I. British Standard English (RP) 


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I. British Standard English (RP)



There is a general perception that everyone in England speaks with a plummy English accent. This is not true. In England, there are a wide range of accents that have developed and lived on for a long period of time. Foreigners may have difficulty understanding all these different accents.

In England, the main accent groupings are between the south and the north. The dividing line is believed to start from Shrewsbury to Birmingham and to the Wash. The prestige or posh English accent is known as Received Pronunciation (RP) that is thought to have its roots in the educated language of south-eastern England. It’s more commonly known as the Southern English accent.

The accent spoken in the east end of London is called Cockney. The London accent is quite widespread in many parts in Southern England too. The West Country, particularly Bristol, has a very distinctive pronunciation. This also applies to other rural areas like parts of East Anglia. When you go up north you will find that the West Midlands, especially Birmingham, has a rather different accent of its own. The Birmingham accent is among the most difficult accents to understand according to many people from other parts of England.

Liverpool also has a unique accent of its own which is called the Scouse accent. Many believe that Liverpool has traces of the Irish accent. Other parts of the country that have distinctively different accents are Manchester (Mancunian), Leeds, Sheffield, and particularly Newcastle (Geordie).

It is more difficult to understand people if they live further away from London. Certain accents which are quite difficult to understand include the Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Scottish accents. Basically, the more northern, the more difficult it becomes.

This can be quite surprising, but the Queen’s English is not as commonly spoken as thought. When someone is heard speaking like this, there can frequently be uncalled prejudice against them as being too filthy rich, posh or basically snobbish.

Thus the form of English that in its grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and spelling system does not identify the speaker or the writer with a particular geographical area or social grouping. The accent associated with Standard English is known as 'received pronunciation' or RP

Received Pronunciation (RP) is an example of a non-regional accent of;

British English, which has been described in detail by very many authors, amongst whom Jones (1962) and Gimson (1962, 1989) are outstanding. The pronouncing dictionary specifying the details of RP which has been;

regarded for very many years as the most authoritative source is the one first published by Daniel Jones in 1917. This has been updated in many succes­sive editions. Gimson, as one of Jones' senior colleagues, and the holder of the Chair of Phonetics at University College London immediately after Jones, was responsible for the 13th and 14th editions (Gimson 1967, 1977). This 14th edition was in turn the basis for a further revision by Ramsaran (1988). Another excellent and up-to-date pronouncing dictionary which describes RP (as well as a number of other accents of English) is Wells (1990). Wells maintains a historical continuity with Daniel Jones, being Gimson's successor in the Chair of Phonetics at University College London.

The term 'Received', in its Victorian sense of being 'received in polite society', gives a historical clue to the origins of the RP accent. According to Abercrombie (1965), RP developed as an accent of the English public schools (i.e. private schools, in the paradoxical usage of the English), and 'is maintained, and transmitted from generation to generation, mainly by people educated at [these] public schools' (Abercrombie 1965: 12). Wells (1982, vol. I: 10) summarizes these characteristics of RP by stating that:

In England... there are some speakers who do not have a local accent. One can tell from their speech that they are British (and very probably English) but nothing else... It is characteristic of the upper class and (to an extent) of the upper-middle class. An Old Etonian sounds much the same whether he grew up in Cornwall or Northumberland.

Although the function of this accent as a marker of socioeconomic status is now a good deal weaker than previously.

 

II. American Standard Engllish (GA)

 

The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, whereas by definition given above a dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors, like H. L. Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view one shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms.

An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. E.g. cookie 'a biscuit'; frame house 'a house consisting of a skeleton of timber, with boards or shingles laid on'; frame-up 'a staged or preconcerted law case'; guess 'think'; store 'shop'. A general and comprehensive description of the American variant is given in Professor Shweitzer's monograph. An important aspect of his treatment is the distinction made between americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang. The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic. The American variant of the English language differs from British English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will deal with the latter.1 Our treatment will be mainly diachronic. Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonizers were contemporaries of Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA.

For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and, was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bull-frog 'a large frog', moose (the American elk), oppossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears), for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants. They also had to find names for the new conditions of economic life: back-country 'districts not yet thickly populated', back-settlement, backwoods 'the forest beyond the cleared country', backwoodsman 'a dweller in the backwoods'.

