SPREAD OF ENGLISH

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 472.

It is common knowledge that over 300 million people now speak English as first language. It is the national language of Great Britain, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (part of it).

English was originally spoken in England and south-eastern Scotland. Then it was introduced into the greater part of Scot­land and southern Ireland. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was brought to North America (mainly from the West of England). Later in the 18th and 19th centuries English was exported to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa owing to the colonial expansion. A flow of emigrants who went to invade, explore and inhabit those lands came mostly from the south-eastern parts of England.

English became wide-spread in Wales at about the same time. Welsh English is very similar to southern English, although the influence of Welsh has played a role in its formation. Then in the 20th century American English began to spread in Canada, Latin America, on the Bermudas, and in other parts of the world. Thus nowadays two main types of English are spoken in the English-speaking world: English English and American English.

According to British dialectologists (P. Trudgill, J. Hannah, A. Hughes and others (61, 78) the following variants of English are referred to the English-based group: English English, Welsh English, Australian English, New Zealand English; to the Ameri­can-based group: United States English, Canadian English.

Scottish English and Irish English fall somewhere between the two being somewhat by themselves.

On the whole this division seems rather reasonable and the "English" types of English will be treated first in this book, though it is safe to say that English English, Welsh English, Scot­tish English and Northern Ireland English should be better com­bined into the British English subgroup, on the ground of politi­cal, geographical, cultural, psychological unity which brought more similarities than differences for those variants of pronuncia­tion.

To our regrets, the lack of space gives us no chance to de­scribe all the territorial and national variants of English pronunci­ation.