Dealing with

2

Dealing with main varieties, we can talk of:

                    British English (BrE)

                    American English (AmE)

                    Australian English (AuE)

                    Canadian English

                    South African English

                    New Zealand English

                    Caribbean English

In addition, each main variety of English has sub-varieties or regional variations. For example, within the British English variety we have: Cockney, Essex English, Geordie, Received Pronunciation, Scottish English, Standard English and so on.

British English, or English (BrE, BE, en-GB), is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere. 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 "Hiberno-English" for the "English language as spoken and written in Ireland".

There are slight regional variations in formal written English in the United Kingdom. For example, although the words wee and little are interchangeable in some contexts, wee (as an adjective) is almost exclusively written by some people from some parts of northern Britain (and especially Scotland) or from Northern Ireland, whereas in Southern England and Wales, little is used predominantly.

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, 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, "For many people . . . especially in England [British English] is tautologous," and it 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."

Dialects

Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of the United Kingdom, as well as within the countries themselves. There are also differences in the English spoken by different socio-economic groups in any particular region.

The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England, which comprises Southern English dialects, West Country dialects, Midlands English dialects and Northern English dialects), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language), and Scottish English (not to be confused with the Scots language). The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. The Scottish and Northern English dialects include many words originally borrowed from Old Norse and a few borrowed from Gaelic, though most of the structure and common words are conservative Anglo-Saxon, hence "kirk" (church), "beck" (stream), "feart" (feared), "fell" (hillside), "kistie" (chest, box), "lang syne" (long ago) and so on.

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 a team led by Sally Johnson, Professor of Linguistics and Phonetics at Leeds University, to study British regional dialects.

Johnson's team are 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." Work by the team on this project is not expected to end before 2010. When covering the award of the grant on 1 June 2007, The Independent stated:

Mr Upton, who is Professor of English at Leeds University, said 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" Regional

The form of English most commonly associated with the upper class in the southern counties of England is called Received Pronunciation (RP). It derives from a mixture of the Midland and Southern dialects which were spoken in London in the early modern period and is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. Although speakers from elsewhere in England may not speak with an RP accent it is now a class-dialect more than a local dialect. It may also be referred to as "the Queen's (or King's) English", "Public School English", or "BBC English" as this was originally the form of English used on radio and television, although a wider variety of accents can be heard these days. About two percent of Britons speak RP, and it has evolved quite markedly over the last 40 years.

In the South East there are significantly different accents; the London Cockney accent is strikingly different from RP and its rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand.

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. Communities migrating 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 school children. As a result, Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors, and Multicultural London English has emerged as a mixture of these influences.

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 midland 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. This is due to the influx of Scottish steelworkers.

In addition, most 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. This phenomenon is known in linguistics as code shifting.

American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States.

English is the most common language in the United States. Though the U.S. federal government has no official language, English is the common language used by the federal government and is considered the de facto language of the United States because of its widespread use. English has been given official status by 28 of the 50 state governments.

The use of English in the United States was a result of English colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America in the 17th century. Since then, American English has been influenced by the languages of the Native American population, the languages of European and non-European colonists, immigrants and neighbors, and the languages of slaves from West Africa.

Compared to English as spoken in England, North American English is more homogeneous. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast (for example, in eastern New England and New York City) partly because these areas were in close contact with England and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when these were undergoing changes. In addition, many speech communities on the East Coast have existed in their present locations for centuries, while the interior of the country was settled by people from all regions of the existing United States and developed a far more generic linguistic pattern. The red areas are those where non-rhotic pronunciations are found among some white people in the United States. AAVE-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be found among black people throughout the country. Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, West Country English and Scottish English as well as the fact most regions of England at this time also had rhotic accents. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is an alveolar approximant [ɹ] or retroflex [ɻ] rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of eastern New England, New York City and surrounding areas and the coastal portions of the South, and African American Vernacular English. In rural tidewater Virginia and eastern New England, 'r' is non-rhotic in accented (such as "bird", "work", "first", "birthday") as well as unaccented syllables, although this is declining among the younger generation of speakers. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, the lost r was often changed into [ə] (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs.

Furthermore, the er sound of fur or butter, is realized in AmE as a monophthongal r-colored vowel (stressed [ɝ] or unstressed [ɚ] as represented in the IPA). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.

Some other English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:

                   The shift of /æ/ to /ɑ/ (the so-called "broad A") before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or preceded by a homorganic nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this modification, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare. The realization of intervocalic /t/ as a glottal stop [ʔ] (as in [bɒʔəl] for bottle).

This change is not universal for British English and is not considered a feature of Received Pronunciation. This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception.

On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in other varieties of English speech:

                    The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɒ/, making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English. Exceptions are accents in northeastern New England, such as the Boston accent, and in New York City). The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɔ/.

This is the so-called cot–caught merger, where cot and caught are homophones.

This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward. For speakers who do not merge caught and cot:

The replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel before voiceless fricatives (as in cloth, off [which is found in some old-fashioned varieties of RP]), as well as before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before /ɡ/ (log, hog, dog, fog [which is not found in British English at all]).

                    The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what and in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody; the word because has either /ʌ/ or /ɔ/;want has normally /ɔ/ or /ɑ/, sometimes /ʌ/. Vowel merger before intervocalic /ɹ/. Which vowels are affected varies between dialects, but the Mary-marry-merry, nearer-mirror, and hurry–furry mergers are all widespread. Another such change is the laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to /ɛ/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ before /ɹ/, causing pronunciations like [pɛɹ], [pɪɹ] and [pjʊɹ] for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound [ʊɹ] is often further reduced to [ɝ], especially after palatals, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir.

