The History of Late Modern Englishes: An Activity-based Approach 9780367198251, 9780367148362, 9780429243493

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‘For both students and teachers, Keith Johnson’s The History of Late Modern Englishes is a godsend. The book adopts a refreshingly modern, sociolinguistic approach to its subject matter, exploring English in all its varieties. Like its masterful predecessor The History of Early English, it is written in an accessible and entertaining way, and its well-constructed and engaging exercises encourage students to make discoveries about English for themselves. A “must” for my course reading list!’ David Hornsby, University of Kent, UK ‘While scholarly discussions of LModE have grown considerably since the turn of the millennium, it has been much less frequent to come across student-centred discussions of what present-day Englishes owe to their historical past. By focussing on geographical variation across time, this book outlines some important ways in which English has changed over the last three centuries.’ Marina Dossena, University of Bergamo, Italy

The History of Late Modern Englishes The History of Late Modern Englishes provides an accessible and student-​friendly introduction to the history of the English language from the beginning of the eighteenth century up until the present day. Taking an activity-​based approach, this text ensures that students learn by engaging with the fascinating evolution of this language rather than by simply reading about it. The History of Late Modern Englishes: • Covers the development of Englishes around the world, not only in the British Isles, but also in the United States, Canada, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Melanesia, as well as in other countries around the world where English is used as a lingua franca; • Accommodates the needs of both native and non-​native speakers of English, with helpful features such as a glossary of key terms and questions to guide the reader through the book; • Includes activity sections and discussion points to help students engage with the text; • Is accompanied by e-​resources which include further activities and additional coverage of points of interest in the book. Written by an experienced teacher and author, this book is an essential course textbook for any module on the history of English and the perfect accompaniment to the author’s own The History of Early English. Keith Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Language Education in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Lancaster, UK.

LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGE Series Editors:

Brian Walker, Huddersfield University, UK; Willem Hollmann, Lancaster University, UK; and the late Geoffrey Leech, Lancaster University, UK Series Consultant:

Mick Short, Lancaster University, UK Learning about Language is an exciting and ambitious series of introductions to fundamental topics in language, linguistics and related areas. The books are designed for students of linguistics and those who are studying language as part of a wider course. Also in this series: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing Through Prolog Clive Matthews An Introduction to Child Language Development Susan H. Foster-​Cohen The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics Henry Rogers The Earliest English An Introduction to Old English Language Chris McCully and Sharon Hilles Varieties of Modern English An Introduction Diane Davies An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, Second Edition Danny D. Steinberg and Natalia V. Sciarini An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, Second Edition Friedrich Ungerer and Hans-​Jorg Schmid Analysing Sentences An Introduction to English Syntax, Fourth Edition Noel Burton-​Roberts The History of Early English An Activity-​based Approach Keith Johnson An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Fifth Edition Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching, Revised Third Edition Keith Johnson The History of Late Modern Englishes An Activity-​based Approach Keith Johnson For more information about this series please visit: www.routledge.com/​series/​PEALAL LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGE

The History of Late Modern Englishes An Activity-​based Approach

KEITH JOHNSON

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Keith Johnson The right of Keith Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN:  978-​0-​367-​14836-​2  (hbk) ISBN:  978-​0-​367-​19825-​1  (pbk) ISBN:  978-​0-​429-​24349-​3  (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK Access the Support Material: www.routledge.com/​9780367198251

Always for Helen and Hugh

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Phonetic symbols used

1

xii xiii xiv

Into the middle of things 1.1 How different was eighteenth century English? 1.2 The variety of ‘Englishes’ 1.3 Previously, in English 1.4 About this book, and how to use it

1 1 2 6 8

2 ‘Ascertaining English’: the eighteenth century 2.1 Swift, dunces, fops, and students 2.2 Prescription and proscription 2.3 Usage guides: what to say and what not to say 2.4 Johnson’s Dictionary 2.5 Some characteristics of eighteenth-​century English 2.6 Prescription and description

11 11 14 15 18 21 25

3 The nineteenth century: English, standard and non-​standard 3.1 Language and history 3.2 The interest in matters linguistic 3.3 Developing a standard English 3.4 A variety of varieties 3.5 Nineteenth-​century words 3.6 The setting sun

32 32 35 41 42 47 52

4 A short interlude about variety 4.1 Bad press 4.2 Do and have in Berkshire 4.3 Good or bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong? 4.4 ‘Variation attractors’ 4.5 Traditional and mainstream dialects

59 59 60 61 62 67

ix

Contents

5 ‘A tongue of small reach’: England 5.1 British dialects, and dialect studies 5.2 England 5.3 The three caveats

70 70 75 84

6 ‘A tongue of small reach’: Wales, Scotland, Ireland 6.1 The Celts 6.2 Wales 6.3 Sexy Scottish? 6.4 Irish English 6.5 A one-​way street, or two-​way traffic?

90 90 91 93 98 100

7 ‘Immigrants goes to America’: English in North America 7.1 Many hellos in America 7.2 Old languages in the New World 7.3 GA comes of age 7.4 American, or Patagonian? British and American English 7.5 Varieties of American English 7.6 Studying American dialects 7.7 Canada 7.8 Adaptation, acceptance, continuity

104 104 107 109 113 116 119 119 122

8 A world apart?: Australia and New Zealand 8.1 ‘So many new names ...’ 8.2 Australia 8.3 New Zealand 8.4 Does distance matter?

127 127 128 135 136

9 Wider still and wider 9.1 Diasporas and circles 9.2 India: Macaulay’s ‘Minute’, and some history 9.3 Outer Circle India 9.4 What Indian English (IE) is like 9.5 The ‘-​isation’ process

142 142 144 145 147 152

10 Pidgins, Creoles, and Tok Pisin: a ‘ghastly mutilated English’? 10.1 An extraordinary linguistic event 10.2 Some features of pidgins and creoles 10.3 Tok Pisin 10.4 ‘Ghastly mutilated English’?

