Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire, whereas the adjective 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[7] and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language.
Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English,[8] as is the case for English used by European Union institutions.[9] In China, both British English and American English are taught.[10] The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries.[11][12][13]
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisiandialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic—the insular variety of Continental Celtic, which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages (Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages, influence on English was notably limited. However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages.[14]
Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication).
The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like the Germanic schwein) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans.[15] Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef.[16]
Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary.
The team are[a] sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC, in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio".[19] When discussing the award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated:
that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country, or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink".[20]
English regional
This section needs expansion with: details about other different regional accents and dialects. You can help by making an edit requestadding to it. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.(April 2024)
Most people in Britain speak with a regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation[21] (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and "BBC English"[22]), that is essentially region-less.[23][24] It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period.[24] It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners.[24]
In the South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand,[25] although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated.
Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney.[26] Immigrants to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren.[27] Notably Multicultural London English, a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London.[28][29][30]
Since the mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian. It is the last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby, five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by the West Scottish accent.
Features
Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect.
T-stopping
Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop[ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in a process called T-glottalisation. National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no[ʔ]" and bottle of water being heard as "bo[ʔ]le of wa[ʔ]er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later, while often has all but regained /t/.[31] Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p, as in pa[ʔ]er and k as in ba[ʔ]er.[31]
R-dropping
In most areas of England and Wales, outside the West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity.
In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R. It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar, where the R is not pronounced.
Diphthongisation
British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between.
North
Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in the traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne, 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'.
South
Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with a greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ].
People in groups
Dropping a morphological grammatical number, in collective nouns, is stronger in British English than North American English.[32] This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people.
The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment:
Police are investigating the theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn.[33]
A football team can be treated likewise:
Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City.[34]
This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen, a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813:
All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes.[35]
However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used.
The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence.
Negatives
Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives. Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence.[36] While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows the idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb.[37]
Standard British English
Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or the Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways.
The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over a century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English.[38] Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England.[39] Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in the 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire, is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents.
For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth 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 in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of a lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence.[40] Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate.[17]
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. 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 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 that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house.[43]
Relationship with Commonwealth English
British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English.[44] Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries, though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia, Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, and South Africa. It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia, and in parts of Africa. Canadian English is based on British English, but has more influence from American English, often grouped together due to their close proximity.[45] British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings.[46]
^ In British English collective nouns may be either singular or plural, according to context. An example provided by Partridge is: " 'The committee of public safety is to consider the matter', but 'the committee of public safety quarrel regarding their next chairman' ...Thus...singular when...a unit is intended; plural when the idea of plurality is predominant". BBC television news and The Guardian style guide follow Partridge but other sources, such as BBC Online and The Times style guides, recommend a strict noun-verb agreement with the collective noun always governing the verb conjugated in the singular. BBC radio news, however, insists on the plural verb. Partridge, Eric (1947) Usage and Abusage: "Collective Nouns". Allen, John (2003) BBC News style guide, page 31.
Citations
^"English". IANA language subtag registry. 16 October 2005. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
^"United Kingdom". IANA language subtag registry. 16 October 2005. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
^McSmith, Andy. Dialect researchers given a "canny load of chink" to sort "pikeys" from "chavs" in regional accents, The Independent, 1 June 2007. Page 20
^BBC English because this was originally the form of English used on radio and television, although a wider variety of accents can be heard these days.
^Department of Education and Science (Summer 1980). Report by HM Inspectors on Educational Provision by the Inner London Educational Authority (Report). H.M. Stationery Office. p. 4. Archived from the original on 19 November 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2023. A survey of all school pupils conducted by ILEA's Research and Statistics Division has established that one in ten children in inner London speak English as a second language; ILEA pupils have over 125 different mother tongues, far more than any other LEA in England and more than in New York.
^Lindsey, Geoff (2019). English after RP: standard British pronunciation today. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN978-3-030-04356-8.
^Strycharczuk, P., López-Ibáñez, M., Brown, G., & Leemann, A. (2020). "General Northern English. Exploring regional variation in the North of England with machine learning". Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 545883.
У этого термина существуют и другие значения, см. Прощание славянки (значения). Прощание славянки Песня Дата выпуска 1912 Жанр марш Язык русский Композитор Василий Агапкин Медиафайлы на Викискладе Марш в исполнении Оркестра береговой охраны США, 2006 год «Проща́ние сл...
SwimmingAlbum studio karya Mac MillerDirilis03 Agustus 2018 (2018-08-03)Direkam2016–2018Studio Ameraycan (Hollywood) The Ble Compound Home (Los Angeles) Conway (Hollywood) Dubway (New York City) Estudios del Sur (Santiago) ID Labs (Pittsburgh) Island Sound (Honolulu) Legacy (Dallas) Room 719 (Burbank) Studio X (Seattle) Genre Hip hop[1] jazz rap Durasi58:39Label REMember Music Warner Bros. Produser Alexander Spit Cardo DJ Dahi Eric G ID Labs J. Cole Jon Brion Mac Miller Nos...
