1.
History of English
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The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon era developed into Middle English, the language as spoken between the Norman Conquest and the late 15th century. Another important influence came from the conquering Normans, who spoke a form of French called Old Norman, many Norman and French loanwords entered the language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system and the government. Early Modern English – the language used by Shakespeare – is dated from around 1500 and it incorporated many Renaissance-era loans from Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as borrowings from other European languages, including French, German and Dutch. Significant pronunciation changes in this included the ongoing Great Vowel Shift. Modern English proper, similar in most respects to that today, was in place by the late 17th century. Partially due to United States influence, English gradually took on the status of a lingua franca in the second half of 20th century. Old English consisted of a group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant, however, an input to Middle English came from the Anglian dialects. Global geographic variation between different English dialects and accents remains significant today, scots, a form of English traditionally spoken in parts of Scotland and the north of Ireland, is often regarded as a separate language. English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe, during the Roman Empire, most of the Germanic-inhabited area remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within the empire. Some Germanics served in the Roman military, and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri, Batavi, Germanic settlement and power expanded during the Migration Period, which saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Germanic settlement of Britain took place from the 5th to the 7th century, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that around the year 449 Vortigern, King of the Britons, invited the Angle kin to help repel invading Picts, in return for lands in the southeast of Britain. This led to waves of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, the languages spoken by the Germanic peoples who initially settled in Britain were part of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family. They consisted of dialects from the Ingvaeonic grouping, spoken mainly around the North Sea coast, in regions that lie within modern Denmark, north-west Germany, due to specific similarities between early English and Old Frisian, an Anglo-Frisian grouping is also identified. These dialects had most of the typical West Germanic features, including a significant amount of grammatical inflection, for instance, the predecessor of Modern English wine had been borrowed into early Germanic from the Latin vinum. The dialects spoken by the Germanic settlers developed into a language that would come to be called Anglo-Saxon, Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern English. Old English was first written using a script called the futhorc. The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf, the speech of eastern and northern parts of England was also subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century
2.
Australian English
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Australian English is a major variety of the English language, used throughout Australia. Although English has no status in the Constitution, Australian English is the countrys 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 variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British Isles. Australian English differs from other varieties of English in vocabulary, accent, pronunciation, register, grammar, the earliest form of Australian English was first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the colony of New South Wales. This first generation of children created a new dialect that was to become the language of the nation, the Australian-born children in the new colony were exposed to a wide range of dialects from all over the British Isles, in particular from Ireland and South East England. The native-born children of the created the new dialect from the speech they heard around them. Even when new settlers arrived, this new dialect was strong enough to blunt other patterns of speech, a quarter of the convicts were Irish. Many had been arrested in Ireland, and some in Great Britain, many, if not most, of the Irish spoke Irish and either no English at all, or spoke it poorly and rarely. There were other significant populations of convicts from non-English speaking part of Britain, such as the Scottish Highlands, anthony Burgess writes that Australian English may be thought of as a kind of fossilised Cockney of the Dickensian era. According to linguist Bruce Moore, the input of the various sounds that went into constructing the Australian accent was from south-east England. Some elements of Aboriginal languages have adopted by Australian English—mainly as names for places, flora and fauna. Many such are localised, and do not form part of general Australian use, while others, such as kangaroo, boomerang, budgerigar, wallaby, other examples are cooee and hard yakka. The former is used as a call, for attracting attention. Cooee is also a distance, if hes within cooee. Hard yakka means hard work and is derived from yakka, from the Jagera/Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region, also of Aboriginal origin is the word bung, from the Sydney pidgin English, meaning dead, with some extension to broken or useless. Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The best-known example is the capital, Canberra, named after a local word meaning meeting place
3.