157 157 159 161 167

11 Worldwide 11.1 English seepage 11.2 ELF 11.3 Netspeak: ‘like a jungle river’ 11.4 ESP, worldwide 11.5 A language for the future, with a past

172 172 174 178 182 184

x

Contents

12 English: a language with a past … and a future? 12.1 English shows its past 12.2 English, a language with a future? 12.3 The future, always unclear 12.4 And finally Glossary References Index

189 189 194 201 202 206 211 221

xi

List of illustrations

Tables 10.1 The Guyanese creole continuum from Macaulay (2006: 173). 12.1 Suffixes in OE and PDE. 12.2 Ethnologue’s top five languages in terms of users.

158 191 195

Figures 2.1 Pronunciations based on Walker’s (1791) Dictionary. 3.1 Number of words first recorded by the OED, in fifty-​year periods. From the OED Online. 9.1 Kachru’s Concentric Circles. 11.1 Some emoticons, taken from OpenMoji: https://openmoji.org.

27 48 143 180

Maps 5.1 The word adder and variations. From Upton and Widdowson (2006: 130). 5.2 Major variety areas of the British Isles. 5.3 The word flea and variations. Based on Upton and Widdowson (2006: 134).

xii

72 74 86

Acknowledgements

Right at the beginning, when the book was being planned, I was much helped and encouraged by Francesca McGowan, Willem Hollmann, and Brian Walker. Willem and Brian have continued to be guiding forces throughout the writing process, always offering helpful and constructive comments. I’m grateful also to all the team at Routledge, including Adam Woods, and particularly to Lizzie Cox. The team has patiently and competently nursed the book into production. Thanks also to Tony Hirst, Geraldine Martin, and Ed Robinson. The biggest thanks go to my wife Helen, not just for tolerating my regular lengthy disquisitions on topics related to the book, but also for reading chapters as they became ready, and for offering useful comments ranging from the most particular to the most general. The author and the publishers are grateful to the copyright holders for permission to reproduce the following material: The extract from the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, with kind permission from the National Trust for Scotland. Figure 3.1 from the Oxford English Dictionary Online, with kind permission from Oxford University Press (Books). The sentences in 4.4.2, taken from the Survey of English Dialects, with kind permission from the British Library (source), on behalf of the University of Leeds (copyright holders). Maps 5.1 and 5.3 from Upton, C., and Widdowson, J.D.A. (2006). An atlas of English dialects. Second edition. London: Routledge, with kind permission from Taylor and Francis (Books). Table 10.1 from Macaulay, R. (2006). The social art: language and its uses. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, with kind permission from Oxford Publishing Limited (Academic). The Tok Pisin Greetings Card, from Mühlhäusler, P., Dutton, T.E., and Romaine, S. (2003). Tok Pisin texts from the beginning to the present. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, with kind permission from John Benjamins. The card was originally produced by the Grassroots Comic Company, Port Moresby. Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of third-​party material used throughout the text; however, this has not been possible in every instance. The publishers would be pleased to rectify any omissions in subsequent editions of this product should they be drawn to our attention. xiii

Phonetic symbols used

Sounds found in ‘RP’ (‘Received pronunciation’ is discussed in Chapter 3, Section 3) p b t d k g tʃ ʤ f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h m n ŋ l r j w ɪ e æ ɒ ʌ ʊ iː uː ɑː xiv

pet boy tell dad key, car go child, nature jail, age father vote think, Athens this, rather sit zip, rise sheep, ratio pleasure hope music now ring, anger love right yet war, square hit, rabbit bet, many cat, attack hot, what shut, love good, should sea, me do, spoon car, heart

newgenprepdf

Phonetic symbols used

ɔː ɜː ə eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ aʊ ɪə eə ʊə

saw, shore bird, earn about, teacher lay, face cry, lie boy, choice throw, no how, foul dear, here fair, wear sure, poor

Non RP a ɑ aː æə eː ɛː ɛʉ oː u əɪ ʍ ɬ ʈ, ɖ x ʔ

As in the French word salle. Mentioned in Chapter 5’s Note 11. A little like the French word pas. Discussed in 7.4.1 in relation to the American pronunciation of words like bomb. As in the Australian pronunciation of father. The vowel is discussed in 8.2.4. Cockney pronunciation of RP /​aʊ/​. Discussed in 5.2.1. It is also mentioned in 8.2.4 in relation to Australian English. As in the German word sehen. The vowel is first mentioned in 4.4.1. As in the French word même. The vowel is discussed in 6.3, and in 12.1.2. The diphthong used in Northern Irish how. Discussed in 6.4. As in the German word Sohn, and the French chose. The vowel is discussed in 5.2.5, and 6.3. As in the French word boule. Discussed in 6.3. As some West Country British speakers would say the word price. Discussed in 5.2.4, and also in 7.7 in relation to ‘Canadian raising’. Sometimes written /​hw/​. As in Scottish and American when. The sound is discussed in 6.3 and 7.4.1. The Welsh sound at the beginning of the word llan. Discussed in 6.2. Retroflex versions of /​t/​and /​d/​. Discussed in relation to Indian English in 9.4.1. The sound used in the Scottish word loch. See 6.3. Glottal stop. Discussed in 4.4.1.

