American English Vs British English

8 Key excerpts on "American English Vs British English"

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  eBook - ePub

  English Accents and Dialects

  An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles, Fifth Edition

  • Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill, Dominic Watt(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Another reaction on the part of learners who fail to understand what is being said may be to think that perhaps what they learned in their own country was not ‘real’ English. Fortunately, this is increasingly unlikely to be the case. Although the English they have learned is real enough, it will tend to be limited to a single variety of the language, a variety chosen to serve as a model for their own speech. It will usually be the speech variety of a particular group of native speakers as that variety is spoken, slowly and carefully, in relatively formal situations. Given limitations of time, of teachers’ knowledge, and of students’ aspirations and attitudes, this restriction is entirely reasonable, at least as far as speaking is concerned. Though learners may sound a little odd at times, they will usually be able to make themselves understood. But such a restriction as far as listening comprehension is concerned is less easily justified. While native speakers may be able to decode the learners’ messages, they may lack the ability or the inclination to encode their own messages in a form more comprehensible to learners. In many cases, of course, native speakers will simply not be aware of such difficulties. Even when they are, a common strategy is to repeat what has just been said, only louder, or to revert to ‘foreigner talk’ (‘me come, you go – OK?’), usually making understanding even more difficult. It seems to us, then, that exposure to a number of varieties of English, and help in understanding them, can play an important and practically useful part in the study of English as a foreign language.

  Even when learners with comprehension problems recognise that English, like their own language – indeed, like every living natural language – is subject to variation, that variation can be so complex and at times so subtle that it is usually a long time before they begin to see much order in it. And native speakers, even those who teach the language, are often hard put to explain the things that puzzle learners. For this reason, we will attempt now to give some idea of the principal ways in which British and Irish English speech varies and, just as importantly, the non-linguistic (social, geographical) factors which condition that variation. It is hoped by doing this to provide a framework within which to set the features of social and regional variation, which will be our main concern in the remainder of the book.

  Variation in Pronunciation

  Received Pronunciation

  We should first make clear the way we are going to use two important terms, dialect and accent

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  The Handbook of English Pronunciation

  • Marnie Reed, John Levis, Marnie Reed, John M. Levis(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Part IV Pronunciation of the Major Varieties of English The Handbook of English Pronunciation, First Edition. Edited by Marnie Reed and John M. Levis. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. “North American English” and “pronunciation”: a definition of terms When discussing varieties of English, many people identify the two dominant standard varieties as “British” and “American”. This label is less than ideal, since what most people think of as “American English” is also spoken by a majority of Canadians, who do not consider themselves “American” in the normal sense of that word. As we will see, the English of most Canadians is actually closer to “General American English” than many of the regional and social types of English spoken in the United States. Especially in comparison with British or Southern Hemisphere varieties, Canadian English is incontestably a type of “American English”, but in deference to the binational home of this type of English, the set of English varieties spoken on the North American continent will here be called “North American English” (NAE). One of these varieties, traditionally associated with parts of the midwestern and western United States and with central and western Canada, can now be heard, at least at higher social levels, across much of the continent. Beyond its native territory, it serves not only as a kind of pan‐ regional standard to be used in public domains like mass media communication and higher education, but as an acquisition target for learners of English as a second language and as a style‐shifting target for many native speakers of other varieties of NAE, who wish to benefit from its high social prestige. This variety will be called “Standard North American English” (SNAE). The term “pronunciation” in fact comprises many distinct types of sound difference. They are organized here into four levels of analysis.

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  English across Cultures. Cultures across English

  A Reader in Cross-cultural Communication

  • Ofelia García, Ricardo Otheguy(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Other dialects are cited occasionally to show that the British-American case is not a lusus naturae. The first problem in establishing correspondences between dialects is that it is sometimes difficult to know just what a word means — exactly where its semantic boundaries lie. At what age does a boy (in the sense 'immature human male') become a man? What precisely is the difference between luggage and baggage? The language may defeat us in attempting to answer questions like those, not because British-American lexical differences 223 we don't know enough, but because there is not enough to be known. That is, the questions are more precise than the things they ask about. Language is often imprecise, with fuzzy meanings, imprecise semantic boundaries between words. If we cannot say exactly what words mean, it is very difficult to talk about exactly how their meanings vary across dialect boundaries. Second, there is a difference between active and passive command. Britons may not call a pigsty a pigpen, but they are unlikely to be greatly puzzled by what the American term means. Americans may not call a comic strip a strip cartoon, but they can guess the meaning of the Briticism easily enough. On the other hand, Americans will not only never talk about a free house, they will probably fail to understand what it is until the meaning is explained as 'an independent pub, not tied to a brewery, and hence free to sell various brands'. Similarly, the Briton will be nonplussed at being told that a particular house is three blocks down the street, particularly if there are no British blocks ('large office or apartment buildings') in sight. Third, there may be uncertain dialect identifications. It is usually said that shawn is the British pronunciation of shone. And so it is, in a sense, except that some Americans pronounce the word that way too.