Scottish English
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Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. The main, formal variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English, Scottish Standard English may be defined as the characteristic speech of the professional class and the accepted norm in schools. IETF language tag for Scottish Standard English is en-Scotland, Scottish Standard English is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with focused broad Scots at the other. Scottish English may be influenced to varying degrees by Scots, many Scots speakers separate Scots and Scottish English as different registers depending on social circumstances. Some speakers code switch clearly from one to the other while others style shift in a less predictable, generally there is a shift to Scottish English in formal situations or with individuals of a higher social status. Scottish English results from contact between Scots and the Standard English of England after the 17th century. Furthermore, the process was influenced by interdialectal forms, hypercorrections. Convention traces the influence of the English of England upon Scots to the 16th-century Reformation, printing arrived in London in 1476, but the first printing press was not introduced to Scotland for another 30 years. Texts such as the Geneva Bible, printed in English, were distributed in Scotland in order to spread Protestant doctrine. King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, since England was the larger and richer of the two Kingdoms, James moved his court to London in England. The poets of the court therefore moved south and began adapting the language, to this event McClure attributes he sudden and total eclipse of Scots as a literary language. The continuing absence of a Scots translation of the Bible meant that the translation of King James into English was used in worship in both countries, the Acts of Union 1707 amalgamated the Scottish and English Parliaments. However the church, educational and legal structures remained separate and this leads to important professional distinctions in the definitions of some words and terms. There are therefore words with precise definitions in Scottish English which have no place in English English or have a different definition. The speech of the classes in Scotland tends to conform to the grammatical norms of the written standard. Highland English is slightly different from the variety spoken in the Lowlands in that it is more phonologically, grammatically, similarly, the English spoken in the North-East of Scotland tends to follow the phonology and grammar of Doric. Although other dialects have merged non-intervocalic /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ʌ/ before /r/, many varieties contrast /o/ and /ɔ/ before /r/ so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently. /or/ and /ur/ are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour, an epenthetic vowel may occur between /r/ and /l/ so that girl and world are two-syllable words for some speakers
4.
Hong Kong English
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Hong Kong English is the dialect of the English language used in Hong Kong. The dialect is a result of Hong Kongs British oversea territory history, Hong Kong predominantly uses British spellings. Pronunciations and words are also predominantly British, although influences from American, Canadian and Australian English do exist as a result of western TV, Cantonese English, in theory, refers to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by native Hong Kongers and other Cantonese people. Overall, it is spoken by native Hong Kong language speakers. Therefore, although it is called Hong Kong English, it is not only spoken in Hong Kong, people who come from Macau, Guangzhou, or whose first language is Cantonese speak it. Since many of the characteristics of Hong Kong English are perceived as erroneous, the majority of Hong Kongers and Macau people with English proficiency tend to follow British English, American English or a mixture of the two. English is one of the languages in Hong Kong, and is used widely in the Government, academic circles, business. All road and government signs are bilingual and English is as valid as Chinese on legal. Accent and spelling preference may vary person to person, depending on the people they have interacted with. For instance, contractions and slang are not used, and many idioms are alien to Hong Kongers because the terms pertain more to the cultures of English-speaking countries, the falling English proficiency of local English language teachers has come under criticism. Since the handover, English in Hong Kong remains primarily a second language, consonants in Cantonese are all voiceless except nasals and semivowels, as a result, /d/, /z/, and /dʒ/ are pronounced, and. There is a tendency for /θ/ to undergo fronting and become /f/, so through may be pronounced as /fu/, however, this is variable, so some speakers pronounce thin as /θɪn/ while others pronounce it as /fin/. /ð/ tends to become unaspirated /t/, so though is /tou/ and this is reported to be very widespread, so this is nearly always /tis/, and brother is /ˈbata/. Most people do not distinguish voiced and voiceless word-final stops, making bat and bad homonyms. Some do not distinguish /ʃ/ and /s/, in Cantonese these sounds are allophonic and this new condition does not appear on nearly all the younger, or even the middle-aged Hongkongers. Corruption of /tr/ to /tʃ/ often occurs, chain and train are pronounced both /t͡sʰe̝ŋ/, but some speakers pronounce the word train as, like many places in Britain, Hong Kong English is non-rhotic, which means /ɹ/ is not pronounced except before a vowel. However, with the influence of American programmes shown in TV, Some people pronounce /ɹ/ as /w/, except when followed by a consonant other than g or k, rain sounds like wing, and free like fee. Some people pronounce /ɹ/ as /l/ before rounded vowels, road sounds like low, wh is pronounced as /w/, as in English English and most American dialects
5.