                    Dropping of /j/ is more extensive than in RP. In most North American accents, /j/ is dropped after all alveolar and interdental consonant, so that new, duke, Tuesday, resume are pronounced /nu/, /duk/, /tuzdeɪ/, /ɹɪzum/.

                    æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, /æ/ is approximately realized as [eə] before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, [æ] and [eə] contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].

                   The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [aɪ]. This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [ˈlæːɾɹ̩] for "ladder" as opposed to [ˈlæɾɹ̩] for "latter".

                    T glottalization is common when /t/ is in the final position of a syllable or word (get, fretful: [ɡɛʔ], [ˈfɹɛʔfəl]), though this is always superseded by the aforementioned rules of flapping

                    Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], making winter and winner homophones. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that /Vnt/ and /Vn/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.

                    The pin–pen merger, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now also sometimes found in parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with roots in the mountainous areas of the Southeastern United States.

Australian English

Australian English (AusE, AuE, AusEng, en-AU) is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language.

English is the primary language spoken throughout Australia.

Despite being given no official status in the constitution, English is Australia's de facto official language and is the first language of, and is used exclusively by, the vast majority of the population.

Australian English was distinctly recognisable as different from British English shortly after the founding of the colony of New South Wales in 1788. It arose from the intermingling of children of early settlers from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British Isles and quickly developed into a major variety of English.

Phonological features

Australian diphthongs

                  Australian English is a non-rhotic accent that is highly distinctive from other varieties of English. It shares most similarity with other Southern Hemisphere accents, in particular New Zealand English. Like most dialects of English it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.

o                   The vowels of Australian English can be divided into two categories: long and short vowels. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, are similar to the lax vowels in British and North American English.

o                   The long vowels, consisting of both monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to its tense vowels and centring diphthongs. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction: that compresses, shortens or removes these features.

o                   The Australian English vowels /ɪ/, /e/,/æ/,/ɜː/,/ə/, and /oː/ are noticeably closer (higher tongue position) than their RP (British Received Pronunciation) equivalents. The centring diphthongs are accordingly also closer in AE than RP.

Monophthongs

      A long /æː/ sound is found in the adjectives bad, mad, glad and sad, before the /ɡ/ sound (for example, hag, rag, bag) and also in content words before /m/ and /n/ in the same syllable (for example, ham, tan, plant).

o                   In some speakers, especially those with the Broad accent, the vowel in words like dad, back and lag will be shifted toward [ɛ].

o                   In some varieties of Australian English, bad (with long [æː]) and lad (with short [æ]) do not rhyme (see bad–lad split).

o                   For many speakers, the /æː/ sound is flatter than the British /æː/.

o                   There is æ-tensing before a nasal consonant—The nasal sounds create changes in preceding vowels because air can flow into the nose during the vowel. Nasal consonants can also affect the articulation of a vowel. So for several speakers, the /æː/ vowel in words like "jam", "man", "dam" and "hand" will be shifted towards [e].

                  The /aː/ sound, an open unrounded vowel, is used in words like car, bath, ask, father and pass. So the words like trap and bath wouldn't have the same vowel (see Trap–bath split).

o                   However, words like chance, plant, branch, sample (words containing the suffix -mand, -ant, -anch, -ance) mostly have an /æ/ vowel as in cat but there are some speakers who use the vowel in cart (/aː/) for these words, particularly in South Australia, which had a different settlement chronology and type than other parts of the country.

Comparatively, most of the British accents use the back /ɑː/ sound.

                  The /e/ sound, which is a high-mid front unrounded vowel, is predominantly used in words like, dress, pet, bed and head. Comparatively, in most of American and British English, an [ɛ] sound is used instead, which is a low-mid front vowel.

                  The /ɪ/ sound, used in tin, bit and sit, tends to be tenser than in other varieties of English, and may sometimes sound like it's shifted to /i/ in the foreign ear. Thus, words like pin and kin will sound almost similar to peen and keen in the foreign ear. The final vowel in words like “happy” and “city”, which is typically /i/, is elongated to an /i:/ sound, so both will sound like happee and citee, respectively. Some of these aforementioned features are present in Chicano English.

                  Diphthongs

                  For many speakers, the vowel in words like "town" and "now" is [æʊ].

                  The vowel in words like "neat" and "feet" is [ei] sound where, for example, "neat" will be [neiʔ].

                  The vowel in "fate" is [æɪ] for several speakers, so words like that will sound like [fæɪʔ].

                  The vowel in "high" may be [ɑɪ] for those with the Broad accent, so "buy" might sound like "boy" in the foreign ear. This is a direct influence from the Cockney accent. Some of these features aforementioned are also present in the New York accent.

                  Non-rhoticity

                  Australian accent is R-less; in other words, the [r] sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. A final -er is pronounced as lowered [ɐ] in most speakers, or [ə] for some. So the words butter [bɐɾə], here [hɪɐ] and park [paːk] will not contain the /r/ sound.

                  Intervocalic alveolar flapping

                  Intervocalic /t/ and /d/ undergoes voicing and flapping to the alveolar tap [ɾ] after the stressed syllable and before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/, though not before syllabic /n/ (bottle vs button [batn]), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). There will be a homophony if some words are flapped, for example, metal and petal will sound like medal and pedal. In formal speech /t/ is retained.