British English is the
standard dialect of
English language as spoken and written in the
United Kingdom.
[5] Variations exist in formal, written English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective
wee is almost exclusively used in parts of
Scotland and
Ireland, and occasionally
Yorkshire, whereas
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,
[6] so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the
Oxford Guide to World English, British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in 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".
[7]
History[edit]
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 language was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who conquered and colonised parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th 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 languagein 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
Frenchinfluences 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.
[9]
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[edit]
Map showing phonological variation within England of the vowel in
bath,
grass, and
dance.
'a' [ä]
'aa' [æː]
'ah' [ɑː]
anomalies
Those in the north generally pronounce such words with a short vowel whereas those in the south use a long vowel
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".
[12] 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".
[13]
Regional[edit]
Most people in Britain speak with a regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called
Received Pronunciation[14] (also called "the Queen's English", "Oxford English" and "
BBC English"
[15]), that is essentially region-less.
[16][17] It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period.
[17] It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners.
[17]
In the South East there are significantly different accents; the
Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). The Cockney
rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand,
[18]although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated.
Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. In London itself, the broad local accent is still changing, partly influenced by Caribbean speech. Immigrants to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country. Surveys started in 1979 by the
Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. As a result,
Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors.
[citation needed]
Since the mass internal
immigration to
Northamptonshire in the 1940s and 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/
grass (i.e. barth/grarss). Conversely
crass/
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.
In addition, many British people can to some degree temporarily "swing" their accent towards a more neutral form of English at will, to reduce difficulty where very different accents are involved, or when speaking to foreigners.
[citation needed]
Ethnicity[edit]
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Features[edit]
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.
Glottal stop[edit]
In a number of forms of spoken British English, it is common for the phoneme
/t/ to be realised as a
glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in a process called
T-glottalisation. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, it has become much more widespread. It is still stigmatised when used in words like
later, but becoming very widespread at the end of words such as
not (as in no
[ʔ] interested).
[19] Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are
p, as in pa
[ʔ]er and
k as in ba
[ʔ]er.
[19]
R-dropping[edit]
In most areas of Britain outside
Scotland and Northern Ireland, 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. This 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.
Diphthongisation[edit]
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.
In the south[edit]
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].
In the north[edit]
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'.
Loss of grammatical number in collective nouns[edit]
A tendency to drop
grammatical number in
collective nouns, stronger in British English than in North American English,
[20] exists. This is namely treating them, that were once grammatically singular, as grammatically plural, that is: the perceived natural number prevails. This applies especially to nouns of institutions and groups made of many 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.
[21]
A football team can be treated likewise:
Arsenal
have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City.
[22]
Negative concord[edit]
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.
[23] 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.
[24]
Standardisation[edit]
For historical reasons dating back to the rise of
London in the 9th 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 leveling 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.
[25] 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.
[10]
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.
[28]
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