xv

1

Into the middle of things

1.1  How different was eighteenth century English? The Romans had a phrase, first used by Horace, to describe books that do not start at the very beginning of the story. The phrase was in medias res (‘into the middle of things’), and it was what Homer did in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. This book too begins in the middle of things. Let’s say that English ‘began’ when the Germanic tribes brought their languages over to the British Isles, starting in about the year 450. We take up the story of English nearly thirteen hundred years later, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We’ll open with a linguistic lament. Just twelve years into that century, in 1712, the writer Jonathan Swift (he of Gulliver’s Travels) wrote a letter lamenting the state of English of the time, and making suggestions for its improvement. The letter was entitled A proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English tongue, and it was written to a very important person, Robert Harley. He was Earl of the city of Oxford and the village of Mortimer. At the time he was also the equivalent of Prime Minister of the country. In the next chapter, we shall look at the details of what Swift says in his letter. For the moment, to give you a feel for what early eighteenth-​century English looked like, we’ll focus on the Proposal’s opening paragraph. When you’ve read through it, identify some ways in which it is different from English today. Here is the paragraph: WHAT I had the Honour of mentioning to Your LORDSHIP ſome time ago in Converſation, was not a new Thought, juſt then ſtarted by Accident or Occaſion, but the Reſult of long Reflection; and I  have been confirmed in my Sentiments by the Opinion of ſome very judicious Perſons, with whom I conſulted. They all agreed, That nothing would be of greater Uſe towards the Improvement of Knowledge and Politeneſs, than some effectual Method for Correcting, Enlarging and Aſcertaining our Language; and they think it a Work very poſſible to be compaſſed, under the Protection of a Prince, the Countenance and Encouragement of a Miniſtry, and the Care of proper Perſons choſen for ſuch an Undertaking. I was glad to find Your LORDSHIP’s Anſwer in ſo different a Style,from what hath been commonly made uſe of on the like Occaſions, for ſome years paſt, that all ſuch Thoughts muſt be 1

Into the middle of things

deferred to a Time of Peace: A Topick which ſome have carried ſo far, that they would not have us, by any means, think of preſerving our Civil or Religious Conſtitution, because we were engaged in a War abroad. Differences there certainly are. Some deal with how the language is written down. There is one letter that we no longer use in English today. It is called the ‘long s’, and is written [ſ]([ſ]in italics). Then there’s the use of capital letters, which at first sight may seem to follow neither rhyme nor reason. Some of the punctuation seems very odd to us too. And on the *lexical level, you find one or two words used in strange ways (an asterisk beside the first time that a word is used means that it is defined in the Glossary at the end of the book). A  good example is aſcertaining; today the verb ascertain means ‘to find out for certain’, but in Swift’s day it could have the meaning of ‘to fix’. It’s an important word that makes its way into the title of Chapter 2, which is all about the eighteenth century. Having looked briefly at just this one paragraph, what would you say about the degree of difference between English then and now? Are they rather similar? Rather different? Considerably different? The chances are that you will go for ‘rather similar’. The differences we have briefly mentioned do not amount to much. The English language has not changed all that much in the three hundred years between 1712 and now. To get a clearer idea of where our 1712 starting point is positioned in the history of English, you may be interested in doing one more comparison, this time going backwards rather than forwards  –​for the same amount of time, about three hundred years. This book’s e-​resources give you a passage written at the end of the fourteenth century. This will enable you to see the extent of change between then and the eighteenth century, as well as between then and now. On the e-​resource web page, the passage is marked ER1.1  –​ER for ‘e-​resource’, and 1.1, meaning it is Chapter 1’s first e-​resource entry. The passage is given the rather odd title ‘Garrying grisbittyng’; it will become clear why when you look at the ER.

1.2  The variety of ‘Englishes’ So here we are, in medias res, with a language quite similar to ours today. Perhaps then there’s not very much to say about English since Swift’s day, in which case you might expect this to be a rather short book! In fact, the history of English during the period is an eventful, exciting one, and the reason is to do with variety. We chose just one type of eighteenth-​century English for our comparison –​a formal written style used by a celebrated man of letters. Had we chosen another style –​informal handwritten letters, for ­example –​we might have reached different conclusions. For the other part of our comparison we talked about ‘English today’, which you doubtless interpreted to be a standard

2

Into the middle of things

type of English, probably also of the sort used in formal writing. The comparison is a reasonable one, but it doesn’t tell anything like the full story. That story involves –​over the three centuries we shall cover –​not one English, but a large number of ‘Englishes’, different versions of the language found throughout the world: English used as a first language, English as a second language utilised for administrative purposes, English acting as a means of communicating country to country. Then, to add to the variety, there are multitudinous local dialects; exactly how many depends on how you define a dialect, but there are certainly more than thirty in Britain alone, let  alone the rest of the world. All these Englishes, and their dialects, differ in terms of accent, grammar, lexis, and in other linguistic ways besides. Much of the history in this book is the story of these varieties and how they developed. This is why it’s ‘Englishes’, not ‘English’, in the book’s title. Here, to give you a taste of the variety that will be one of the book’s major themes, are examples of four ‘Englishes’. Look at each passage in turn. What is it about? Where might it come from? What are its distinctive linguistic features? How does it differ from standard English? It’s not necessary to go into too much detail: the purpose here is just to illustrate different versions of English in our period. Think about these questions before you read the descriptions under the texts. Chapter 1’s second e-​resource entry –​ER1.2 –​contains a glossary for the English 3 passage, and a translation of English 4: English 1 Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong Under the shade of a coolibah tree, He sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled You’ll come a-​Waltzing Matilda, with me Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda You’ll come a-​Waltzing Matilda, with me He sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled, You’ll come a-​Waltzing Matilda, with me Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong, Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee, He sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag, You’ll come a-​Waltzing Matilda, with me Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda You’ll come a-​Waltzing Matilda, with me He sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag, You’ll come a-​Waltzing Matilda, with me.

3

Into the middle of things

English 2 The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them . . . . After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people. English 3 Though his position in society wis ower laich for him tae hae the richt tae vote, Robert wis nanetheless passionate aboot politics and made his writin desk his ballot box. Scunnerin the weel-​daein and pooerfu, hooanever could prove a fykie business. Robert Burns loved the lassies. He fell in love aften an wi ease, and wi mony weemun frae a wheen o backgrunds. The wey he treatit his lovers wis different ilka time, and ilka relationship affected Robert in its ain weys. English 4

 

Paul: Peter: Paul: Peter: Paul:

