British English

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British English
Native to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (originally Kingdom of England)
Region United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (originally Kingdom of England)
Ethnicity British people (originally English people)
Early forms
Standard forms
Dialects
Latin (English alphabet)
Unified English Braille
Official status
Official language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
IETF en-GB [1] [2]

British English (abbreviations: BrE, en-GB, and BE) [3] is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom. [6] More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English. Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity".

Contents

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]

History

Origins

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects 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.

Dialects

Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of the United Kingdom, as well as within the countries themselves.

The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English, West Country, East and West Midlands English and Northern English), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language), and Scottish English (not to be confused with the Scots language or Scottish Gaelic). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages.

Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though. [17]

Research

Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950), the University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. [18] [19]

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

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.

In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English , the Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. [40] In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent.

History of standardisation

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]

Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform, where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. [41] By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers. [42]

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]

See also

Related Research Articles

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland.

Received Pronunciation (RP) is the British English accent regarded as the standard one, carrying the highest social prestige, since as late as the very early 20th century. Language scholars have long disagreed on RP's exact definition, how geographically neutral it is, how many speakers there are, the nature and classification of its sub-varieties, how appropriate a choice it is as a standard, how the accent has changed over time, and even its name. The study of RP is concerned only with matters of pronunciation, while other features of Standard British English, such as vocabulary, grammar, and style, are not considered. The accent has changed, or its traditional users have changed their accents, to such a degree over the last century that many of its early 20th-century traditions of transcription and analysis have become outdated or are no longer considered evidence-based by linguists. Still, these traditions continue to be commonly taught and used, for instance in language education, and the use of RP as a convenient umbrella term remains popular.

Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. The United Kingdom has a wide variety of accents, and no single "British accent" exists. This article provides an overview of the numerous identifiable variations in pronunciation. Such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middle English</span> Stage of development of English, from the 12th to 15th centuries

Middle English is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High and Late Middle Ages.

Estuary English is an English accent, continuum of accents, or continuum of accent features associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London, since the late 20th century. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England, while also acknowledging that it is a social construct rather than a technically well-defined linguistic phenomenon. He describes it as "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent, Received Pronunciation (RP), and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent, Cockney. There is much debate among linguists as to where Cockney and RP end and where Estuary English begins, or whether Estuary English is even a single cohesive accent.

H-dropping or aitch-dropping is the deletion of the voiceless glottal fricative or "H-sound",. The phenomenon is common in many dialects of English, and is also found in certain other languages, either as a purely historical development or as a contemporary difference between dialects. Although common in most regions of England and in some other English-speaking countries, and linguistically speaking a neutral evolution in languages, H-dropping is often stigmatized as a sign of careless or uneducated speech.

Indian English is a group of English dialects spoken in the Republic of India and among the Indian diaspora. English is used by the Government of India for communication, and is enshrined in the Constitution of India. English is also an official language in seven states and seven union territories of India, and the additional official language in seven other states and one union territory. Furthermore, English is the sole official language of the Judiciary of India, unless the state governor or legislature mandates the use of a regional language, or if the President of India has given approval for the use of regional languages in courts.

Scottish English is the set of varieties of the English language spoken in Scotland. The transregional, standardised variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English (SSE). Scottish Standard English may be defined as "the characteristic speech of the professional class [in Scotland] and the accepted norm in schools". IETF language tag for "Scottish Standard English" is en-scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scouse</span> Accent and dialect of English in the Liverpool City Region

Scouse, more formally known as Liverpool English or Merseyside English, is an accent and dialect of English associated with the city of Liverpool and the surrounding Liverpool City Region. The Scouse accent is highly distinctive as it was influenced heavily by Irish and Welsh immigrants who arrived via the Liverpool docks, as well as Scandinavian sailors who also used the docks, and thus has very little in common with the accents found throughout the rest of England. People from Liverpool are known as Liverpudlians, but are usually called Scousers; the name comes from scouse, a stew originating from Scandinavian lobscouse eaten by sailors and locals.

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages, and, possibly, British Latin, that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence upon the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Country English</span> Variety of the English language

West Country English is a group of English language varieties and accents used by much of the native population of the West Country, an area found in the southwest of England.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be used to represent sound correspondences among various accents and dialects of the English language.

In English, the digraph ⟨th⟩ usually represents either the voiced dental fricative phoneme or the voiceless dental fricative phoneme. Occasionally, it stands for. In the word eighth, it is often pronounced. In compound words, ⟨th⟩ may be a consonant sequence rather than a digraph.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English language in Northern England</span> Modern Northern English accents and dialects

The spoken English language in Northern England has been shaped by the region's history of settlement and migration, and today encompasses a group of related accents and dialects known as Northern England English or Northern English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English language in Southern England</span> Varieties of English language in Southern England

English in Southern England is the collective set of different dialects and accents of Modern English spoken in Southern England.

In English phonology, t-glottalization or t-glottalling is a sound change in certain English dialects and accents, particularly in the United Kingdom, that causes the phoneme to be pronounced as the glottal stop in certain positions. It is never universal, especially in careful speech, and it most often alternates with other allophones of such as, ,, , or.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English language</span> West Germanic language

English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain. The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain. It is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire and the United States. English is the third-most spoken native language, after Standard Chinese and Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers.