Canadian English
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Canadian English is the set of varieties of the English language native to Canada. A larger number,28 million people, reported using English as their dominant language, 82% of Canadians outside the province of Quebec reported speaking English natively, but within Quebec the figure was just 7. 7% as most of its residents are native speakers of Quebec French. Canadian English contains elements of British English and American English, as well as many Canadianisms, the construction of identities and English-language varieties across political borders is a complex social phenomenon. 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, Canadian English is the product of five waves of immigration and settlement over a period of more than two centuries. Studies on earlier forms of English in Canada are rare, yet connections with other work to historical linguistics can be forged, an overview of diachronic work on Canadian English, or diachronically-relevant work, is Dollinger. Until the 2000s, basically all commentators on the history of CanE have argued from the language-external history, an exception has been in the area of lexis, where Avis et als Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, offered real-time historical data though its quotations. Recently, historical linguists have started to study earlier Canadian English on historical linguistic data, dCHP-1 is now available in open access. )Most notably, Dollinger pioneered the historical corpus linguistic approach for English in Canada with CONTE and offers a developmental scenario for 18th and 19th century Ontario. Recently, Reuter, with a 19th-century newspaper corpus from Ontario, has confirmed the scenario laid out in Dollinger, Canadian spelling of the English language combines British and American conventions. Words such as realize and paralyze are usually spelled with -ize or -yze rather than -ise or -yse, french-derived words that in American English end with -or and -er, such as color or center, often retain British spellings. While the United States uses the Anglo-French spelling defense and offense, some nouns, as in British English, take -ice while matching verbs take -ise – for example, practice and licence are nouns while practise and license are the respective corresponding verbs. Canadian spelling sometimes retains the British practice of doubling consonants when adding suffixes to words even when the syllable is not stressed. Compare Canadian travelled, counselling, and marvellous to American traveled, counseling, in American English, such consonants are only doubled when stressed, thus, for instance, controllable and enthralling are universal. In other cases, Canadians and Americans differ from British spelling, such as in the case of nouns like curb and tire, Canadian spelling conventions can be partly explained by Canadas trade history. For instance, the British spelling of the word cheque probably relates to Canadas once-important ties to British financial institutions, Canadas political history has also had an influence on Canadian spelling. Canadas first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, once directed the Governor General of Canada to issue an order-in-council directing that government papers be written in the British style, a contemporary reference for formal Canadian spelling is the spelling used for Hansard transcripts of the Parliament of Canada. Many Canadian editors, though, use the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, often along with the chapter on spelling in Editing Canadian English, and, throughout part of the 20th century, some Canadian newspapers adopted American spellings, for example, color as opposed to the British-based colour. Some of the most substantial historical spelling data can be found in Dollinger, the use of such spellings was the long-standing practice of the Canadian Press perhaps since that news agencys inception, but visibly the norm prior to World War II. The practice of dropping the letter u in such words was also considered a labour-saving technique during the days of printing in which movable type was set manually
6.
Welsh English
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Welsh English refers to the dialects of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people. The dialects are influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the words and grammar, a variety of accents are found across Wales, including those of north Wales, the Cardiff dialect. In the east and south east, it has influenced by West Country dialects due to immigration, while in North Wales. The vowel of cat /æ/ is pronounced as a more central near-open front unrounded vowel, in Cardiff, bag is pronounced with a long vowel. In Powys, a pronunciation resembling its New Zealand and South African analogue is sometimes heard, the uncertainty over which vowel to use often leads to hypercorrections involving the schwa, e. g. programme is often pronounced /ˈproː. e. A lowered close-mid front rounded vowel Most other long monophthongs are similar to that of Received Pronunciation, but words with the RP /əʊ/ are sometimes pronounced as, examples of this include the use by some speakers of the tag question isnt it. Regardless of the form of the statement and the placement of the subject. Fed up, I am or Running on Friday, he is, in South Wales the word where may often be expanded to where to, as in the question, Where to is your Mam. The word tidy has been described as One of the most over-worked Wenglish words and can have a range of meanings including - fine or splendid, long, decent, a tidy swill is a wash involving at least face and hands. Spellings are almost identical to other dialects of British English, minor differences occur with words descended from Welsh that are not anglicised unlike in many other dialects of English. In Wales, the valley is always cwm, not the Anglicised version coombe, as with other dialects of British English, -ise endings are preferred, realise instead of realize. David Crystal, who grew up in Holyhead, claims that the dominance of English in Wales is little different from its spread elsewhere in the world. While other British English accents have affected the accents of English in Wales, in particular, Scouse and Brummie accents have both had extensive Anglo-Welsh input through migration, although in the former case, the influence of Anglo-Irish is better known. Anglo-Welsh literature and Welsh writing in English are terms used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers and it has been recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century. A rival claim for the first Welsh writer to use English creatively is made for the poet, John Clanvowe. In the UK TV series Thomas & Friends, the Narrow Gauge Engines Skarloey, Rheneas, Sir Handel, Peter Sam and Duke speak with Welsh Dialect, the Welsh comedy-drama series Stella is set in a fictional South Wales valley where Welsh English can be heard throughout. – Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects from across the UK on the British Librarys Sounds Familiar website Talk Tidy, John Edwards, Author of books and CDs on the subject Wenglish
7.
