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Linguistic Variation in the English Language:
Due to its status as an official language in many countries, and becoming the default lingua franca for international communication, many spoken variations of English exist. Some of the best known and most dominant across the Anglophone world include American English, British English, Irish English, and Australian English. Lesser-spoken variations include New Zealand English and Canadian English, which due to geographical proximity, cultural affinity, and political cooperation alike exist largely in tandem with Australian and American English respectively. Differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and influences from other languages certainly exist in these variations, setting them apart as distinct dialects. But excepting perhaps isolated sub-dialects or thick parlances of older individuals, the divergence between these aforementioned dialects is usually not sufficient to hinder comprehension between their speakers. In general, it will become obvious quite quickly which country the speakers in question hail from, and they may occasionally be unfamiliar with specific vocabulary or slang pertaining to daily life in each others’ homelands, but overall communication will take place without issue. Due to the fact that speakers of English from these countries tend to be familiar with each other’s cultures to a certain extent, they will often know and somewhat stereotypically associate certain pronunciations and phrases with each other’s dialects. One example would be the name of the famous Australian Idol singer and drag queen Shane Gilberto Jenek, better known by the stage name of Courtney Act, which in non-rhotic dialects such as his native Australian becomes a play on the phrase “caught in the act,” whereas in rhotic dialects such as American English, the stage name loses its originally intended pun. Other spoken examples of divergence in the dialects can be seen in highly informal greetings, with “what’s up?” being popular in North America, compared to “wotcha” in southern Britain, “how ya goin’?” in Australia, and the famous greeting “what’s the craic?” in Ireland.
Other spoken dialects in Anglophone countries are more than sufficiently distinct to hinder comprehension for other English speakers, even if their standard forms do not differ greatly. Two such examples could be spoken Jamaican English, which is often referred to as a patois or creole daughter language in its own right, and Singaporean English. In the case of Jamaican, words are pronounced in a highly condensed fashion and many letters are changed or cut, as can be seen in the dialect’s widely recognized greeting “wha’ gwan?” or “what [is] going on.” Word order and syntactical structure are often quite distinct from even Standard Jamaican English due to Carib and African influences. Singaporean English is known for often featuring the particle “lah,” borrowed from Malay, which is used to emphasize certain parts of a sentence or a whole sentence depending on use and context, and has no direct English translation.
Aside from overarching national and geographical divergences, socio-economic and community-based variations also exist in English, within or across such geographical umbrellas. Prominent geographical variation in dialect is certainly present in the United States. The most general regional groupings consist of New England, the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Pacific Northwest. But aside from small variations in vocabulary, and a few unusually strong regional accents (namely in East Coast cities like Boston or New York that were established earlier in the country’s history), linguistic diversity in the United States is manifested more through sociolects. A key example of a prominent American sociolect is African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Often condescendingly dismissed as “improper speech” or “poor grammar,” in recent decades AAVE has gained more recognition as a defined sociolect with its own grammar, syntax, word order, and morphological features. Words are often shortened, particularly in the elimination of final consonants such as “r’s” and their frequent replacement with glottal stops (i.e. “four” becomes “fo’”) or schwas (i.e. “mother” becomes “mothuh”). Other commonly recognized features of AAVE include its distinctive usage of the verb “to be” in various sentence forms (such as “I been done,” meaning “I’ve finished”), double negation (i.e. “I didn’t go nowhere” to mean “I didn’t go anywhere,” which reverses the sentence’s original meaning in Standard English, and the common use of “ain’t” as a general particle of negation (i.e. “He ain’t know” instead of “he didn’t know”). Speakers of AAVE, particularly those living in urban areas and middle class neighborhoods, tend to code switch quite frequently, using AAVE in informal contexts among relatives and African American friends and acquaintances, but switching to a more standard American English register in school or work environments, or when communicating with non-AAVE speakers. Because of the influence that AAVE and its speakers have had in certain areas of American culture, particularly in various genres of music, it is often an object of imitation and appropriation by non AAVE-speakers and non-African Americans.
Another common sociolect found in the United States is that of Chicano English, or “Spanglish,” which is widely used among Hispanic, particularly Mexican American, communities and neighborhoods. It uniquely fuses Spanish and English vocabulary, word order, and syntax, producing a combination that is not fully dominated by either language (i.e. instead of the fully English “I went to the store to buy some strawberries, but they were sold out,” or the fully Spanish “fui a la tienda a comprar unas fresas, pero ya no quedaban,” a Latino American might say “fui al store a comprar some strawberries, pero ya estaban sold out.”
