British English

British English(abbreviations:BrE,en-GB, andBE)is the set ofvarietiesof theEnglish languagenative to theUnited Kingdom.More narrowly, it can refer specifically to theEnglish language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout theBritish Islestaken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporatingScottish English,Welsh English, andNorthern Irish English.Tom McArthurin theOxford Guide to World Englishacknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] 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".
Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjectiveweeis almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionallyYorkshire, whereas the adjectivelittleis predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the termBritish English. The forms ofspokenEnglish, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spokenand so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language.
Globally, countries that areformer British coloniesor members of theCommonwealthtend to follow British English,as is the case for English used by European Union institutions.In China, both British English and American English are taught.The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world andoperates in over 100 countries.
English is aWest Germanic languagethat originated from theAnglo-Frisiandialectsbrought to Britain byGermanic settlersfrom various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speakingCommon Brittonic—the insular variety ofContinental Celtic, which was influenced by theRomanoccupation. This group of languages (Welsh,Cornish,Cumbric) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from theGermanic languages, influence on English wasnotably limited. However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages.
Initially,Old Englishwas a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of theAnglo-Saxonkingdoms of England. One of these dialects,Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The originalOld Englishwas then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of theScandinavianbranch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was theNormansin the 11th century, who spokeOld Normanand ultimately developed an English variety of this calledAnglo-Norman. These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a trulymixed 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 containsLatinandFrenchinfluences, e.g. swine (like the Germanicschwein) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the Frenchporc) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans.Another example is the Anglo-Saxoncumeaning cow, and the Frenchbœufmeaning beef.
Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of theAnglo-Frisiancore of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from theRomancebranch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a"borrowing" languageof great flexibility and with a hugevocabulary.
Dialectsandaccentsvary amongst the fourcountries of the United Kingdom, as well as within the countries themselves.
The major divisions are normally classified asEnglish English(or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped intoSouthern English,West Country,EastandWest Midlands EnglishandNorthern English),Northern Irish English(in Northern Ireland),Welsh English(not to be confused with theWelsh language), andScottish English(not to be confused with theScots languageorScottish Gaelic). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages.
Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the wordthough.
Following its last majorsurvey of English Dialects(1949–1950), theUniversity of Leedshas started work on a new project. In May 2007 theArts and Humanities Research Councilawarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects.
The team aresifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by theBBC, 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".When discussing the award of the grant in 2007,Leeds Universitystated:
Most people in Britain speak with a regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent calledReceived Pronunciation(also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and "BBCEnglish"), that is essentially region-less.It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period.It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners.
In the South East, there are significantly different accents; theCockneyaccent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockneyrhyming slangcan be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand,although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated.
Londonersspeak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors.Estuary Englishhas been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney.Immigrants to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by theInner London Education Authoritydiscovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren.NotablyMulticultural London English, asociolectthat emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young,working-classpeople inmulticulturalparts ofLondon.
Since the massinternal migrationtoNorthamptonshirein the 1940s and given 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 theKetteringaccent, which is a transitional accent between theEast MidlandsandEast Anglian. It is the last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words likebathorgrass(i.e.barthorgrarss). Converselycrassorplasticuse a slender "a". A few miles northwest inLeicestershirethe slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town ofCorby, five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by the West Scottish accent.
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.
Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English,/t/has become commonly realised as aglottal stop[ʔ]when it is in the intervocalic position, in a process calledT-glottalisation. National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings,notbeing heard as "no[ʔ]" andbottle of waterbeing heard as "bo[ʔ]le of wa[ʔ]er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such aslater, whileoftenhas all but regained/t/.Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English arep, as in pa[ʔ]er andkas in ba[ʔ]er.
In most areas of England and Wales, outside theWest Countryand other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known asnon-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 theintrusive R. It 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. This is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping arecarandsugar, where the R is not pronounced.
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.
Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as ingoandsay(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 ofNewcastle upon Tyne, 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'.
Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so thateeandooinfeedandfoodare pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with a greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ].
Dropping a morphologicalgrammatical number, incollective nouns, is stronger in British English than North American English.This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people.
The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment:
A football team can be treated likewise:
This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example,Jane Austen, a British author, writes in Chapter 4 ofPride and Prejudice, published in 1813:
However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used.
Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known asdouble negatives. Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence.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.
Standard Englishin the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to theAcadémie françaisewith French or theRoyal Spanish Academywith Spanish. Standard British Englishdiffers notablyin certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standardAmerican Englishand certain other standard English varieties around the world.British and American spellingalso differ in minor ways.
The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over a century asReceived Pronunciation(RP). However, due tolanguage evolutionand changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losingprestigeor has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguistGeoff Lindseyfor instance calls Standard Southern British English.Other scholars suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England.Outside of England, namely in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts very little influence, particularly in the 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of theBritish Empire, is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RPnotably contrastswith standard North American accents.
As of the 21st century, dictionaries such as theOxford English Dictionary, theLongman Dictionary of Contemporary English, theChambers Dictionary, and theCollins Dictionaryrecord actualusagerather than attempting toprescribeit.In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, andneologismsare frequent.
For historical reasons dating back to the rise ofLondonin the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and theEast Midlandsbecame 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 bothdialect levellingand 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.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.
Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language(1755) was a large step in theEnglish-language spelling reform, where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling.By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler'sModern English UsageandThe Complete Plain WordsbySir Ernest Gowers.
Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication is included in style guides issued by various publishers includingThe Timesnewspaper, theOxford University Pressand theCambridge University Press.The Oxford University Pressguidelines 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 asHart's Rules, and in 2002 as part ofThe Oxford Manual of Style. Comparable in authority and stature toThe Chicago Manual of Stylefor publishedAmerican 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.
British English is the basis of, and very similar to,Commonwealth English.Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in theCommonwealth countries, though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken inAustralia,Malta,New Zealand,Nigeria, andSouth Africa. It also includesSouth Asian Englishused in South Asia, in English varieties inSoutheast Asia, and in parts of Africa.Canadian Englishis based on British English, but has more influence fromAmerican English, oftengrouped togetherdue to their close proximity.British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings.