Dialects of English

A nasty shock awaits many visitors to Britain. Imagine you have learnt English for years, you can read newspapers and you have no problem following the television, but when you go into a fish or chip shop in Newcastle, you can not understand a word they are saying. The language has been standardized for a very long time, and regional dialects in Britain have largely died out – far more so than in Italy or Germany, for example. That is to say, the vocabulary of the dialects has died out, but the accents and a few bits of distinctive grammar remain. It is the accent which gives the visitor a problem in the fish or chip shop. Some accents are so strong that they present problems for British people, too. Variations within the British are so great that accents from New York or Texas are often easier to follow than ones from Liverpool or Glasgow.

It is mostly the vowels which differ from one dialect to another. Intonation patterns also differ between regions.

There is a kind of standard British English pronunciation, based on a confusing way on class and geography. It is the accent of the south-east, but not that of London itself. It could be said that the upper classes have a dialect of their own, with a pronunciation known as RP (Received Pronunciation). The majority of middle-class people speak a sort of classless, democratic version of RP, with a slight admixture of the local regional accent.

People’s attitudes to the various regional accents depend on a whole range of historical and social factors. The Birmingham accent is considered ugly, cockney is associated with criminals, Scottish is thought of as serious and sensible, Irish as poetic. An interesting case is that of the so-called Westcountry accent. This comes from the south and west, which is the least industrial region; consequently the accent is identified with farm-workers, sometimes considered stupid by city folk. While all the other varieties of English have been increasingly accepted on mainstream TV and radio, Westcountry remains the Cinderella among accents, confined to comedy and gardening programmes.

A world language

A billion people speak English, two-thirds of the world’s scientists write in English, and 80% of the world’s electronic information is stored in English. One result is that the British are terribly lazy about learning other languages. The most important factor in language learning is motivation, and the British just do not have it. …

· Which historical events have been important in the development of English? (Russian?)

· Languages change over time; do you think this is a good or bad thing?

· What different languages are spoken in Britain? (Russia?)

· In Russia, do older people criticise the language of young people?

· How do you feel about the spread of English? Is it a threat or an opportunity?

What’s in a name?

The full name of the country is, of course, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Very briefly the history is as follows.

Wales was merged with England by King Henry VIII in 1543.

Scotland followed with the Act of Union in 1707, after which the country was known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

The Act of Ireland in 1801 united Britain and Ireland, but that unhappy union finally broke up in 1921, with only six mainly Protestant counties in the north of Ireland remaining in the UK. This remains the situation today.

The monarchy

By far the strangest feature is the role of the monarch. The Queen appears on paper to have tremendous power, but in fact has hardly any at all. The country is a kingdom, the government is Her Majesty’s Government, laws are made by the Queen in Parliament, criminals are tried in the name of the Queen, and the Queen is the head of state. She dissolves the Parliament before an election and she appoints the new Prim Minister (PM); she has a business meeting with the PM once a week, usually on Tuesdays; at the annual State Opening of Parliament she makes the Queen’s Speech, which outlines the government’s plans. She is the head on the Commonwealth (which includes 51 countries and a quarter of the world’s population), and she is actually Head of State in 16 countries including Canada, Papua New Guinea and Jamaica. All this seems to add up to a dominant role within the system. But it does not: the key word here is symbolic.

The American President is both head of the government and head of state. this is also the case in France and in Russia, while in most countries around the world these two roles are separate. The all-but-powerless, ceremonial head of state is most commonly a president, but in a few places such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, the job is done by a king or queen. Queen Elizabeth signs all laws that are presented to her, she can not pick and choose. She appoints the leader of the majority party as Prime Minister, automatically. The Queen’s Speech is in fact written for her by the government. Any power she may have is strictly personal: if PMs respect her opinion on something, they will her advice. Constitutionally, she has the right only, “to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn”.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1046