Foreword
Every linguistic communication allows different sorts of fluctuations: geographical or territorial, possibly the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken signifier of the standard national linguistic communication and others. It is the national linguistic communication of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some states of Canada. It is the official linguistic communication of Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial discrepancies of a national linguistic communication and local idioms. Discrepancies of a linguistic communication are regional assortments of a standard literary linguistic communication characterized by some minor distinctive features in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their ain literary norms.
Standard English & # 8211 ; the official linguistic communication of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the imperativeness, the wireless and the telecasting and spoken by educated people may be defined as that signifier of English which is current and literary, well unvarying and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms belonging to assorted local idioms. Local idioms are assortments of the English linguistic communication peculiar to some territories and holding no normalized literary signifier. Regional assortments possessing a literary signifier are called discrepancies. Dialects are said to undergo rapid alterations under the force per unit area of Standard English taught at schools and the address wonts cultivated by wireless, telecasting and film.
The differences between the English linguistic communication every bit spoken in Britain. The USA, Australia and Canada are instantly noticeable in the field of phonetics. However these differentiations are confined to the articulatory-acoustic features of some phonemes, to some differences in the usage of others and to the differences in the beat and modulation of address. The few phonemes characteristic of American pronunciation and foreigner to British literary norms can as a regulation be observed in British idioms.
AMERICAN ENGLISH
The assortment of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term discrepancy or assortment appears most appropriate for several grounds. American English can non be called a Defense Intelligence Agency & # 173 ; lect although it is a regional assortment, because it has a literary normalized signifier called Standard American, whereas by definition given above a idiom has no literary signifier. Neither is it a separate linguistic communication, as some American writers, like H. L. Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its ain. From the lexical point of position one shall hold to cover merely with a heterogenous set of Americanisms.
An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set look peculiar to the English linguistic communication as spoken in the USA. E.g. cooky
‘a biscuit ‘ ; frame house
‘a house consisting of a skeleton of lumber, with boards or herpes zosters laid on ‘ ; frame-up
‘a staged or preconcerted jurisprudence instance ‘ ; conjecture
‘think ‘ ; shop
‘shop ‘ .
A general and comprehensive description of the American discrepancy is given in Professor Shweitzer ‘s monograph. An of import facet of his intervention is the differentiation made between Americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those bing in low colloquial and slang. The differ & # 173 ; ence between the American and British literary norm is non systematic.
The American discrepancy of the English linguistic communication differs from British English in pronunciation, some minor characteristics of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will cover with the latter.1
Our dainty & # 173 ; ment will be chiefly historical.
Talking about the historic causes of these divergences it is necessary to advert that American English is based on the linguistic communication imported to the new continent at the clip of the first colonies, that is on the Eng & # 173 ; lish of the seventeenth century. The first settlements were founded in 1607, so that the first colonisers were coevalss of Shakespeare, Spenser and Mil & # 173 ; ton. Wordss which have died out in Britain, or changed their significance may last in the USA. Thus, I guess
was used by Chaucer for I
think.
For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and, was influenced by the new milieus. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar zoology and vegetation. Hence bull-frog
‘a big toad ‘ , moose
( the American moose ) , oppossum, raccoon
( an American animate being related to the bears ) , for animate beings ; and maize, hickory,
etc. for workss. They besides had to happen names for the new conditions of economic life: back-country
‘districts non yet thickly populated ‘ , back-settlement, back countries
‘the forest beyond the cleared state ‘ , frontiersman
‘a inhabitant in the back countries ‘ .
The resistance of any two lexical systems among the discrepancies described is of great lingual and heuristic value because it furnishes ample informations for detecting the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon the vocabu & # 173 ; lary. American political vocabulary shows this point really decidedly: absentee vote
‘voting by mail ‘ , dark Equus caballus
‘a campaigner nominated out of the blue and non known to his electors ‘ , to gerrymander
‘to arrange and distort the electoral procedure to bring forth a favourable consequence in the involvements of a peculiar party or campaigner ‘ , all-outer
‘an ace of decisive meas & # 173 ; ures ‘ .
Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian idioms or from Spanish penetrated really shortly non merely into British English but besides into several other linguistic communications, Russian non excluded, and so became international. They are: canoe, mocassin, squaw, hatchet, wigwam,
etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face
and the. like, taken from Indian linguistic communications. The Spanish adoptions like cafeteria, mustang, spread, Sombrero,
etc. are really familiar to the talkers of many European linguistic communications. It is merely by force of wont that linguists still include these words among the specific characteristics of American English.
As to the place name, for case, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah
( all names of Indian folk ) , or other names of towns, rivers and provinces named by Indian words, it must be borne in head that in all coun & # 173 ; attempts of the universe towns, rivers and the similar show in their names hintsof
the earlier dwellers of the land in inquiry.
Another large group of distinctive features as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific characteristics of pronunciation, emphasis or spelling criterions, such as [ ae ] for in ask, dance, way,
etc. , or Ie ] for [ ei ] in made, twenty-four hours
and some other.
The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British opposite number, in other respects merely different. The suffix -our
is spelled -or,
so that armour
and wit
are the American discrepancies of armor
and temper. Altho
bases for although
and thru
for through.
The tabular array below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no agencies exhaustive. For a more complete intervention the reader is referred to the monograph by A. D. Schweitzer:
British spelling American spelling
offense discourtesy
cozy cosy
pattern practise
bondage bondage
jewelry jewelery
going going
In the class of clip with the development of the modern agencies of communicating the lexical differences between the two discrepancies show a inclination to diminish. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in American address. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decennaries ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by footings once considered as specifically British. It was, for case, customary to contrast the English word fall
with the American autumn.
In world both words are used in both states, merely fall
is slightly more elevated, while in England the word autumn
is now rare in literary usage, though found in some idioms and lasting in fit looks: spring and autumn, the autumn of the twelvemonth
are still in reasonably common usage.
Cinema and Television are likely the most of import channels for the transition of Americanisms into the linguistic communication of Britain and other linguistic communications as good: the Germans adopted the word adolescent
and the Gallic speak of Vautomatisation.
The influence of American promotion is besides a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term radio
is replaced by the Americanism wireless.
The slang of American film-advertising makes its manner into British use ; i.e. of all clip
( in “ the greatest movie of all clip ” ) . The phrase is now steadfastly established as standard vocabulary and applied to topics other than movies.
The personal visits of authors and bookmans to the USA and all signifiers of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.
The bing instances of difference between the two discrepancies, are con & # 173 ; veniently classified into:
1 ) Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in
a film where you can see the movie without acquiring out of your auto ‘ or ‘a store where automobilists buy things remaining in the auto ‘ ; fellow spread
‘a fake spread used as a summer abode for holiday-makers from the metropoliss ‘ . The noun fellow
was originally a disdainful moniker given by the dwellers of the Western provinces to those of the Eastern provinces. Now there is no disdain intended in the word fellow.
It merely means ‘a individual who pays his manner on a far spread or cantonment ‘ .
2 ) Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, sugarcoat, letter box, films, braces, truck
in the USA and Sn, Sweets, pillar-box
( or letter-box ) , images
or flicks, braces
and lorry
in England.
3 ) Cases where the semantic construction of a partly tantamount word is different. The word paving,
for illustration, means in the first topographic point ‘covering of the street or the floor and the similar made of asphalt, rocks or some other stuff ‘ . The derived significance is in England ‘the footway at the side of the route ‘ . The Americans use the noun pavement
for this, while paving
with them means ‘the roadway ‘ .
4 ) Cases where otherwise tantamount words are different in distribu & # 173 ; tion. The verb drive
in Standard English is largely combined with such nouns as a Equus caballus, a bike,
more seldom they say to sit on a coach.
In Amer & # 173 ; ican English combinations like a drive on the train to sit in a boat
are.quite usual.