Hei, Peter! Baibai yu leit long parti blong Mary, ye. Orait, orait. Mi kam nau. Yu sheiv tudei, or no mor? Mi sheiv tudei, bat-​e wichwei, yu tink mi luk-​e no gud yet? Yes. Yu luk-​e not veri klin this morning, and this taim mi teikim kam wan-​fela ‘Gillette Thin Blade’ –​nju kain bleid, ye. Himi savi meikim yu klin an smuth, gud tu. Yu trai im! Peter: Thank yu, Paul. Mi savi this-​fela ‘Gillette Thin Blade’ –​himi namber wan, an mi tink mi savi sheiv long him plenni taim. Bat, samting no mor, hau mach nau him kostim ye man? Paul: Himi kost ten sens long wan paket, Peter … English 1 is part of a song which perhaps you have come across before. The lyrics were composed in 1895 by the Australian poet Banjo Paterson, who wrote mostly about the Australian outback region. The title Waltzing Matilda means ‘travelling the road with a bag of belongings’. The song tells the story of an itinerant worker (a swagman), camping by a water hole (billabong), shaded by a gum tree (coolibah), waiting for his tea kettle (billy) to boil. A sheep (jumbuck) 4

Into the middle of things

came along. The swagman killed it and put it in his food (tucker) bag. The story ends badly: the jumbuck’s owner pursues the swagman who, to avoid capture, drowns himself in a billabong. In terms of grammar, Waltzing Matilda is like standard English, and its distinguishing features are the Australian words mentioned above. Almost the opposite is true of English 2: the words are relatively standard, but the grammar is not. The passage is taken from the opening chapter of Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book, first published in 1884, was written in the dialect of Missouri, where Mark Twain was born. There’s an interesting linguistic feature in the first three words –​the way the sentence’s *subject, the widow, is ‘repeated’ by the pronoun she  –​ the widow she. We’ll see another version of this kind of ‘repetition’ in Chapter 5 (Box 5.2), when we discuss northern British English. We’ll also come across, more than once, several other features of Mark Twain’s language, which are characteristic of a number of Englishes worldwide. You may have noticed the use of ‘double negatives’  –​ where two negative words, like never and no in the first sentence, are used: a practice not followed in standard English. Find the other three examples in the passage. Then there is the use of them as a *demonstrative adjective, instead of the standard these or those: them new clothes. Some of the verb forms are non-​ standard also: rung as the past tense of ‘ring’, and warn’t for ‘weren’t’ –​a form which suggests how the word was pronounced. Another non-​standard verb is learned, where we would expect ‘taught’. Perhaps the word lassies in English 3 gives away the passage’s origin. It is the Scottish word for ‘girls’. The passage is an example of written Scots. It’s taken from information panels in the Birthplace Museum of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns (1759–​96), in Alloway, south-​west Scotland. The language of the passage is discussed in detail in Chapter 6 (section 6.3), and we will not need to look at it in length here. Like Waltzing Matilda, the passage’s grammar is quite standard. The lexis causes some problems, with words like laich (meaning ‘low’, ‘lowly’) that are non-​standard. Scunnerin is an interesting word; the verb scunner means ‘disgust’, and is associated with the standard English word ‘shun’. The form scunnerin exemplifies another feature of the passage, that the spellings sometimes reflect the way the word was pronounced. Quite often British dialects drop the final ‘g’ in words ending in -​ing; it’s a dialectal feature that we discuss in 4.4.1 (Chapter  4, section 4.1). The lost ‘g’ is here also lost in the spelling. You might like to find some other words in the passage where you suspect that spelling reflects pronunciation. It’s likely that you found English 4 the most difficult of the passages to understand. It’s part of an advertisement broadcast on the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service in 1971. The Solomon Islands are in the SW Pacific Ocean. They were under British protection till they gained independence in 1978. Their official language is Solomon Island Pidgin. The advert is for what is described as a ‘namber wan’ razor blade –​Gillette.

5

Into the middle of things

The language is clearly based on English, and you will have no difficulty in finding English words in the passage, though often with different spellings. So there’s parti for ‘party’, nau for ‘now’, sheiv for ‘shave’, and there are many more examples. Sometimes, though, you have to stop and think just what the standard English would be. Baibai, for example, is based on English words, but it’s not ‘bye bye’ –​what is your guess? The pidgin’s grammar is non-​standard also. Look for example at the passage’s questions. In standard English, to form some questions we start with part of the verb do, followed by the sentence’s subject; so it would be ‘did you shave today?’ and ‘do you think I don’t look good?’ Notice from the passage what Solomon Island Pidgin does. The four passages illustrate just some of the Englishes that sprang up during the Late Modern English period. You can find more about each variety in this book:  Chapter  8 covers Australian English, while Chapter  7 is devoted to English in North America. Chapter 5 is all about English dialects, while Chapter 6 focuses on Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and in fact uses the Burns passage in its discussion of Scots. Chapter 10 discusses pidgin versions of English, focusing on the language called Tok Pisin, used in New Guinea. Because of the variety, there’s a lot to say; which is why the book isn’t that short!

1.3  Previously, in English So far we have been using phrases like ‘English today’ and ‘eighteenth-​century English’ to describe various stages in the language’s development. Linguists have their own terms. Old English describes the language from its beginnings until the Norman invasion of 1066. The stage from 1066 until about 1509 (when Henry VIII became king) is known as Middle English. From then until about 1700 is Early Modern English. After that it is Late Modern English, while today’s English is described as Present Day English (with a start date, according to some linguists, at the end of the Second World War). We will use these terms throughout this book, usually in their abbreviated forms:  OE, ME, EModE, LModE, and PDE. Incidentally, the dates when these stages started and finished are approximate. People did not stop talking ME on the 20th April 1509, and start talking EModE on the 21st when Henry VIII became king. The dates are also the subject of scholarly discussion. Some, for example, have the LModE period starting before the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is very likely that you come to this book with some knowledge about the development of English up to the beginning of the eighteenth century. You have perhaps already studied OE, ME, and EModE. To help understand the state of the language in 1700, when the LModE period (and this book) begins, now would be a good time to remind yourself of that history. There is a very brief 6

Into the middle of things

overview below, but before reading it, you might use Activity 1A (Previously, in English) to stimulate your look back into the past.