Cet article est une ébauche concernant un coureur cycliste belge. Vous pouvez partager vos connaissances en l’améliorant (comment ?). Pour plus d’informations, voyez le projet cyclisme. Georges ClaesInformationsNom court Жорж Клас ст.Naissance 7 janvier 1920BoutersemDécès 14 mars 1994 (à 74 ans)LouvainNationalité belgeÉquipes professionnelles 1939-1941Dilecta-Wolber1942Thompson1942-1943Helyett-Hutchinson1944Trialoux-Wolber1946-1948Rochet-Dunlop1947-1952Thompson...
College basketball tournament 2013 Big Ten men's basketball tournamentClassificationDivision ISeason2012–13Teams12SiteUnited CenterChicago, IllinoisChampionsOhio State (5th title)Winning coachThad Matta (4th title)MVPAaron Craft (Ohio State)TelevisionBTN, ESPN, ESPN2, and CBSBig Ten men's basketball tournaments← 20122014 → 2012–13 Big Ten Conference men's basketball standings vte Conf Overall Team W L PCT W L PCT No. 4 India...
Dr. jur.Werner MilchWerner Milch, back to camera, confers with his brother and client Erhard Milch, during the latter's trial at Nuernberg.Born(1903-11-15)15 November 1903Died17 November 1984(1984-11-17) (aged 81)OccupationLawyerRelativesErhard Milch (brother)AwardsKnight's Cross of the Iron Cross Werner Milch (15 November 1903 – 17 November 1984) was a German lawyer. Milch was born in Wilhelmshaven, the son of Anton Milch, a Jewish pharmacist[1] who served in the Imperial Germ...
У этого термина существуют и другие значения, см. Игра в шахматы. Эмма Лёвенштамм Игра в шахматы: Ленин с Гитлером — Вена 1909[1]. 1909 или 1930-е годы (?) англ. A Chess Game: Lenin with Hitler — Vienna 1909 Бумага, офорт. 38,1 × 50,8 см Частное собрание, после аукциона Mullock’s (19 апреля 2011...
Institut Teknologi dan Sains Nahdlatul Ulama PasuruanDidirikan31 Januari 2018Afiliasi keagamaanNahdlatul UlamaRektorAbu Amar Bustomi, M.Si.AlamatJl. Raya Warung Dowo Utara Pohjentrek, Pasuruan, 67171, Indonesia7°41′08″S 112°52′53″E / 7.685538°S 112.881303°E / -7.685538; 112.881303KampusSwastaSitus webwww.itsnupasuruan.ac.idInstitut Teknologi dan Sains Nahdlatul Ulama Pasuruan atau ITSNU Pasuruan merupakan salah satu perguruan tinggi swasta Islam yang berada...
Le informazioni riportate non sono consigli medici e potrebbero non essere accurate. I contenuti hanno solo fine illustrativo e non sostituiscono il parere medico: leggi le avvertenze. Malattia di PickRM nella malattia di PickMalattia rara Specialitàneurologia Classificazione e risorse esterne (EN)OMIM172700 MeSHD020774 MedlinePlus000744 eMedicine1135504 SinonimiMorbo di Pick EponimiArnold Pick Modifica dati su Wikidata · Manuale La malattia di Pick, o morbo di Pick (da non confonders...
Latter-day Saints in the Mariana Islands The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in GuamYigoBarrigadaTalisayLDS Church meetinghouses and templeRed = Yigo Guam Temple andadjacent meetinghouseGreen = Stake Center Purple = Other meetinghouseAreaAsia NorthMembers2,547 (2022)[1]Stakes1Wards4Branches1Total Congregations[2]5Missions1Temples1 Family History Centers2[3] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Northern Mariana IslandsMembers and missionari...
Национальное аэрокосмическое агентство Азербайджана Штаб-квартира Баку, ул. С. Ахундова, AZ 1115 Локация Азербайджан Тип организации Космическое агентство Руководители Директор: Натиг Джавадов Первый заместитель генерального директора Тофик Сулейманов Основание Осн...
2012 single by MedinaHappeningSingle by Medinafrom the album Forever Released14 September 2012Recorded2012GenreElectropop, R&BLength4:04 (Album Version)3:09 (Radio Edit)LabelLabelmade, EMISongwriter(s)Medina Valbak, Rasmus Stabell, Jeppe Federspiel, Ross GolanProducer(s)ProvidersMedina singles chronology Hvad der sker her (2012) Happening (2012) Har du glemt (2012) Happening is a song by Danish singer Medina from her second English studio album Forever. The song is the English version of ...
North American professional baseball league MLB redirects here. For the hierarchy of professional baseball leagues affiliated with this league, see Minor League Baseball. For other uses, see MLB (disambiguation). Major League BaseballCurrent season, competition or edition: 2024 Major League Baseball seasonSportBaseballFoundedNational League (NL), 1876; 148 years ago (1876)[1]American League (AL), 1901; 123 years ago (1901)[2]National Agreeme...
Bridge in Florence, Italy For other uses, see Ponte Vecchio (disambiguation). Ponte VecchioCoordinates43°46′05″N 11°15′11″E / 43.76799°N 11.25316°E / 43.76799; 11.25316CrossesArnoLocaleFlorence, ItalyCharacteristicsDesignClosed-spandrel segmental stone arch bridgeLongest span30 metres (98 ft)Location The Ponte Vecchio (Italian pronunciation: [ˈponte ˈvɛkkjo];[1] Old Bridge)[2] is a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arc...