5 ) It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American Eng & # 173 ; lish with some difference in emotional and stylistic coloring. Nasty,
for illustration, is a much milder look of disapproval in England than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the nineteenth century. Politician
in England means ‘someone in civil orders ‘ , and is derogative in the USA. Professor Shweitzer, pays particular attending to phenomena dif & # 173 ; fering in societal norms of use. E.g. balance in its lexico-semantic vari & # 173 ; ant ‘the balance of anything ‘ is substandard in British English and rather literary in America.
6 ) Last but non least, there may be a pronounced difference in frequence features. Therefore, time-table
which occurs in American English really seldom, yielded its topographic point to agenda.
This inquiry of different frequence distribution is besides of paramount importance if we wish to look into the morphological distinctive features of the American discrepancy. Practically talking the same forms and agencies of word-formation are used in coining neologies in both discrepancies. Merely the frequence ob & # 173 ; served in both instances may be different. Some of the postfixs more often used in American English are: –
& # 1077 ; & # 1077 ;
( conscript N
‘a immature adult male about to be enlisted ‘ ) , -ette – tambourmajorette
‘one of the miss drummers in forepart of a emanation ‘ ) , -dom
and -ster,
as in runabout
‘motor-car for long journeys by route ‘ or gangste
rdom.
American slang uses alongside the traditional 1s besides a few specific theoretical accounts, such asverb stem-1- -er+adverb root
+ — Er:
e.g. opener-upper
‘the first point on the programme ‘ and winder-upper
‘the last point ‘ , severally. It besides possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes non used in literary Colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie/sy,
as in coppo
‘police & # 173 ; adult male ‘ , fatty
‘a fat adult male ‘ , bossaroo
‘boss ‘ , chapsie
‘fellow ‘ .
The tendency to shorten words and to utilize initial abbreviations is even more marked than in the British discrepancy. New mintages are ceaseless & # 173 ; ly introduced in advertizements, in the imperativeness, in mundane conversation ; shortly they fade out and are replaced by the newest creative activities. Ringing Lardner, really popular in the 30 ‘s, makes one of his characters, a infirmary nurse, repeatedly use two puzzling abbreviations: G.F. and P. F. ; at last the patient asks her to unclutter the enigma.
“ What about Roy Stewart? ” asked the adult male in bed.
“ Oh, he ‘s the chap I was stating you about, ” said Miss Lyons.“ He ‘s my G.
F B. F ”
“ Possibly I ‘m a D.F. non to cognize, but would yoa state me what a B.F. and G.F. are? ”
“ Well, you are dense, are n’t you? ” said Miss Lyons. “ A G.F. , that ‘s a miss friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that ”
The phrases boy friend
and miss friend,
now widely used everyplace, originated in the USA. So it is an Americanism in the wider significance of the term, i.e. an Americanism “ by right of birth ” , whereas in the above definition it was defined Americanism synchronically every bit lexical units peculiar to the English linguistic communication as spoken in the USA. Particularly common in American English are verbs with the hanging postpositive. They say that in Hollywood you ne’er run into
a adult male: you meet up
with him, you do non analyze
a topic but survey up
on it. In British English similar buildings serve to add a new significance.
With words possessing several structural discrepancies it may go on that some are more frequent in one state and the others in another. Therefore, amid
and toward,
for illustration, are more frequently used in the States and amidst
and towards
in Great Britain.
A well-known humorist G. Mikes goes every bit far as to state: “ It was decid & # 173 ; ed about two hundred old ages ago that English should be the linguistic communication spoken in the United States. It is non known, nevertheless, why this determination has non been carried out. ” In his book “ How to Scrape Skies ” he gives legion illustrations to exemplify this proposition: “ You must be utmost & # 173 ; ly careful refering the names of certain articles. If you ask for Sus & # 173 ; penders in a adult male ‘s store, you receive a brace of braces, if you ask for a brace of bloomerss, you receive a brace of pants and should you inquire for a brace of braces, you receive a fagot expression. It has to be mentioned that although a lift is called an lift in the United States, when hitch-hiking, you do non inquire for an lift, you ask for a lift.
