Lexicology. Different dialects and accents of English
Preface
Every language allows different kinds of variations: geographical or
territorial, perhaps the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between
the written and the spoken form of the standard national language and
others. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia,
New Zealand and some provinces of Canada. It is the official language of
Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. Modern
linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language and
local dialects. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard
literary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the sound
system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms.
Standard English – the official language of Great Britain taught at
schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television
and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which
is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable
wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to
dialect words or dialectisms belonging to various local dialects. Local
dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts
and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a
literary form are called variants. Dialects are said to undergo rapid
changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the
speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema.
The differences between the English language as spoken in Britain. The
USA, Australia and Canada are immediately noticeable in the field of
phonetics. However these distinctions are confined to the articulatory-
acoustic characteristics of some phonemes, to some differences in the use
of others and to the differences in the rhythm and intonation of speech.
The few phonemes characteristic of American pronunciation and alien to
British literary norms can as a rule be observed in British dialects.
AMERICAN ENGLISH
The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of
American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for
several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is
a regional variety, because it has a literary normalized form called
Standard American, whereas by definition given above a dialect has no
literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American
authors, like H. L. Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor
vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view one shall have to
deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms.
An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar
to the English language as spoken in the USA. E.g. cookie 'a biscuit';
frame house 'a house consisting of a skeleton of timber, with boards or
shingles laid on'; frame-up 'a staged or preconcerted law case'; guess
'think'; store 'shop'.
A general and comprehensive description of the American variant is
given in Professor Shweitzer's monograph. An important aspect of his
treatment is the distinction made between americanisms belonging to the
literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang. The
difference between the American and British literary norm is not
systematic.
The American variant of the English language differs from British
English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in
vocabulary, and this paragraph will deal with the latter.1 Our treatment
will be mainly diachronic.
Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary
to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the
new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English
of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the
first colonizers were contemporaries of Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton.
Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive
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
surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar
fauna and flora. Hence bull-frog 'a large frog', moose (the American elk),
oppossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears), for animals;
and corn, hickory, etc. for plants. They also had to find names for the new
conditions of economic life: back-country 'districts not yet thickly
populated', back-settlement, backwoods 'the forest beyond the cleared
country', backwoodsman 'a dweller in the backwoods'.
The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants described
is of great linguistic and heuristic value because it furnishes ample data
for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon the
vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definitely:
absentee voting 'voting by mail', dark horse 'a candidate nominated
unexpectedly and not known to his voters', to gerrymander 'to arrange and
falsify the electoral process to produce a favorable result in the
interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer 'an adept of
decisive measures'.
Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the
Indian dialects or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British
English but also into several other languages, Russian not excluded, and so
became international. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam,
etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face and the. like, taken
from Indian languages. The Spanish borrowings like cafeteria, mustang,
ranch, sombrero, etc. are very familiar to the speakers of many European
languages. It is only by force of habit that linguists still include these
words among the specific features of American English.
As to the toponyms, for instance, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri,
Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and
states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in all
countries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names
traces of the earlier inhabitants of the land in question.
Another big group of peculiarities as compared with the English of Great
Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or
spelling standards, such as [ae] for in ask, dance, path, etc., or Ie] for
[ei] in made, day and some other.
The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British
counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled
-or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and
humour. Altho stands for although and thru for through. The table below
illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive.
For a more complete treatment the reader is referred to the monograph by A.
D. Schweitzer:
British spelling American spelling
offence offense
cosy cozy
practice practise
thralldom thralldom
jewellery jewelery
traveling traveling
In the course of time with the development of the modern means of
communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a
tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and
Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms
mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on
both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as
specifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the
English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used
in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while in England
the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects
and surviving in set expressions: spring and fall, the fall of the year are
still in fairly common use.
Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the
passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as
well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of
Vautomatisation. The influence of American publicity is also a vehicle of
Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the
Americanism radio. The jargon of American film-advertising makes its way
into British usage; i.e. of all time (in "the greatest film of all time").
The phrase is now firmly established as standard vocabulary and applied to
subjects other than films.
The personal visits of writers and scholars to the USA and all forms
of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.
The existing cases of difference between the two variants, are
conveniently classified into:
1) Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in a
cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car' or 'a
shop where motorists buy things staying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham
ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'. The
noun dude was originally a contemptuous nickname given by the inhabitants
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