The Development of the Written English Language:
English as a written language has evolved dramatically from its original registers, and understanding these changes is key in classifying the language. Scant written records exist of the Germanic speech of the earliest Anglo-Saxon invaders of Great Britain, who absorbed or displaced many of the local Pictish and Celtic clans inhabiting the island (as well as their languages). Literacy became more widespread in Britain following its Christianization by St. Augustine and 40 other Roman missionaries in the year 597. The pagan Anglo-Saxons had used a runic alphabet which closely resembled those found in northern Europe, specialized for engraving on wood or stone, and fused it with the Latin alphabet introduced by these missionaries. The resulting written language included letters such as “ƿ (wynn),” “þ (thorn),” “ð (eth),” and “ȝ (yogh),” some of which have been retained in other Germanic languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese. Old English refers to the register and literary works of the English language hailing from from the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. Old English was the dominant spoken language of the time, with Latin only being used regularly by the clergy and elite, but Latin borrowings, particularly religious terminology such as “priest,” baptism” “eucharist,” “candle,” and so on were increasingly adopted for common use. Literature published during the Old English period included numerous works by poets such as Caedmon from the 7th century, and epics such as Beowulf, still well-recognized and commonly read to this day. Old English was quite grammatically akin to Old Norse and modern Icelandic, showcasing more intricate features of expression such as three genders, seven strong verb classes and three weak ones, five potential case inflections, and consequentially freer word order, which modern English has all but lost. Further Germanic influence in Old English came from Viking invasions and political domination in following centuries.
A dramatic and pivotal turning point came with the the Norman conquest of Britain, in which the French King William the Conqueror seized control of the island in 1066 and redistributed land to Norman lords, subjugating the Anglo-Saxons and making them second-class citizens. This manifested in the increasingly diglossic linguistic situation, with Anglo-Norman becoming the spoken language of the court, administration, and noble elite for more than three hundred years afterwards, and English being seen as an inferior, simple peasant’s tongue. Because of Old English and Anglo-Norman speakers being largely separated by rigid societal hierarchies, the two languages developed in tandem with each other for many decades, only beginning to fuse when intermarriage between speakers of the two sociolects becoming more acceptable. Romance-based prefixes such as “con-,” “pre-,” “ex-,” and “trans-,” and noun suffixes such as “-age,” “-ance/-ence,” “-ity,” and “-tion” made an appearance in written English at this time due to French influence, and huge numbers of French loanwords, particularly relating to positions of power (i.e. “government”), and artistic expression (i.e. “poet,” “literature”) were adopted. French scribes reversed the common Old English diphthong “hw” to “wh,” wishing to uphold an aesthetic consistency with other diphthongs such as “ch” and “th.” Other reappropriations of spellings common at the time seemed more arbitrary, such as adding a “w” to the word hal, a precursor to the modern “whole.”
Following Norman rule, dialects became so divergent across Britain that mutual intelligibility was impossible over long distances, and the spoken register gradually shed the grammatical complexities of Old and Middle English. A monk called Orm from northern Lincolnshire crafted a text referred to as the “Ormulum,” in which he attempted to combat excessive mispronunciation by transcribing biblical passages exactly as they were pronounced. This was done by simplifying and altering the written language, shifting many common diphthongs (i.e.“cw” to “qu;” “queen” instead of “cween”), eliminating “h’s” at the beginning of many words (i.e. “neck” instead of “hnecca”), and perhaps most crucially, eliminating the use of the letters wynn, replacing it with "w," yogh, replacing it with g or gh, thorn and eth, replacing them with th, and so on.
Out of touch with their French roots, many of the Norman elite began to craft a more English identity, and the plague killed much of the Latin-speaking clergy, resulting in a more even linguistic playing field and adoption of common English by classes who had previously discredited it. By the 15th century, Old English was likely just as mutually unintelligible as it is for modern English speakers.
A defining benchmark in the development of Modern English was the so-called Great Vowel Shift, referring to an unusually swift evolution of long vowel sounds being pronounced higher and in a forward position in the mouth. Spelling changes that were made to reflect these changes rendered written English increasingly similar to its modern form. The last crucial facet in the development of Modern English was the invention of the printing press in 1476, which made literature of diverse genres and purposes accessible to more of the general population, and led to greater unity among the speakers who used it. Late Modern English has remained relatively unchanged in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling; the greatest changes are reflected in vocabulary, as many words have been coined for technological inventions and newly discovered scientific concepts.
Continuing my little academic series from Finland, here are my essays from my Variations of the Finnish language class, which I had to write about the dialectal variation and the development of the written version of my first language, that being English.