The overview English is a language on the Germanic branch of the Indo-​European language tree. It grew out of the tongues that the Anglo-​Saxon tribes brought with them to Britain from the areas of Denmark and North Germany which were their home. OE was a highly ‘*synthetic’ language. Synthetic languages generally use suffixes to show some grammatical relations. In Johnson (2016), I  talk about OE’s ‘jungle of endings’. For example, the adjective glæd (meaning ‘cheerful’ or ‘glad’) had no fewer than ten forms (glæd, glædne, glades, gladum, glade, glædra, gladum, glaedu, glædre, glæda). Which form was used depended on the gender of the noun the adjective referred to, and what its grammatical function was. The verb forms were equally complex. There were many *strong verbs which had irregular forms, rather like our PDE give, which has gave and given as its past tense and *past participle. OE also had various ways, shared by other Germanic languages, for developing its vocabulary: it was fond of using *compounds to do this, as well as using *affixes. Following the Norman invasion of 1066, ME saw a considerable Norman/​ French influence on the language. Borrowing words (particularly at this time from Norman and French) became a major way of vocabulary expansion for English. Many of OE’s grammatical complexities disappeared. Endings were often dropped, so that by the end of the period the adjective glad –​often, though not always, spelt like that –​came to have just one form.1 The verb system simplified too, with many of the OE strong verbs becoming regular. There were also pronunciation changes, with the phenomenon known as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) beginning in the ME period, and extending beyond it. If you’re unfamiliar with the GVS, it’s worth finding out about it. Johnson (2016), Chapter  12, describes it in detail, as do most other histories of English. The EModE period was characterised by a massive, almost uncontrolled, but highly creative, expansion of vocabulary, largely through the borrowing of words from other languages. It was also a period of great change, showing much variation, for example in how words were spelt, and how grammatical forms were used. The seventeenth century saw the beginnings of a period of consolidation: no more uncontrolled growth, and signs of a desire to bridle the language in, to ‘fix’ it in various ways –​or, to use Swift’s word, to ‘ascertain’ it. One way of bridling in, fixing or ascertaining a language is to establish an institution to look after such matters. For French, an Academy was established with just these aims in mind. In Britain, the Royal Society of London set up a committee, in 1664, to look at ways of improving and fixing the English language. This is discussed in the last pages of Johnson (2016). It is the point where we now take up the story. 7

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But before reading on, give a thought to what you already know about the development of English from 1700 until the present day  –​about, that is, this book’s subject matter. Have you any ideas, however vague, about what direction English takes during this period? You might like to think particularly about where, in geographical terms, the language comes to be used. In EModE English was largely associated with that small group of islands in northern Europe –​the British Isles. But now?

1.4  About this book, and how to use it The main aim of this book is, of course, to tell the eventful history of English from the eighteenth century up to the present day. But there is another aim, which is to give you some experience at analysing language, as you explore varieties of English that are both familiar and unfamiliar to you. This experience will also give you an insight into some of the processes linguists follow when mapping out the history of a language. This second aim is one of the reasons why the book is ‘activity-​based’. All histories of English include descriptions of varieties of the language, showing what it was like at a particular historical point or in a particular geographical location. ‘Geographical locations’ come to the fore during the Late Modern English period, because this is the time when English spread throughout the world. For this reason, the book involves description of a good number of varieties, and will be useful as an introduction to ‘world Englishes’, though not full treatment of this topic. The book is organised following Kachru’s (1992) ‘concentric circle model’, which we describe in Chapter 9, section 1 (9.1). In this model, there are areas –​ like Britain, North America, and Australasia –​where English is used as a first language. These are called the ‘First Circle’, and are dealt with in Chapters 2 to 8. In ‘Second Circle’ countries, English is often, though not always, used as a second language, for official, administrative, and educational purposes  –​in India, for example. These are covered in Chapters 9 and 10. The final two chapters, 11 and 12, deal with Kachru’s ‘Extended Circle’, where English is used, often though again not always, as a foreign language. The topic of English as a world language is a major theme of those two chapters. As you have already seen, the book contains a short Glossary of linguistic terms. Terms which are covered there have an asterisk beside them the first time (but only the first time) they appear. The procedures used in the book are much the same as those followed in my History of Early English (Johnson, 2016), and activities really are an integral part of both books. They appear in various places. The text itself includes some, particularly in the form of questions which you are encouraged to answer for yourself, before reading on to find out what answers others have given. In some 8

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chapters, most of the activities are in the text, but it is more usual for them to appear in the Activity Section which comes towards the end of each chapter. The idea is that you do these activities as you go along. You are not expected to do every one; the assumption is that you will want to pick and choose. A very common procedure is to ask you to stop and do an activity before continuing to read the text. This is usually because the text’s next paragraph discusses the issue, and hence provides the ‘answers’ to the activity. This procedure gives you the option to avoid an activity if you so wish  –​by not going to the Activity Section, and just continuing to read. Sometimes there may be not just activities, but whole sections of the text that you wish to leave out, perhaps because they deal with a variety of English which does not particularly interest you. Before you decide to skip either an activity or a section, please bear in mind the ‘analysing language’ aim of the book; you may find it useful to do an activity which involves analysis, even though the variety of English on which it is based may be of secondary interest. Nearly every chapter has an Answer Section which gives solutions to questions raised in the chapter and its activities. An (AS) in the text signals that solutions appear in this Answer Section. Where, as often happens, solutions are given in the text itself, they are not repeated in the Answer Section. And talking about answers: occasionally you are asked questions which are not given answers in the text or elsewhere. In these cases you are being encouraged to use your own resources to explore. This book has associated e-​resources at www.routledge.com/9780367198251. These resources are not quite so integral to the book as the activities are. They contain additional materials  –​example passages to supplement those in the text, extra pieces of information, or further activities, particularly those that involve listening to recorded material. The letters ER in the text direct you to the e-​resources. I hope you enjoy the book’s ‘activity-​based approach’. It is used not just to help develop your skills of linguistic analysis, but also because I  believe that making some effort to work things out for yourself helps learning and makes it more memorable.

Activity section 1A  Previously, in English This is a chance to review what you already know about the development of English up to 1700, when this book begins. Think about the various stages of English in turn: OE, ME, EModE. For each period, identify origins: where the influences and linguistic impulses came from.