There is some confusion about the word flat.
A level in America is called an flat ; what they call a flat is a puncture in your Sur ( or as they spell it, tyre ) . Consequently the notice: flats fixed
does non indi & # 173 ; cate an estate agent where they are traveling to repair you up with a level, but a garage where they are equipped to repair a puncture. ” Challenging the common statement that there is no such thing as the American state, he says: “ They do so be. They have produced the American fundamental law, the American manner of life, the amusing strips in their newspapers: .they have their national game, baseball & # 8212 ; which is cricket played with a strong American speech pattern & # 8212 ; and they have a national linguistic communication, wholly their ain. ”
This is of class an hyperbole, but a really important one. It con & # 173 ; houses the fact that there is a difference between the two discrepancies to be reckoned with. Although non sufficiently great to justify American Eng & # 173 ; lish the position of an independent linguistic communication, it is considerable plenty to do a mixture of discrepancies sound unnatural, so that pupils of English should be warned against this danger.
Local Dialects in the USA
The English linguistic communication in the USA is characterized by comparative uniformity throughout the state. One can go three 1000 stat mis without meeting any but the slightest idiom differences. However, regional fluctuations in address doubtless exist and they have been observed and recorded by a figure of research workers. The following three major belts of idioms have so far been identified, each with its ain characteristic characteristics: Northern, Midland and South & # 173 ; ern, Midland being in bend divided into North Midland and South Mid & # 173 ; land.
The differences in pronunciation between American idioms are most evident, but they rarely interfere with apprehension. Differentiations in grammar are scarce. The differences in vocabulary are instead numer & # 173 ; ous, but they are easy to pick up.
Cf. , for example, Eastern New England sour-milk cheese, Inland Northern Dutch cheese, New York City pot cheese for Standard American/cottage cheese (
& # 1090 ; & # 1074 ; & # 1086 ; & # 1088 ; & # 1086 ; & # 1075 ;
) .
The American linguist F. Emerson maintains that American Eng & # 173 ; lish had non had clip to interrupt up into widely diverse idioms and he believes that in the class of clip the American idioms might eventually go about every bit distinguishable as the idioms in Britain. He is surely great & # 173 ; ly mistaken. In modern times dialect divergency can non increase. On the contrary, in the United States, as elsewhere, the national linguistic communication is be givening to pass over out the dialect differentiations and to go still more unvarying.
Comparison of the idiom differences in the British Isles and in the USA reveals that non merely are they less legion and far less marked in the USA, but that the really nature of the local differentiations is different. What is normally known as American idioms is closer in nature to part & # 173 ; al discrepancies of the literary linguistic communication. The job of know aparting between literary and dialect address forms in the USA is much more complicated than in Britain. Many American linguists point out that American English differs from British English in holding no one vicinity whose address forms have come to be recognized as the theoretical account for the remainder of the state.
CANADIAN, AUSTRALIAN AND INDIAN VARIANTS
It should of class be noted that the American English is non the lone bing discrepancy. There are several other discrepancies where difference from the British criterion is normalized. Besides the Irish and Scottish vari & # 173 ; emmets that have been mentioned in the preceding paragraph, there are Aus & # 173 ; tralian English, Canadian English, Indian English. Each of these has de & # 173 ; veloped a literature of its ain, and is characterized by distinctive features in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Canadian English is influenced both by British and American Eng & # 173 ; lish but it besides has some specific characteristics of its ain. Specifically Cana & # 173 ; dian words are called Canadianisms. They are non really frequent outside Canada, except hovel
‘a hut ‘ and to penetrate out
‘to explain ‘ .