Kenyan English
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Kenyan English is a local dialect of the English language spoken by several communities and individuals in Kenya, and among some Kenyan expatriates in other countries. The dialect contains features unique to it that were derived from local Bantu languages, the English language was introduced to Kenya along with Great Britains colonisation of Kenya in 1895, when the East Africa Protectorate was set up before becoming a colony in 1920. Swahili had been established as a language in most parts of the Swahili Coast at the time of colonization. The British reduced the influence of Swahili and made English the medium of instruction in Kenyan schools, English remained in official use after Kenyas independence on 12 December 1963. The official languages of Kenya are English and Swahili, with the latter also recognised as the national language, like English in southern England, Kenyan English is non-rhotic. The trap-bath split does not exist in Kenyan English, a good phonological indicator of Kenyan English would be the behaviour of the vowels in kit and bath. The kit vowel would generally be pronounced with the close, front /ɪ/, the bath vowel would generally be pronounced with an /ɑː/ sound. The /aɪ/ as in ride is generally pronounced as /ɑɪ/, the behaviour of e sounds varies in Kenyan English. The vowels in such as face, made, ate and pay are monophthongised from /eɪ/ to /e/. The vowel sound in such as bed or men does not change from /ɛ/. The pronunciation of the sound in a word such as the varies. The behaviour of u sounds also varies in Kenyan English, the pronunciation of the vowel sound in words such as mud, gun or us is generally open and not fixed, as some would pronounce the usual /ʌ/, while others would pronounce /ɑː/ or /ɑ/. Words that end with -wer and -yer are generally pronounced with the /w/ and /j/ included respectively. As a result, the regular /. ər/ and /ɪ. ər/ sounds in several dialects of English would be pronounced as /wɑ/ and /jɑ/, or in some cases /. ɑ/ and /ɪ. ɑ/, respectively. For example, the fewer would be pronounced as /fjuːwɑ/ or /fjuː. ɑ/ instead of /fjuː. ər/. Mispronunciation of English words due to the interference of local Kenyan languages is known in the country as shrubbing. It has been noted that shrubbing is less likely with upper-middle and upper class citizens, or citizens who do not speak indigenous Kenyan languages and learned English as a first language. Therefore, people living in rural areas and/or those who learned English as a language and are likely to have a heavier accent are more likely to shrub
8.
English-speaking world
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Approximately 330 to 360 million people speak English as their first language. More than half of live in the United States, followed by some 55 million in England. English is the third largest language by number of speakers, after Mandarin. Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly, from 470 million to more than 1 billion, david Crystal calculates that non-native speakers as of 2003 outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. When combining native and non-native speakers, English is the most widely spoken language worldwide, there are six large countries with a majority of native English speakers that are sometimes grouped under the term Anglosphere. They are, in descending order of English speakers, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, other substantial communities of native speakers are found in South Africa, and Nigeria. Also there are countries where in a part of the territory English became a language, e. g. Colombias San Andrés y Providencia. This was a result of the influence of British colonization in the area, English is one of the eleven official languages that are given equal status in South Africa. It is also the language in current dependent territories of Australia and of the United States. Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been official status by 32 of the 50 state governments. It is, by treaty, the official language for aeronautical. English is one of the languages of the United Nations and many other international organizations. In 2012, excluding native speakers,38 percent of Europeans consider that they can speak English, in publishing, English literature predominates considerably with 28 percent of all books published in the world and 30 percent of web content in 2011. This increasing use of the English language globally has had a impact on many other languages, leading to language shift and even language death. English itself has more open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole. Variation in Nonnative Varieties of English, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Census 2011, Key Statistics for Northern Ireland December 2012, language in England and Wales,2011. Language Use in the United States,2011, Population by mother tongue and age groups,2011 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories
9.
Bermudian English
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Bermudian English is a regional accent of English found in Bermuda, a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic. Standard English is used in settings and in writing, while vernacular Bermudian English is spoken on more casual occasions. The Bermudian accent began to develop following settlement in the early 17th century, to Americans, it sounds slightly British, while the British find it more American. Bermudian English has been called one of the most severely underresearched varieties of English and it primarily shows a mixture of traits typical of British English and American English, and is generally classified as a form of American English. Azorean Portuguese has also impacted on Bermudian English as a result of immigration since the 1840s, the accents most evident characteristic is a variation in letter/sound assignment. The use of and is interchangeable and vowels are often elongated
10.
