Englishes: British, Scottish, Global

British English

many sociolects, idiolects

regional dialects

Britain: long, shared heritage, small area

vs

USA: short shared past, vast territory

yet: greater differences within the North of England than in North America

Linguistic Atlas of Britain (1948-61)

British English

no overarching authority or ‘academy’

strong local identity

irregular spelling – legacy of dialects

‘busy’ – ‘bury’

‘one’, ‘once’

spelling crystallised with printing (Bible translations)

Professor Higgins’s English

Received Pronunciation (RP)

(Received) Standard English, Oxford English, Public School English, BBC English

„talking proper/posh”; „la-di-dah”

1791: Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (John Walker)

Standard English

educated London and S-E dialect

Canterbury Tales, York Mystery Plays,Langland: Piers the Ploughman, SirGawain and the Green Knight: no standard

Standard English: no longer a dialect but a global object

middle classes; printing, media; education; Empire; EFL

Standard English

Imperial civil service

Education Act of 1870: rise of public schools

standardisation (stygmatising dialect)

WW1 officers

BBC: Lord Reith

Standard english

- long ‘a’ (far, fast) ‘la-di-dah’

- ‘oi’ (boil, soil)

- ‘Ə:’ (curtain, certain)

- weakened ‘r’ (orator)

„He wore a tattered brown trilby, grey shabby trousers, crepe-soled shoes and a dark-coloured anorak. He carried a walking stick and spoke with a good accent, the police say.”

„It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishmen despise him.” (G. B. Shaw)

Standard English

not just linguistics: social, political issue

respected in US (rise of silent film)

detested by many (language of privilege, oppression, effeminacy: ‘lah-di-dah’)

Standard English

BBC experiment in WW2

Yorkshire entertainer Wilfred Pickles

Tom Leonard (Scottish poet):

‘Six o’clock News’

Standard and non-standard

change from 1950s

British new wave film (Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney)

Kitchen sink drama

1980s: policy change in BBC

film, tv, popular entertainment, stand-up

soap operas (East Enders, Brookside, Coronation Street)

Dialects, RP and society

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles:

Tess, „who passed Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less, ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality”

dialect - accent

non-standard language:

vocabulary

grammar

pronunciation

I didn’t have no dinner tonight.

I seen an accident before I come here.

I shall stay here while she comes. („Wait while lights flash.”)

Our teacher can’t learn us nothing. (OE ‘leornian’)

Cockney English

„cockeneyes” (cock’s eggs)

Canterbury Tales: „cockenay” (milksop)

C17: Bow Bell Cockney

‘born within the sound of Bow-bell’

C18: pejorative (Dr. Johnson’s idea of correct English) – rising middle classes

slander: Keats as a ‘Cockney poet’

Cockney

C19: working-class, debased language (Shaw: Pygmalion)

Dickens’s Sam Weller (The Pickwick Papers)→literary stereotype (v/w)

today: London East End working class

accent

Features of Cockney(1) ‘th’ sounds →f and v (muvver, barf, no bovver)

firty fahsn fevvers on a frush’s froat

(2) dropping the aitch

„That’s an ‘edgeog. It’s really two words. ‘Edge and ‘og. Both begin with an aitch.”

(3) diphthongs: beat, fate, great, high, why, nice

(4) [a:] about – abaht; thousand – fahsn, Gawd

(5) the glottal stop

(6) the linking ‘r’

(7) syllable-final ‘l’ vocalised: tewwim (tell him)

(8) question tags („innit”)

(9) intonation, pitch, tone („Ay-ee, Ba-yee, Cy-ee”)

sources of Cockney vocabulary

Romany: pal, chavvy [‘chav’], mush

Yiddish: shemozzle, nosh

Arabic and other Oriental: bint, cushy, dekko, shufti, doolally

French (WW2): parleyvoo, San fairy ann (ça ne fait rien), toot sweet (tout de suite)

mate, chum, guvnor, cock, love, me old duck

aggro

Blimey (Gorblimey), Cor, Wotcha

Literary Cockney

Sam Weller in Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers (Wellerisms: „Bevare of vidders”)

G. B. Shaw: Pygmalion

Kipling: Barrack-Room Ballads

East Enders (soap); Only Fools and Horses (sitcom)

Cockney (rhyming) slang

Adam and Eve

Brahms and Liszt

Rosy Lee

trouble and strife

butcher’s; cobbler’s

to rabbit; raspberry

Joe Strummer, Hampden roar, Salisbury Crag

BACK-SLANG (yob, nevis)

Scotland

continuum:

Standard English – Scottish English –Scots – [Gaelic]

strong regional differences

Scottish English, Scots

‘r’ sound („rhotic”) (laird, beard, bird)

Diphthong / monophtong (stole, stale)

Voiceless velar fricative χ (loch)

‘hw’ - Where, while

Book, like, hospital, kitchen, have

Scots vocabulary Gaelic: loch, pibroch, clachan, capercailzie,

cairn, slogan, ceilidh, slainte

Old English: bairn, wee, bide, dicht, glaikit, quean, park

Norse: ain, aye, blether, kirk, lass, ken, maun

Dutch: coft, pinkie, callan

Literary Scots (Lallans Scots)

debated status: dialect or language

no Bible translation

Robert Burns (18th cent.)

Scottish Renaissance (1920s, 30s)

literary Scots: more archaic

Scottish Renaissance; Hugh MacDiarmid: ‘The Eemis Stane’

Global Englishes

Different status in different places

India since 1947: 3-language formula

Pitcairn Islands; Tristan da Cunha

South Africa: Afrikaans, English, native languages

Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana etc: lingua franca

Singlish (Singaporean)

Global English

English enriched

Hindi loanwords: bungalow, pundit, pukka, juggernaut, jungle

the Hobson-Jobson (dictionary, 1886)

Afrikaans loanwords: trek, spoor, veldt

Creole Englishes

Jamaica and West Indies:

Continuum: Jamaican English – Jam. Patois/ Creole

„Di kuk di tel mi mi faamin, bot it nat so.”

(the cook told me I was shamming sick, but it was not so)

NO RIGHT TURN NO TON RAIT

SCHOOL ZONE BEGINS SKUUL ZUON

BIGIN

NO ENTRY NO ENTA

KEEP LEFT KIP LEF

NO PARKING BETWEEN THESE SIGNS

NO PAAK BITWIIN DEM SAIN YA

NO OVERTAKING OR PASSING NO

OUVATEK NAAR PAAS

Creole and pidgin

West Africa: Krio (Sierra Leone)

Pidgin Englishes

(eg. Tok Pisin [talk pidgin] in New Guinea)

Pidgin: contact language, language of trade

Small and specified vocabulary, reduced grammar

Global English back in Britain

Nation Language

(Kamau Braithwaite): the work of artists from the Caribbean and African diaspora

preferred to ‘dialect’

dub poetry

Linton Kwesi Johnson