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Think of the linguistic characteristics of each period. What was English ‘like’ during each stage? Consider grammar, but also think about vocabulary and *phonology. If you had to characterise the period in a few key words, what might they be? The purpose of this activity is to stimulate thought. If your thoughts are a little vague, console yourself with the idea that the value is in the ‘process’ of your thinking, not necessarily in the ‘product’.

Further reading All general histories of English, like Johnson (2016), have chapters on OE, ME, and EModE. There are also books dealing with each specific period. For example: Hogg and Alcorn (2012) for OE, Smith and Horobin (2002) for ME, and Nevalainen (2006) for EModE. As for the LModE period, van Ostade (2009) provides excellent and succinct coverage. Lass (1999  –​Volume 3 of the Cambridge History of the English Language) goes up to 1776, and hence covers much of the eighteenth century. Later volumes in the series  –​Romaine (1999), Burchfield (1994), and Algeo (2001) –​also provide detailed linguistic background to the LModE period.

Note 1 Apart, that is, from *comparative and *superlative forms. In early ME there were also different forms of adjectives –​called ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ –​but the distinction had disappeared by the end of the ME period.

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‘Ascertaining English’ The eighteenth century

2.1  Swift, dunces, fops, and students Back, now, to Jonathan Swift, whom we talked about in 1.1 (Chapter 1, section 1). His Proposal was written nearly fifty years after the Royal Society’s committee was set up, and he is still arguing for the establishment of a fully-​fledged English Academy, much along the lines of the French one. Like many authors in the century before, Swift’s starting point is the ‘extremely imperfect’ state of English of the day, full of corruptions. Sometimes the Proposal sounds like a collection of those letters to newspapers, which people still write today, complaining of some misuse of the English language. The ‘imperfect’ state of the language, Swift says, is the result of ‘the great depravity of our taste’, with new words appearing in the language and continually ‘corrupting’ it. ‘Dunces’, he claims, are only too ready to ‘give rise to some new word, and propagate it in most conversations’. There are also ‘illiterate court fops, half-​witted poets’, and ‘young men at the universities’, who ‘insist on reading the daily trash’, using ‘words picked up in a coffee house’. Harrumph. What linguistic practices did Swift particularly dislike? In the September 1710 issue of The Tatler magazine, he published a spoof letter that revealed some of his linguistic aversions. Here is the letter, followed by a discussion of Swift’s dislikes. Before reading the discussion, take a look at Activity 2A (‘The depravity of our taste’). It has a glossary of unfamiliar words to help you understand the letter, and asks you to identify for yourself what some of these dislikes may have been. The letter: SIR, I cou’dn’t get the things you sent for all about town…. I  th’t to ha’ come down myself, and then I’d h’ br’t ’um; but I ha’n’t don’t, and I believe I can’t d’t, that’s pozz…. Tom begins to gi’mself airs, because he’s going with the plenipo’s…. ’Tis said the French King will bamboozl’ us agen, which causes many speculations. The Jacks and others of that kidney are very uppish, and alert upon’t, as you may see by their phizz’s…. Will Hazzard has got the hipps, having lost to the tune of five hundr’d pound, th’ he understands play very well, nobody better. He has promis’t me upon rep, to leave off play; but you know ’tis a weakness he’s too apt to give into, th’ he has as much wit as any 11

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man, nobody more. He has lain incog ever since…. The mobb’s very quiet with us now…. I believe you thot I bantr’d you in my last like a country put…. I shan’t leave town this month, &c. As you probably picked up, Swift’s main objection was to abbreviations. He hated all of them. The letter contains several examples of shortened words: pozz for ‘positive’, plenipo for ‘plenipotentiary’ (representative), phizz for ‘physiognomy’ (face), and rep for ‘reputation’. Hipps is an interesting one. It is short for ‘hypochondria’, one meaning of which was ‘melancholia’ or ‘depression’. Mobb too is an abbreviation. It is associated with the Latin phrase ‘mobile vulgus’, meaning ‘the rabble’. The phrase was shortened to mobile, and that in turn became mobb or, as we spell it today, mob. The idea of ‘mobile’ connects with ‘rabble’ because crowds were thought of as being fickle (‘mobile’) in their behaviour. Swift also disliked words which were ‘abbreviated’ by *contractions –​where letters (mostly vowels) were replaced by apostrophes. The extract is full of them; in just the first few lines you have cou’dn’t for ‘could not’, th’t to ha’ for ‘thought to have’, I’d h’ br’t ’um for ‘I would have brought them’, I ha’n’t don’t for ‘I have not done it’, I can’t d’t for ‘I cannot do it’, and gi’mself for ‘give himself’. Swift’s reasons for such objections verge on what we would now consider the bizarre. In the Proposal he says: ‘This perpetual disposition of shortening our words, by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended, and whose languages all labour under the same defect’. Swedish and Danish have the same ‘roughness and frequency of consonants’ as us. We need to be protected, he argues, against these ‘northern blasts’ of consonants. It’s the fault of us northerners, he is saying, who like consonants too much. Far better, for Swift, are languages like Italian, which abound in ‘vowels and liquids’. He also finds, incidentally, a gender issue. He would rather trust, he says, ‘the refinement of our language … to the judgment of the women’. Why? Because women like vowels, while men prefer consonants! Apart from abbreviations and contractions, Swift also disliked words and phrases which he regarded as the result of foolish fashion (which is where the dunces and fops come in). Some of these came from slang, and were also relatively new. The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED’s) first citation of the passage’s bamboozle, for example, is 1703; of banter as a verb, it is 1677; and of country put, 1688. The word kidney (in the sense of ‘temperament’ or ‘disposition’) is slightly older, and in fact makes an appearance in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor where Falstaff speaks of a man of my kidney. Swift also, for some reason, disliked sentences which ended with a series of dots . . . . . At the centre of Swift’s endeavours –​what he has ‘most at heart’ –​he says, is a desire to find some method ‘for ascertaining and fixing our language for ever … For I  am of the opinion, that it is better a language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing’. It was a view shared by many eighteenth-​century writers on language. It is worth giving this view some 12

