For historical and economic reasons the English language has spread over vast territories. It is the national language of the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zeland and some provinces of Canada. Besides, it used to be a state language in the former colonies of the British Empire: in Asia, Africa, or in countries which fell under US domination in Central and South America. The key terms in studying the territorial varieties of the English language are:Standard English, variants, dialects. Standard English is 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. 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 calledvariants. In GB there are two variants: Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Nothern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects. Features of traditional dialects
Any dialect will yield numerous examples. These are a few:
GrammarUse of noun plurals formed with -n: shoon "shoes", een "eyes", kine "cows"
Use of a T/V pronoun system: thee, thou/tha and thy, as well as you, your andyours.
Use of object pronoun form her in subject case contexts.
Use of reflexive me for “myself”: I washed me; I laid me down.
Use of redundant auxiliary do: she do go there every day.
Variant forms of the verb to be: I is (Northwest), I are (Midlands and East Yorkshire), I be (Southwest), I am (North and East)
LexisScotland: luin "boy", quine "girl", greet "cry", gang "go"Yorkshire: beck "stream", bairn "child" (These are Paul Kerswill's examples; Barrie Rhodes notes that they are not specific to Yorkshire, but common in the north generally. Bairn is widespread in Scots, while the modern.
PhonologyScotland: nicht "night", dochter "daughter", hame "home"
North: spian "spoon", bian "bone", reet "right"
North-east: fower "four", sivven "seven"
South-east Midlands: fut "foot", umman "woman"
Among the regional varieties beyond the borders of GB American English is the most important, as it has its own literary standards, i.e. its own generally accepted norms of speaking and writing. American English can not be called a dialect since it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, while a dialect has no literary form. Canadian, Australian and Indian English can also be considered regional varieties of English with their own peculiarities.
