Variants and dialects of the English language. American English. Lexicography. Types of Dictionaries

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 called variants.

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.

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 litrary form.

Canadian, Australian and Indian English can also be considered regional varieties of English with their own peculiarities.

The differences between British English (BE) and American English (AmE) are observed in the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and spelling.

There is a number of differences between British and American lexicons. There exist words which belong only to American vocabulary and constitute its specific feature. These words are called Americanisms (the term was introduced by Sir John Witherspoon, rector of Princeton University). 

Among Americanisms the following major groups of words are distinguished: historical Americanisms, proper Americanisms and borrowings.

The examples of historical Americanisms are the words: fall (autumn), to guess (in the meaning “to think”), sick (in the meaning “ill, unwell”). In BE their meanings have changed, while in AmE these words still retain their old meanings.

Proper Americanisms are words that are specifically American. They denote American realia, objects of American flora and fauna: ^ Congress, House of Representatives, District Attorney, forty-niner (золотоискатель 1949 года), prairie scooner (фургон переселенцев), jump a claim (захватить чужой участок), drugstore, blue-grass, catbird(американский пересмешник), bullfrog, etc. They are also names of objects which are called differently in the US and in GB: store – shop, baggage – luggage, subway – underground, railroad – railway, gasoline – petrol, department – faculty, etc.

AmE is rich in specifically American borrowings which reflect the historical contacts of the Americans with other nations on the American continent. Among such borrowings are Spanish borrowings (ranch, sombrero, canyon, tornado), Afro-American borrowings (banjo), German borrowings (lager beer and black beer, frankfurter) and especially Indian borrowings (the words wigwam, canoe, mocassin, tomahauk, racoon, skunk, names of places, rivers, lakes and states: Mississippi, Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky.

The differences between Canadian and BE are concerned mainly with intonation. As for the vocabulary, some words do not differ from their British counterparts while others are the same as in AmE: to guess (“to think”), rooster (“cock”), sidewalk (“pavemant”), store (“shop”).

Australian English, too, differs from BE mainly in phonetics: the pronunciation is characterized by the nasal twang (is nasalized), like that of Americans, by indistinct pronunciation of the consonants p,b,w, n (the so-called American lip-laziness), Australian speech is somewhat slow, lengthy and monotonous. In the vocabulary there is a number of typically local words like coala, dingo, bandicoot (сумчатая крыса) and various placenames borrowed from the native inhabitants. 

Indian English differs from BE in pronunciation (take – [tek], young – [o], etc.) and vocabulary. It contains a great number of words taken from the native language: curry, bandana, khaki, sari, sahib, bundgalow, etc. Some of them have become international.

The mass media, constant international contacts facilitate the levelling of differences between variants and dialects of the English language.