kingdom. New Zealand English. New Zealand English (NZE, en-NZ) is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand. The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and become distinctive only in the last 150 years". The most distinctive influences on New Zealand English have come from Australian English, English in southern England, Irish English, Scottish English, the prestige Received Pronunciation (RP), and Māori. New Zealand English is most similar to Australian English in pronunciation, with some key differences.
Dictionaries Orsman's next dictionary achievement was the publication of The New Zealand Dictionary published by New House Publishers in 1994. It was co-edited by Elizabeth Orsman. Indian English. Indian English is any of the forms of English characteristic of the Indian subcontinent. English has slowly become one of the lingua francas of the Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka), and is the language of their cultural and political elites, offering significant economic, political, and social advantage to fluent speakers. Though English is one of the two official languages of the Union Government of India, only a few hundred thousand Indians have English as their first language. According to the 2005 India Human Development Survey, of the 41,554 surveyed households reported that 72 percent of men (29,918) did not speak any English, 28 percent (11,635) spoke at least some English, and 5 percent (2,077, roughly 17.9% of those who spoke at least some English) spoke fluent English.
Indian English generally uses the Indian numbering system. History Phonology Indian accents vary greatly. Vowels Consonants Notes Canadian English. Broadly speaking, Canadian and American English are phonologically classified together as North American English, emphasizing the fact that the vast majority of outsiders, even other native English speakers, cannot distinguish the typical accents of Canadian English from American English by sound. There are minor disagreements and differences in emphasis to which degree Canadians and Americans themselves can differentiate their own two accents; there is even evidence that California English, for example, is undergoing the same vowel shift as Canadian English. In Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, speech is further influenced by Canadian French, with many English words being replaced by their French counterparts. History The term "Canadian English" is first attested in a speech by the Reverend A.
Constable Geikie in an address to the Canadian Institute in 1857 (see DCHP-1 Online, s.v "Canadian English", Avis et al. 1967). Historical linguistics British English. British English is the English language as spoken and written in Great Britain or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles. Slight regional variations exist in formal, written English in the United Kingdom.
For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland, whereas 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, so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language.
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. Dialects 'a' [æ] 'aa' [äː] 'ah' [ɑː ~ ɑ̈ː] Category:English dialects. What Even Is Australian English? An Interview With The Editor Of The Macquarie Dictionary. United Kingdom English for the American Novice. United Kingdom English for the American Novice Sixth Edition, July 1983 "English" to "American" Dictionary The items in this dictionary were collected while I lived in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1983.
The work is no longer maintained and so contains dated references to people of the time. The Best of British - The American's guide to speaking British... British and American spelling. There are several areas in which British and American spelling are different. The differences often come about because British English has tended to keep the spelling of words it has absorbed from other languages (e.g. French), while American English has adapted the spelling to reflect the way that the words actually sound when they're spoken. If you're writing for British readers, you should only use British spellings.