Jamaican Patois
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It exhibits a gradation between more conservative creole forms and forms virtually identical to Standard English. Jamaicans refer to their language as patois, the term may have arisen from the notion of a clumsy or rough manner of speaking. Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are different from English, despite heavy use of English words or derivatives. Jamaican Patois displays similarities to the pidgin and creole languages of West Africa, significant Jamaican-speaking communities exist among Jamaican expatriates in Miami, New York City, Toronto, Hartford, Washington, D. C. Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, also London, Birmingham, Manchester, a mutually intelligible variety is found in San Andrés y Providencia Islands, Colombia, brought to the island by descendants of Jamaican Maroons in the 18th century. Mesolectal forms are similar to very basilectal Belizean Kriol, Jamaican Patois exists mostly as a spoken language. Although standard British English is used for most writing in Jamaica, Claude McKay published his book of Jamaican poems Songs of Jamaica in 1912. Patois and English are frequently used for stylistic contrast in new forms of internet writing, accounts of basilectal Jamaican Patois postulate around 21 phonemic consonants and between 9 and 16 vowels. ^2 The palatal stops, and are considered phonemic by some accounts, for the latter interpretation, their appearance is included in the larger phenomenon of phonetic palatalization. Examples of palatalization include, /kiuu/ → → /ɡiaad/ → → /piaa + piaa/ → → Voiced stops are implosive whenever in the onset of prominent syllables so that /biit/ is pronounced and /ɡuud/ as. The span of a command of the continuum generally corresponds to the variety of social situations he encounters. The tense/aspect system of Jamaican Patois is fundamentally unlike that of English, there are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding to English -ed -t. There are two particles, en and a. These are not verbs but simply invariant particles that cannot stand alone like the English to be and their function also differs from the English. According to Bailey, the category is marked by /a~da~de/. Alleyne claims that /a~da/ marks the progressive and that the aspect is unmarked but by its accompaniment with words such as always, usually. Some varieties of Jamaican Patois do not have the gender or case distinction, other languages, such as Portuguese and Italian, make a similar distinction. The vast majority of persons are speakers of Jamaican, widely referred to as Patwa
11.
Manx English
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Manx English, or Anglo-Manx, is the historic dialect of English spoken on the Isle of Man, though today in decline. Early Anglo-Manx contained words of Gaelic and Norse origin, but also came to be influenced by the speech of Liverpool and Lancashire in North West England. The Manx historian and linguist A. W. Moore noted that the dialect varied slightly from parish to parish but that the turns of phrase. Moores A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect and W. W, gills Manx Dialect Words and Phrases document the high-water mark of this dialect. Brown was one of the first authors to use the Manx dialect in his work, in the early 20th century, poems and plays in the dialect were written by Cushag, J. J. Kneen, Christopher R. Shimmin and Juan Noa. In the mid-20th century, Kathleen Faragher wrote poetry in the dialect, immigration and cultural influences from elsewhere, particularly the United Kingdom, have caused the disappearance of the dialect, with the exception of a few words and phrases. Some of the following terms surviving from the original Anglo-Manx dialect are still in use today. The task of identifying dialectal usage is complicated by the large cross-over between Manx Gaelic, idiomatic usage and technical/administrative terms such as advocate and deemster, across – The United Kingdom, referred to as across the water. Hes got a house at him Aye – Yes Boy – Common address from one male to another, originally an unmarried male. Hey. Bumbee – Bumblebees, which children were told were bad fairies, comeover – A non-native person living in the Isle of Man. Down North - In contrast to the English Up North, Moore records a usage in the other direction - He came up to Peel from the Norss Fairy Flower – Red Campion, Silene dioica. Feller/Fella – A man/mate, common to other dialects, but much more frequent in Anglo-Manx, for – towards, to, at the period of, wherefore, the reason why, in order to. Gilpin – Young fish of indeterminate species, especially Callig, herrin – Herring Himself – The master of the house, the husband. Jinny Nettle – the stinging nettle, Urtica dioica, lhergy – a hill-slope, or high wasteland. Goin down the lhergy means going downhill in life Little People – Fairies, Mann – the Isle of Man, e. g. Gaut made it, and all in Mann Manx and Manks – Pertaining to, or originating from the Isle of Man. Manxie – A Manx person or a Manx cat, mark – A fishing-ground distinguished by landmarks. Middlin – Tolerable, an equivalent of the Manx, castreycair, neck – impudence, e. g. Oh, the neck of him. Skeet – News, gossip, and also to take a look at something, direct usage of Manx word skeet or steet