The English language spoken and written in England encompasses a diverse range of accents and dialects. The language forms part of the broader British English, along with other varieties in the United Kingdom. Terms used to refer to the English language spoken and written in England include English English and Anglo-English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardiff English</span> Regional accent of English, in Wales

The Cardiff accent, also known as Cardiff English, is the regional accent of English, and a variety of Welsh English, as spoken in and around the city of Cardiff, and is somewhat distinctive in Wales, compared with other Welsh accents. Its pitch is described as somewhat lower than that of Received Pronunciation, whereas its intonation is closer to dialects of England rather than Wales.

The distinction between rhoticity and non-rhoticity is one of the most prominent ways in which varieties of the English language are classified. In rhotic accents, the sound of the historical English rhotic consonant,, is preserved in all phonetic environments. In non-rhotic accents, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments: when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, but a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound and pronounces them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/. When an r is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "better apples," most non-rhotic speakers will preserve the in that position since it is followed by a vowel in this case.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ 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

  1. ↑ "English". IANA language subtag registry. 16 October 2005. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
  2. ↑ "United Kingdom". IANA language subtag registry. 16 October 2005. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
  3. ↑ "British English". Lexico.com. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
  4. ↑ "British English; Hiberno-English" . Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 1989.
  5. ↑ British English, Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary
  6. ↑ The Oxford English Dictionary applies the term to English as "spoken or written in the British Isles; esp[ecially] the forms of English usual in Great Britain", reserving "Irish English" for the "English language as spoken and written in Ireland". [4] Others, such as the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, define it as the "English language as it is spoken and written in England". [5]
  7. ↑ Jeffries, Stuart (27 March 2009). "The G2 Guide to Regional English". The Guardian . section G2, p. 12.
  8. ↑ New Oxford Style Manual. Oxford University Press. 2016.
  9. ↑ "10.3. Spelling". Interinstitutional Style Guide. Publications Office of the European Union. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  10. ↑ Odinye, Sunny (2016). "A study of British and American English for Chinese students". Dezuruigbo Journal.
  11. ↑ "British Council". GOV.UK. 19 July 2018. Archived from the original on 21 January 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
  12. ↑ "Learn English Online". British Council. Archived from the original on 21 January 2023. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  13. ↑ "About BBC Learning English". Archived from the original on 4 February 2023. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  14. ↑ English and Welsh, 1955 J. R. R. Tolkien, also see references in Brittonicisms in English
  15. ↑ "Linguistics 201: History of English". Pandora Internet Web Server. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  16. ↑ Scott, Tom (14 June 2013), "Why You Swear in Anglo-Saxon and Order Fancy Food in French: Registers", YouTube, archived from the original on 28 October 2021, retrieved 18 March 2021
  17. 1 2 "Early Modern English (c. 1500 – c. 1800)". The History of English. Archived from the original on 9 December 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  18. ↑ Professor Sally Johnson biography on the Leeds University website
  19. 1 2 Mapping the English language—from cockney to Orkney, Leeds University website, 25 May 2007.
  20. ↑ 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
  21. ↑ "Received Pronunciation". Archived from the original on 22 July 2019. Retrieved 20 March 2017.
  22. ↑ 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.
  23. ↑ Sweet, Henry (1908). The Sounds of English. Clarendon Press. p.  7.
  24. 1 2 3 Fowler, H.W. (1996). R.W. Birchfield (ed.). "Fowler's Modern English Usage". Oxford University Press.
  25. ↑ Franklyn, Julian (1975). A dictionary of rhyming slang. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. p. 9. ISBN   0-415-04602-5.
  26. ↑ Crystal, David. "BBC - Voices - Your Voice".
  27. ↑ 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.
  28. ↑ "UrBEn-ID Urban British English project". Archived from the original on 19 March 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
  29. ↑ "Argot bargy". The Economist. 2 November 2013. ISSN   0013-0613 . Retrieved 15 April 2021.
  30. ↑ "How Is Immigration Changing Language In the UK?". Vice. 24 February 2016. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
  31. 1 2 Trudgill, Peter (1984). Language in the British Isles. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56–57. ISBN   0-521-28409-0.
  32. ↑ , Oxford Dictionaries website, 2 April 2017.
  33. ↑ , BBC, 8 January 2017.
  34. ↑ , BBC, 2 April 2017.
  35. ↑ Austen, Jane. "Pride and Prejudice". The Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  36. ↑ "Double negatives and usage – English Grammar Today – Cambridge Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org.
  37. ↑ Tubau, Susagna (2016). "Lexical variation and Negative Concord in Traditional Dialects of British English". The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics. 19 (2): 143–177. doi:10.1007/s10828-016-9079-4. S2CID   123799620.
  38. ↑ Lindsey, Geoff (2019). English after RP: standard British pronunciation today. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   978-3-030-04356-8.
  39. ↑ 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.
  40. 1 2 "The Standardisation of English". courses.nus.edu.sg.
  41. ↑ "The History of English: Spelling and Standardization (Suzanne Kemmer)". ruf.rice.edu.
  42. ↑ "New edition of The Complete Plain Words will delight fans of no-frills". Independent.co.uk . 27 March 2014.
  43. ↑ "Style Guide" (PDF). University of Oxford . Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
  44. ↑ Matthews, R. J. (December 1982). "New Zealand English: A Case Study". World Englishes. 2 (2): 75–80. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.1982.tb00525.x. ISSN   0883-2919.
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