The vocabulary of all the discrepancies is characterized by a high per centum & # 173 ; age of adoptions from the linguistic communication of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonisers came. Many of them denote some spe & # 173 ; cific realia of the new state: local animate beings, workss or weather condi & # 173 ; tions, new societal dealingss, new trades and conditions of labor. The local words for new non ions penetrate into the English linguistic communication and subsequently on may go international, if they are of sufficient involvement and importance for people talking other linguistic communications. The term international tungsten & # 1086 ; & # 1075 ; 500 s is used to denote words borrowed from one linguistic communication into sev & # 173 ; eral others at the same time or at short intervals one after another. International words coming through the English of India are for in & # 173 ; stance: cottage
n, jute
n, khaki
adj, Mangifera indica
n, nawabs
n, pajama, sahib, saree.
Similar illustrations, though possibly fewer in figure, such as boome & # 173 ; rang, warrigal, kangaroo
are all adopted into the English linguistic communication through its Australian discrepancy. They denote the new phenomena found by Eng & # 173 ; lish immigrants on the new continent. A high per centum of words bor & # 173 ; rowed from the native dwellers of Australia will be noticed in the so & # 173 ; norous Australian topographic point names.
Otherwise an ample usage was made of English lexical stuff. An intense development of cowss engendering in new conditions necessitated the creative activity of an equal nomenclature. It is natural hence that nouns like stock, bullock
or land
happen a new life on Australian dirt: stock raiser
‘herdsman ‘ , stockyard, stock-keeper
‘the proprietor of the cowss ‘ ; bullock
V means ‘to work hard ‘ , bullocky camion
is a camion driven by bullocks ; an inlander
is a stock-keeper driving his stock from one grazing land to another, overland
V is ‘to drive cowss over long distances ‘ ; to plug a cow
‘to carry on a squad of cattle ‘ ; a cowboy
‘the adult male who conducts a squad of cattle ‘ ; tucker-bag
‘the bag with proviso ‘ .
The differences described in the present chapter do non sabotage our apprehension of the English vocabulary as a balanced system. It has been noticed by a figure of linguists that the British attitude to this phenomenon is slightly curious. When anyone other than an Englishman uses English, the indigens of Great Britain, frequently half-consciously, possibly, feel that they have a particular right to knock his use because it is “ their ” linguistic communication. It is, nevertheless, unreasonable with regard to people in the Vfiited States, Canada, Australia and some other countries for whom English is their mother-tongue. Those who think that the Ameri & # 173 ; tins must look to the British for a criterion are incorrect and, frailty versa, it is non for the American to feign that English in Great Britain is inferior to the English he speaks. At present there is no individual “ right ” English and the American, Canadian and Australian English have devel & # 173 ; oped criterions of their ain.
Decision
I. English is the national linguistic communication of England proper, the USA, Australia and some states of Canada. It was besides at different times imposed on the dwellers of the former and present British settlements and. associated states every bit good as other Britain- and US-dominated districts, where the population has ever stuck to its ain female parent lingua.
II. British English, American English and Australian English are discrepancies of the same linguistic communication, because they serve all domains of verbal communicating. Their structural pecularities, particularly morphology, sentence structure and word-formation, every bit good as their word-stock and phonic system are basically the same. American and Australian criterions are little alterations of the norms accepted in the British Isles. The position of Canadian English ‘has non yet been established.
III. The chief lexical differences between the discrepancies are caused by the deficiency of tantamount lexical units in one of them, divergencies in the semantic constructions of polysemous words and distinctive features of use of some words on different districts.
IV. The British local idioms can be traced back to Old English dia & # 173 ; lects. Numerous and distinguishable, they are characterized by phonemic and structural distinctive features. The local idioms are being bit by bit replaced by regional discrepancies of the literary linguistic communication, i. e. by a literary criterion with a proportion of local idiom characteristics.
V. The alleged local idioms in the British Isles and in the USA are used merely by the rural population and merely for the intents of unwritten communicating. In both discrepancies local differentiations are more pronounced in pronunciation, less conspicuous in vocabulary and undistinguished in grammar.
VI. Local fluctuations in the USA are comparatively little. What is called by tradition American idioms is closer in nature to regional discrepancies of the national literary linguistic communication.