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thought. Is it ‘better’ that a language should be fixed in one state for perpetuity? Think of arguments for and against. And if it is a good thing, can it be done? How? What are your views? But Swift’s opinions –​particularly regarding the value, or feasibility, of fixing the language  –​were not shared by all. Immediately after Swift’s spoof letter appeared, the English historian, John Oldmixon, published his Reflections on Dr Swift’s Letter. It was a swingeing attack. Oldmixon scorns the idea that a language can be fixed so that ‘like the Spanish Cloak, it might always be in Fashion’. And: ‘The Doctor [Swift, that is] may as well set up a Society to find out the Grand Elixir [the universal medicine], the Perpetual Motion … and other such Discoveries, as to fix our Language beyond their own Times’. Added to which, Oldmixon claims, Swift is wrong to say that Latin did not change. An Academy set up to fix the language would be nothing more than ‘meeting over a bottle once a week, and being merry. At which times people mind talking much, more than talking well’. In other words, an excuse for a drink and a chat. Doubtless to annoy Swift, Oldmixon fills his pamphlet with abbreviations of the sort that he knows Swift abhors. Thus, in his short (400-​word) Preface, we find five -​ed forms contracted to -​’d; there is also a tho’, a ’tis, a sho’d, and an ’em. All manner of good writers, like Dryden, Oldmixon says, use contractions, and are used to ‘leaving out the eds and eths’. Only a Frenchman, he adds, would insist on reading every syllable! On one thing, though, Swift and Oldmixon were in agreement, and it was to do with ‘ascertaining’. English, they both thought, badly needed an authoritative grammar and a dictionary. Another who felt the same way was Samuel Johnson, and his voice against the establishment of an Academy was far more influential than Oldmixon’s. One of Johnson’s major works was his Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. Section 2.4 below is devoted to this seminal work. In his initial Plan for the Dictionary, which appeared in 1747, Johnson talks about the ‘fixity issue’. His aim, he says, is to produce ‘a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened’. But as he worked on the Dictionary, his views on ‘ascertainment’ changed. Here is what he says in the Dictionary’s Preface: ‘Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design will require that it should fix our language’. But, he goes on, ‘when we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation’. Arguments like this spell the end of the English desire to set up an Academy to control their language. But the aspiration to bring order to the unruly tongue 13

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remains strong in the eighteenth-​century soul. The alternative to an Academy, and the one which was in fact followed, was for individuals like Johnson to produce authoritative works –​dictionaries, grammars, and other types of language manuals –​which would bring some order to the chaos, without resorting to an official institute to ‘embalm the language’. We shall look at eighteenth-​ century language manuals in section 2.3.

2.2  Prescription and proscription The eighteenth century goes down in history as the age which told people what to say (prescription), as well as what not to say (proscription). Prescribing and proscribing are just what Swift was doing in his Proposal and in the Tatler letter. Yet there was to be no English Academy, because as Oldmixon argued, and Johnson came to realise, close policing of a language can never really work. The policing debate was particularly fierce in eighteenth-​century Britain, and in fact many languages have an equivalent period in their history –​a time when the laying down of language rules is the order of the day. If you are not British, you may like to think if and when your own country had an equivalent to the ‘eighteenth century’. Also, though the debate was an eighteenth-​ century preoccupation, prescription and proscription issues come up through history. There are always those determined to set up rules about acceptable and unacceptable usage. Not just newspaper columns, but nowadays internet blog sites too, are full of complaints against people disobeying grammar rules, or misusing words by deviating from their original meanings (what some indignant complainer feels the words ‘really mean’). Warburg (1962) has a good example. He tells of a lawyer who upbraided a witness for calling an accused man ‘hysterical’. The word, the lawyer pointed out, comes from the Greek word meaning ‘womb’, and men do not have wombs.1 But despite the word’s origin, it is common, and accepted, usage to call a man as well as a woman ‘hysterical’. There is always a host of grammar and vocabulary points just crying out for hot disapproval. A recent one is the phrase between you and I. It should be between you and me; you can see why, by expanding the phrase to clarify its underlying structure. It’s between you and between me, and you can’t say between you and between I. To put it in more linguistic terms, you cannot follow the *preposition between with the subject pronoun form I. People can get extraordinarily upset when the wrong form is used. One internet user, for example, says that when she hears between you and I, it ‘grates on my ears like nails on a chalkboard’. Activity 2B (Between you and I) invites you to think of similar examples in your own language, whether it be English or some other. If people have always complained against the misuse of language, so too have there always been those who, like Johnson, argue that policing a language is a largely useless occupation. As Anthony Burgess (1992) put it:  ‘No man, 14

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however learned or powerful, can exert control over a language’. Trying to prevent languages from changing is like trying to stop the tide from coming in. It’s worth thinking about your own reaction to grammar and vocabulary ‘mistakes’. It’s easy to smile about eighteenth-​century indignation (and even about the lawyer in the 1960s), but what is your reaction to ‘mistakes’ when they occur today? What, do you think, is the right stance to take towards between you and I? Should you try and stop the tide, or let it flow?

2.3  Usage guides: what to say and what not to say2 Was idolatry punished in Jewish society during biblical times? This rather obscure issue started an argument of considerable proportions in the 1760s. One of the antagonists was the churchman and Hebrew scholar, Robert Lowth. He argued that it was indeed punished, and he gave some examples. But the powerful Bishop of Gloucester, William Warburton, took exception to Lowth’s arguments. The debate became personal and public, so that in the end the ecclesiastical authorities had to intervene. As the squabble with Warburton shows, Lowth could be an impetuous man. But he was in general a serene and happy person. His marriage to wife Mary is described as ‘loving’, and they had seven children together. The sadness was that only two of them survived their father. In fact, one of the works he is best known for is his epitaph for his daughter, Mary, who died at the age of thirteen. It begins Cara, vale (‘dear one, farewell’), and is a very touching piece of writing. You might like to find it on the internet. Lowth was a celebrated Hebrew scholar, and most of his works are on biblical topics. But he is best known for his Short Introduction to English Grammar, which appeared in 1762. It was written to help his eight-​year-​old son, Thomas Henry, to learn Latin. It was a common eighteenth-​century belief that there existed a ‘universal grammar’ which underlay all languages, despite differences between them. So learning one language will help learning another and, Lowth thought, Thomas Henry’s progress with Latin would be assisted if he knew something about the grammar of his own language. ‘If children were first taught the common principles of grammar’, he wrote, ‘ … they would have some notion of what they were going about, when they should enter into the Latin Grammar’.3 Lowth’s Grammar enjoyed great and unexpected popularity. It turned out to be by far the most popular of his works, and by 1781 over 34,000 copies had been printed. The book’s Preface extols the simplicity of English, pointing out the lack of suffixes used to mark grammatical functions, and the regularity of the verb system (characteristics that we mentioned in 1.3 –​Chapter 1, section 3). Given this simplicity, Lowth argues, English should be highly regarded and internationally used. The fact that it was neither, he thought, was the fault of how it was taught. Lowth’s own teaching method was based on the belief that ‘besides shewing what is right, the matter may be further explained by pointing out what is wrong’. In other words, people need proscription as well as 15