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  Introducing Global Englishes

  • Nicola Galloway, Heath Rose(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  English is the only official language of England, although Cornish is a recognized regional language, and Welsh is the co-official language of Wales. In Scotland, English is the sole official language, although Scottish Gaelic is given equal respect as a recognized regional language under the Gaelic Language (Scottish) Act of 2005. Irish is the first official language in Ireland, although in practice English takes this role. According to 2011 census data, 92.3 per cent of the population in the United Kingdom speak English as the only language in the home. In the Republic of Ireland, English is the main language of the household, and Polish is the second most widely used language (2.5 per cent of the population), followed by Irish (41 per cent of the population can speak Irish, but only 1.8 per cent use it outside educational contexts).

  Features of English in the British Isles

  The divisions between the variation of Englishes spoken in the British Isles (the islands of Great Britain and Ireland) depend greatly on what aspect of linguistic variation is used as the benchmark for such divisions.

  Sounds PHONEMIC VARIATION Based on this dimension of variation, Hughes, Trudgill and Watt (2012) claim there are five accent groups of the British Isles: 1  Scotland and the north of Ireland; 2  south of Ireland; 3  Wales; 4  north of England; 5  south of England.

  The south of England is also commonly broken into two sub-groups: the south-west and south-east. As has been seen in this book thus far, it is not easy to categorize Englishes into neat categories, and exceptions and deviations can be found in and across these five categories. Nevertheless, it is a useful starting point to begin the investigation of regional variations.

  VOWELS

  A number of studies have been carried out over past decades that aimed to codify variation in vowels. This sections draws on a list of common words used by Wells (1982), which were selected because of their representation of English vowel sounds. Wells used RP and General American as reference accents to compare pronunciation differences within this lexical set. For example, using the lexical set, it can be stated that the vowel in strut

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  Authority in Language

  Investigating Standard English

  • James Milroy, Lesley Milroy(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  9 TWO NATIONS DIVIDED BY THE SAME LANGUAGE? The standard language ideology in Britain and the United States

  9.1 Some beliefs about Standard English

  Comments on Standard English and criticisms of non-standard speakers are commonplace in both Britain and the United States, but the most contentious public debates about language are framed rather diff erently in the two countries. It is diffi cult to imagine a long-running controversy in the United States with all the ingredients of the great grammar debate which we alluded to in Chapter 8 . Equally, it is hard to imagine the British press focusing over many years on an English Only movement or on whether British Black English should be taught as a separate language, as in the Ebonics debate. In this fi nal chapter we shall consider some social and historical factors underpinning these somewhat diff erent manifestations of the standard language ideology. We begin by looking more closely at the term ‘Standard English’ when used in reference to a spoken norm.

  Although not all scholars are in agreement with us, we suggested in Chapter 1 that standardisation was best treated as a process, since attempts to locate a specifi c standard (product) are by defi nition doomed to failure. We also saw that phonology was particularly resistant to standardisation. Hence some scholars identify the standard as a prestigious system of grammar and lexis which can be realised with any phonological system; for them there is no such thing as a ‘standard accent’. However, in practice Received Pronunciation (RP) is often treated not only by the general public, but also by some professional linguists as a reference accent and described as ‘Standard English’ (Smith, 1996:65). In the United States, so-called ‘network American’1 is often identi-fi ed as Standard English, although RP and network American are horses of a very diff erent colour. Network American is a mainstream accent associated with the levelled dialects of the Northern Midwest, where salient locally marked features have been eradicated, so that they are commonly perceived as ‘colourless’ or ‘characterless’ (Wolfram, 1991:210). Speakers of such dialects commonly describe themselves and are described by others as having ‘no accent’ (Preston, 1996). In Britain, it seems to be RP speakers who are typically described in this way, although unlike network American, RP is saliently marked for class and in no sense is, nor ever has been, a mainstream accent. Thus, with respect to spoken language, the term standard means something quite diff

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  World Englishes

  • Gunnel Melchers, Philip Shaw, Peter Sundkvist(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Linguistically, the norm thus represents the variety typical of most of the given community in a given situation most of the time. Sociolinguistically, it is the variety that signals membership of the group in question in a given situation. The term norm, as we shall use it, implies nothing in terms of acceptance by schools, publishers or social elites.