Hope it's interesting!
Linguistic Variation in the English Language:
Due to its status as an official language in many countries, and becoming the default lingua franca for international communication, many spoken variations of English exist. Some of the best known and most dominant across the Anglophone world include American English, British English, Irish English, and Australian English. Lesser-spoken variations include New Zealand English and Canadian English, which due to geographical proximity, cultural affinity, and political cooperation alike exist largely in tandem with Australian and American English respectively. Differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and influences from other languages certainly exist in these variations, setting them apart as distinct dialects. But excepting perhaps isolated sub-dialects or thick parlances of older individuals, the divergence between these aforementioned dialects is usually not sufficient to hinder comprehension between their speakers. In general, it will become obvious quite quickly which country the speakers in question hail from, and they may occasionally be unfamiliar with specific vocabulary or slang pertaining to daily life in each others’ homelands, but overall communication will take place without issue. Due to the fact that speakers of English from these countries tend to be familiar with each other’s cultures to a certain extent, they will often know and somewhat stereotypically associate certain pronunciations and phrases with each other’s dialects. One example would be the name of the famous Australian Idol singer and drag queen Shane Gilberto Jenek, better known by the stage name of Courtney Act, which in non-rhotic dialects such as his native Australian becomes a play on the phrase “caught in the act,” whereas in rhotic dialects such as American English, the stage name loses its originally intended pun. Other spoken examples of divergence in the dialects can be seen in highly informal greetings, with “what’s up?” being popular in North America, compared to “wotcha” in southern Britain, “how ya goin’?” in Australia, and the famous greeting “what’s the craic?” in Ireland.
Other spoken dialects in Anglophone countries are more than sufficiently distinct to hinder comprehension for other English speakers, even if their standard forms do not differ greatly. Two such examples could be spoken Jamaican English, which is often referred to as a patois or creole daughter language in its own right, and Singaporean English. In the case of Jamaican, words are pronounced in a highly condensed fashion and many letters are changed or cut, as can be seen in the dialect’s widely recognized greeting “wha’ gwan?” or “what [is] going on.” Word order and syntactical structure are often quite distinct from even Standard Jamaican English due to Carib and African influences. Singaporean English is known for often featuring the particle “lah,” borrowed from Malay, which is used to emphasize certain parts of a sentence or a whole sentence depending on use and context, and has no direct English translation.
Aside from overarching national and geographical divergences, socio-economic and community-based variations also exist in English, within or across such geographical umbrellas. Prominent geographical variation in dialect is certainly present in the United States. The most general regional groupings consist of New England, the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Pacific Northwest. But aside from small variations in vocabulary, and a few unusually strong regional accents (namely in East Coast cities like Boston or New York that were established earlier in the country’s history), linguistic diversity in the United States is manifested more through sociolects. A key example of a prominent American sociolect is African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Often condescendingly dismissed as “improper speech” or “poor grammar,” in recent decades AAVE has gained more recognition as a defined sociolect with its own grammar, syntax, word order, and morphological features. Words are often shortened, particularly in the elimination of final consonants such as “r’s” and their frequent replacement with glottal stops (i.e. “four” becomes “fo’”) or schwas (i.e. “mother” becomes “mothuh”). Other commonly recognized features of AAVE include its distinctive usage of the verb “to be” in various sentence forms (such as “I been done,” meaning “I’ve finished”), double negation (i.e. “I didn’t go nowhere” to mean “I didn’t go anywhere,” which reverses the sentence’s original meaning in Standard English, and the common use of “ain’t” as a general particle of negation (i.e. “He ain’t know” instead of “he didn’t know”). Speakers of AAVE, particularly those living in urban areas and middle class neighborhoods, tend to code switch quite frequently, using AAVE in informal contexts among relatives and African American friends and acquaintances, but switching to a more standard American English register in school or work environments, or when communicating with non-AAVE speakers. Because of the influence that AAVE and its speakers have had in certain areas of American culture, particularly in various genres of music, it is often an object of imitation and appropriation by non AAVE-speakers and non-African Americans.
Another common sociolect found in the United States is that of Chicano English, or “Spanglish,” which is widely used among Hispanic, particularly Mexican American, communities and neighborhoods. It uniquely fuses Spanish and English vocabulary, word order, and syntax, producing a combination that is not fully dominated by either language (i.e. instead of the fully English “I went to the store to buy some strawberries, but they were sold out,” or the fully Spanish “fui a la tienda a comprar unas fresas, pero ya no quedaban,” a Latino American might say “fui al store a comprar some strawberries, pero ya estaban sold out.”
