Languages in Britain and the USA.
A) The English language. Britain’s other languages (the Welsh language, Irish and Scottish Gaelic).
English is the official language of the country. Apart from standard literary English there are many regional and social dialects. But they are not as numerous as in Italy or Germany, for example. The vocabulary of the dialects has died out, though the accents and few bits of distinctive grammar remain. It is the accent which gives visitors to Britain a problem. Some accents are so strong that they present problems for the British, too. The so-called RP (Received Pronunciation) systematically established through the Public School is the accepted dialect of the national elite. There are two kinds of RP: “unmarked” (the language of well-educated people, BBC radio and television) and “marked” RP (the language of high social class). The majority of middle class people speak a sort of classless, democratic version of RP, with a slight admixture of a local regional accent. People’s attitude to the various regional accents depends on a whole range of historical and social factors. The Birmingham is considered ugly, cockney is associated with criminals, Scottish is thought of as serious and sensible, Irish as poetic. Westcountry accent is identified with farm-workers, sometimes considered stupid by city folk. It is the Cinderella among accents, confined to comedy and gardening programmes.
English is the language predominantly spoken in all the four parts of the UK. Wales, however, is bilingual as a result of the long struggle of the Welsh to preserve their language. It is now spoken as a first language by more than 20 per cent of the population. It is used as a first language in an increasing number of schools and it is studied as a second language in all other schools in Wales. There are television and radio stations with Welsh-language programmes.
The Celtic language still exists as Gaelic in Scotland and inland. In Scotland some 100,000 people, mainly in the Highlands and western coastal regions and in the Hebrides, are able to speak the Scottish form of Gaelic. A few families in Northern Ireland speak the Irish form of Gaelic.
B) American English
The United States is one of the few countries that has no “official” national language, or languages. English is the common language by use, but it is not the national language by law. Nearly 313 million people live in the USA and speak English. There are more native speakers of English there than any other country.
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Today, there are some differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling between American and British English. American English is very flexible and has absorbed many words from the languages of immigrants. Words like unison and rendezvous (from French), and rodeo and tornado (from Spanish) came into the language because France and Spain once controlled parts of North America. Dutch and German settlers gave words such as waffle and cookies, and hamburger and noodles to American English.
The first English speakers to arrive met Native Americans who spoke many different languages. To trade with them, the Europeans learned words from the local languages, and some of these words became part of American English. Native Americans also worked as guides, leading the European traders and trappers around the country. The Europeans learned the Native American names for the places they were passing through. Over half the states now have Native American names. For example, the state of Massachusetts takes its name from the Algonquin word for “place of the big hill.” Minnesota is a Dakota Sioux word meaning “sky-colored water.”
American English has different dialects. People in the southern states speak with a drawl — they tend to speak slowly and lengthen the last sound of each word. They use expressions like “Howdy, y’all” for “Hello, everybody.” In New York City, especially in the boroughs outside Manhattan, many people have a way of speaking English that is called the New York accent. They often speak very fast and tend not to pronounce the “r” in words that end in “er.” A word like “water” sounds like “wata.” Teenagers often like to use a lot of slang, along with expressions such as “like” and “you know,” which can make their way of talking seem vague. The words they choose are strongly influenced by popular music and fashion.
About 30 million Americans speak a language other than English at home. This means, for example, that if you meet an American in New Mexico who speaks Spanish as his first language, he could be a recent immigrant, having arrived in the U.S. only a few years ago, or his grandparents could have arrived in the United States a hundred years ago. It could also be that his ancestors had been living in the area years before the thirteen British colonies were established on the East Coast. A so-called foreign accent does not necessarily mean that an individual is (or even was) a foreigner.
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