  3.4.1.2 Standards and Standard English

  As we have noted above, varieties are often classified by the sociolinguistic criterion of relation to Standard English. As we described in Chapter 1 , during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, publishers and educationalists defined a set of grammatical and lexical features which they regarded as correct, and the variety characterized by these features later came to be known as Standard English. Since English had, by the nineteenth century, two centres, Standard English came to exist in two varieties: British and US. These were widely different in pronunciation, very close in grammar and characterized by small but noticeable differences in spelling and vocabulary. There were thus two more or less equally valid varieties of Standard English – British Standard and US Standard.

  Subsequently there has been a demand for other local standards – Australian, Indian, South African, Nigerian, Jamaican and so on. This has been accommodated by saying that varieties that vary from one another and from British/US Standard English in the way that British and US vary from each other can be counted as Standard English, while varieties that vary more are non-standard (Trudgill and Hannah 2008:1–4). According to this definition Standard English is a dialect, not an accent, and no particular accent is (in theory) attached to it. A variety of Standard English can have almost any accent, but can only have a very small range of grammatical difference from others. Norfolk dialect or AAVE, which say I do , he do , are ‘non-standard’ (but mainly spoken by natives), while Indian Standard or Nigerian Standard, which say I do , he does

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  Variety in Contemporary English

  • W.R. O'Donnell, LORETO Todd(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The extension of the grammar and vocabulary of writing to the spoken language was facilitated by the absence of any standard accent, since this meant the language could be correctly spoken with the regional accent. A situation thus developed in which an increasing number of people learned to use Standard English in speech—albeit with a regional accent, perhaps slightly modified—as well as in writing. It is very likely, of course, that most such people would continue to use their regional variety for everyday, informal purposes, and this may have led, for a time, to some degree of bidialectalism. Recent research in the United States, however, has suggested that true bidialectalism is extremely rare, that speakers who acquire full control over the standard language do not retain full control over their native variety. And this would seem to be to a large extent true of communities as well as individuals; that is, as Standard English has gained ground dialect English has lost. Perhaps the situation which emerged is better described, therefore, as one in which individuals extended their stylistic repertoire to include Standard English for some uses, and dialect English for others, with the possibility of a range of mixed styles in between. As far as the community as a whole is concerned the result is a continuum running from regional dialect at one end to Standard English at the other, with individual repertoires tending more and more to cluster at the standard end. But, however that may be, it remains clear that Standard English is basically a written form of the language, neutral with regard to accent. It is impossible, for instance, to deduce the pronunciation of the present writers from what they write.

  Since variation is an essential property of all human language, Standard English itself varies. It is a safe assumption, for example, that no two Standard English speakers use exactly the same vocabulary. Nor are the differences confined to vocabulary. Americans have ‘meet up with’ where British speakers prefer ‘meet’ (‘We’ll meet (up with) you later’); and US speakers use ‘gotten’ as the past participle of ‘get’ in many contexts where British speakers have ‘got’ (‘Things have gotten/got more complex lately’). Nevertheless, neither the vocabulary nor the grammar of the present paragraph will present any difficulty whatsoever to literate speakers of English, wherever they come from, and no educated speaker will fail to recognise that the paragraph is written in Standard English and not some kind of regional dialect, In short, therefore, though enormous theoretical difficulties arise if we attempt to define it, educated speakers of English have access to a kind of English which, as distinct from dialect English, enables them to communicate freely with all other educated speakers of the language.

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  English Historical Linguistics. Volume 2

  • Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton, Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Varieties of English: Regional varieties of British English 1947 most notably the dialects of the North of England. Finally, large survey data sets like WAVE, with the relevant small-scale and particularly large-scale patterns that they reveal, also allow us to learn more about processes and effects of language change (both in contact and non-contact situations), such as grammaticalization processes (cf. Kortmann and Schneider 2011), and thus serve as a window not only to the past, but also to the future. Angloversals and L1 varioversals – some, admittedly, more than others – are candidates for structural properties becoming part of spontaneous spoken Standard English in the long run; some areoversals may well make it into the standard variety/ies of English spoken in a given Anglophone world region (e.g. British vs. American vs. Caribbean vs. Pacific vs. Southeast Asian vs. South Asian vs. African English). But whichever changes in English around the globe we are bound to witness, the regional varieties of the British Isles will undoubtedly continue to exhibit the largest array of (in part highly regionally restricted) distinctive phonetic/phonological and mor-phosyntactic features of non-standard varieties in the Anglophone world. In a continu-ally globalizing world, there will be an increasing need for the local, not least via the vernacular variety spoken (cf. e.g. Johnstone 2010). The regional British varieties will continue to offer the richest choice in this respect. In this chapter, we barely sketched the outermost layer of the British Isles’ regionalisms. Much still remains to be discov-ered, for example, on the level of (often highly locally restricted) syntactic, semantic and pragmatic constraints on the use of the individual WAVE features (and other features not included in WAVE). 5 References Aitken, Adam Jack. 1981. The Scottish vowel length rule.

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