The Development of the Written English Language:
English as a written language has evolved dramatically from its original registers, and understanding these changes is key in classifying the language. Scant written records exist of the Germanic speech of the earliest Anglo-Saxon invaders of Great Britain, who absorbed or displaced many of the local Pictish and Celtic clans inhabiting the island (as well as their languages). Literacy became more widespread in Britain following its Christianization by St. Augustine and 40 other Roman missionaries in the year 597. The pagan Anglo-Saxons had used a runic alphabet which closely resembled those found in northern Europe, specialized for engraving on wood or stone, and fused it with the Latin alphabet introduced by these missionaries. The resulting written language included letters such as “ƿ (wynn),” “þ (thorn),” “ð (eth),” and “ȝ (yogh),” some of which have been retained in other Germanic languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese. Old English refers to the register and literary works of the English language hailing from from the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. Old English was the dominant spoken language of the time, with Latin only being used regularly by the clergy and elite, but Latin borrowings, particularly religious terminology such as “priest,” baptism” “eucharist,” “candle,” and so on were increasingly adopted for common use. Literature published during the Old English period included numerous works by poets such as Caedmon from the 7th century, and epics such as Beowulf, still well-recognized and commonly read to this day. Old English was quite grammatically akin to Old Norse and modern Icelandic, showcasing more intricate features of expression such as three genders, seven strong verb classes and three weak ones, five potential case inflections, and consequentially freer word order, which modern English has all but lost. Further Germanic influence in Old English came from Viking invasions and political domination in following centuries.
A dramatic and pivotal turning point came with the the Norman conquest of Britain, in which the French King William the Conqueror seized control of the island in 1066 and redistributed land to Norman lords, subjugating the Anglo-Saxons and making them second-class citizens. This manifested in the increasingly diglossic linguistic situation, with Anglo-Norman becoming the spoken language of the court, administration, and noble elite for more than three hundred years afterwards, and English being seen as an inferior, simple peasant’s tongue. Because of Old English and Anglo-Norman speakers being largely separated by rigid societal hierarchies, the two languages developed in tandem with each other for many decades, only beginning to fuse when intermarriage between speakers of the two sociolects becoming more acceptable. Romance-based prefixes such as “con-,” “pre-,” “ex-,” and “trans-,” and noun suffixes such as “-age,” “-ance/-ence,” “-ity,” and “-tion” made an appearance in written English at this time due to French influence, and huge numbers of French loanwords, particularly relating to positions of power (i.e. “government”), and artistic expression (i.e. “poet,” “literature”) were adopted. French scribes reversed the common Old English diphthong “hw” to “wh,” wishing to uphold an aesthetic consistency with other diphthongs such as “ch” and “th.” Other reappropriations of spellings common at the time seemed more arbitrary, such as adding a “w” to the word hal, a precursor to the modern “whole.”
Following Norman rule, dialects became so divergent across Britain that mutual intelligibility was impossible over long distances, and the spoken register gradually shed the grammatical complexities of Old and Middle English. A monk called Orm from northern Lincolnshire crafted a text referred to as the “Ormulum,” in which he attempted to combat excessive mispronunciation by transcribing biblical passages exactly as they were pronounced. This was done by simplifying and altering the written language, shifting many common diphthongs (i.e.“cw” to “qu;” “queen” instead of “cween”), eliminating “h’s” at the beginning of many words (i.e. “neck” instead of “hnecca”), and perhaps most crucially, eliminating the use of the letters wynn, replacing it with "w," yogh, replacing it with g or gh, thorn and eth, replacing them with th, and so on.
Out of touch with their French roots, many of the Norman elite began to craft a more English identity, and the plague killed much of the Latin-speaking clergy, resulting in a more even linguistic playing field and adoption of common English by classes who had previously discredited it. By the 15th century, Old English was likely just as mutually unintelligible as it is for modern English speakers.
A defining benchmark in the development of Modern English was the so-called Great Vowel Shift, referring to an unusually swift evolution of long vowel sounds being pronounced higher and in a forward position in the mouth. Spelling changes that were made to reflect these changes rendered written English increasingly similar to its modern form. The last crucial facet in the development of Modern English was the invention of the printing press in 1476, which made literature of diverse genres and purposes accessible to more of the general population, and led to greater unity among the speakers who used it. Late Modern English has remained relatively unchanged in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling; the greatest changes are reflected in vocabulary, as many words have been coined for technological inventions and newly discovered scientific concepts.
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