The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic and heuristic value because it furnishes ample data for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon the vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definitely: absentee voting 'voting by mail', dark horse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', to gerrymander 'to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a favorable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer 'an adept of decisive measures'.

Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian dialects or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other languages, Russian not excluded, and so became international. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face and the. like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanish borrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are very familiar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force of habit that linguists still include these words among the specific features of American English. As to the toponyms, for instance, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in all countries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names traces of the arlier inhabitants of the land in question.

Another big group of peculiarities as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [ae] for in ask, dance, path, etc., or Ie] for [ei] in made, day and some other.

The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and humour. Altho stands for although and thru for through. The examples below illustrate some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive.(For a more complete treatment you may refer to the monograph by A. D. Schweitzer).

 

British spelling American spelling

 

offence offense

 

cosy cozy

 

practice practise

 

jewellery jewelery

 

In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set expressions: spring and fall, the fall of the year are still in fairly common use. Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of Vautomatisation. The influence of American publicity is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the Americanism radio. The jargon of American film-advertising makes its way into British usage; i.e. of all time (in "the greatest film of all time"). The phrase is now firmly established as standard vocabulary and applied to subjects other than films.

The personal visits of writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms. The existing cases of difference between the two variants, are conveniently classified into:

1) Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'. The noun dude was originally a contemptuous nickname given by the inhabitants of the Western states to those of the Eastern states. Now there is no contempt intended in the word dude. It simply means 'a person who pays his way on a far ranch or camp'.

2) Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.

3) Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt,stones or some other material'. The derived meaning is in England 'the footway at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.

4) Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train to ride in a boat are.quite usual.

5) It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expression of disapproval in England than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politician in England means 'someone in polities', and is derogatory in the USA. Professor Shweitzer, pays special attention to phenomena differing in social norms of usage. E.g. balance in its lexico-semantic variant 'the remainder of anything' is substandard in British English and quite literary in America.

 

III. Accents and dialects

Accent and dialect are the subject in dialectology, sociolinguistics, linguistic geography and historical linguistics to which phonetics makes a contribution^ but which in themselves are not traditionally central to phonetics as such.

An important initial distinction needs to be introduced between 'accent' ^ and 'dialect'.

English is a language which has its own literature, its own grammar and its own dictionaries. It is also a language which is quite clearly not French, not German, not Chinese - or any other language. But to talk about the English language does actually mean something.

The point is that English -like all other languages - comes in many different forms, particularly when we think of the spoken language. Anyone can tell that the English of the British Isles is different from the English of the United States or Australia. The English of England is clearly different from the English of Scotland or Wales. The English of Lancashire is noticeably different from the English of Northumberland or Kent. And the English of Liverpool is not the same as the English of Manchester. There is very considerable regional variation within the English language as it is spoken in different parts of the British Isles and different parts of the world. The fact is that the way you speak English has a lot to do with where you are from - where you grew up and first learnt your language. If you grew up in Liverpool, your English will be different from the English of Manchester, which will in turn be different from the English of London, and so on.

People speak different kinds of English depending on what kind of social background they come from, so that some Liverpool speakers may be 'more Liverpudlian' than others. Some speakers may even be so 'posh' that it is not possible to tell where they come from at all.

These social and geographical kinds of language are known as dialects. Dialects, then, have to do with a speaker's social and geographical origins. It is important to emphasise that everybody speaks a dialect. Dialects are not peculiar or old-fashioned ways of speaking. They are not something which only other people have. Just as everybody comes from somewhere and has a particular kind of social back­ground, so everybody - speaks a dialect. А dialect is the particular combination of words, pronunciations and grammatical forms that you share with other people from your area and your social background, and that differs in certain ways from the combination used by people from other areas and backgrounds.

It is also important to point out that none of these combinations -none of these dialects - is linguistically superior in any way to any other. We may as individuals be rather fond of our own dialect. Dialects are not good or bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong - they are just different from one another, and it is the mark of a civilised society that it tolerates different dialects just as it tolerates different races, religions and sexes. American English is not better - or worse - than British English. The dialect of ВВС news­readers is not linguistically superior to the dialect of Bristol dockers or Suffolk farmworkers. There is nothing you can do or say in one dialect that you cannot do or say in another dialect.

Scientists who study dialects - dialectologists - start from the assumption that all dialects are linguistically equal. What dialectologists are interested in are differences between dialects.

 



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