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prescription –​knowing what not to say as well as what to say. The approach was common in the eighteenth century. Hence Richard Postlethwaite’s Grammatical Art Improved:  In which the Errors of Grammarians and Lexicographers are Exposed, dated 1795, contains a section of ‘exercises of bad English’, requiring readers to identify examples of poor usage. Lowth is often regarded as the father of pre/​proscriptivism, and he is sometimes given devilish status. Bryson (1990), for example, describes Lowth’s Grammar as having a ‘long and distressingly influential life’, and he talks about Lowth’s ‘nonsensical beliefs’. His Grammar is indeed both prescriptive and proscriptive, but he is actually rather gentle in the way he states rules. Take, for example, his comments on the place of prepositions in a sentence. The name ‘preposition’ suggests that they are words that are ‘placed before’ a noun or *noun phrase:  with the boy, under the table. But, Lowth notes: ‘The Preposition is often separated from the *Relative which it governs, and joined to the Verb at the end of the Sentence, or of some member of it: as, Horace is an author, whom I am much delighted with. The correct version should be with whom … ’ But notice the calm, objective way Lowth points this out: ‘this is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style’.4 Take a look at Activity 2C (What not to say). It gives more examples of the usage issues Lowth raises in his Grammar –​together with other eighteenth-​ century prescriptivists. You are asked to identify some of the usage ‘mistakes’ that the prescriptivists talk about. As well as grammars like Lowth’s, the eighteenth century also saw the emergence of books specifically advising readers of linguistic dos and don’ts –​ often called ‘usage guides’. You still find such books nowadays, of course. Henry Fowler’s Modern English Usage is one of the more popular ones. It first appeared in 1926, but is still used by many today. Osselton (1985) lists no fewer than eighteen appearing in the eighteenth century. The range is wide. At the beginning of the century, there is John Jones’ guide with the catchy title:  Practical phonography: or, the new art of rightly spelling and writing words by the sound thereof, and of rightly sounding and reading words by the sight thereof (1701). At the other end of the century stands Lindley Murray’s English Grammar (1795), a book which enjoyed huge success into the nineteenth century. Most deal with grammar, lexis, and spelling, but there were also pronunciation guides; as we saw in 2.1 (Chapter 2, section 1), Johnson himself was interested in establishing pronunciation norms in his Dictionary. Perhaps the best-​known pronunciation guide is John Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, published in 1791. Walker started life as an actor, a profession where elocution and pronunciation are important. His voluminous Dictionary was hugely popular, with more than a hundred reprints appearing by 1904. Of course, issues of change and fixity, important for any dictionary writer, are particularly problematical where

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pronunciation is concerned. How can you fix pronunciation in a dictionary when it is a linguistic area particularly prone to change? Walker’s answer is that ‘the fluctuation of our language, with respect to its pronunciation, seems to have been greatly exaggerated’. Hence a pronunciation dictionary is a possibility. Pronunciation is always an area where social sensitivities are aroused; pronouncing words ‘the wrong way’ can cause all kinds of negative judgements to be made about a person and their background. The Preface to Walker’s Dictionary enters energetically into social comment, and contains detailed advice to the Irish and the Scots on how to obtain ‘a just pronunciation of English’. By ‘just pronunciation’, he means the English of educated Londoners, which is ‘free from all the vices of the vulgar’. Educated Londoners, note, not Cockneys. Walker calls Cockney pronunciation ‘vulgar’, ‘offensive and disgusting’. Activity 2D (‘Just pronunciation’) gives some examples of pronunciations from Walker’s Dictionary and asks questions about them. While on the subject of pronunciation, you may like to think of some socially ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ pronunciations related to your own context. We have seen that Lowth was often rather measured in his prescriptive statements. But the reputation of the century as a fiercely rigid one is supported by the fact that many dictionaries and usages guides were very much more forthright. Take for example Reflections on the English Language, a guide written by one Robert Baker and published in 1770. The book covers 127 linguistic points –​to do with grammar, words often confused, proper lexical usage. Here are three examples of Baker at his fiercest: • Some people say his’n instead of his (by analogy with mine). This is used, Baker says, by ‘infinite numbers of the low people in the country (and not a few in London)’. Sometimes even Londoners sin! • It is common, Baker says, to find people writing or saying He was one of those highwaymen that was condemned last sessions, instead of He was one of those highwaymen that were condemned last sessions. Walker is scathing: ‘a very great absurdity, of which both the English and the French are continually guilty … This is false grammar’. • Some people say I was going to have writ him a letter, and I intended to have writ to him. Baker says:  ‘Can there be greater nonsense than this? Is it not plain we ought to say I was going to write him a letter, and I intended to write to him’. Baker’s Reflections is prefaced by a letter to the King, George III, recommending himself to the sovereign, and outlining the purpose of his work, ‘being a detection of many improper expressions used in conversation, and of many others to be found in authors’. It is a most curious and wide-​ranging document, as Box 2.1 shows.

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Box 2.1  Grammar, painting, acting … and joking Though by 1770 most had dismissed the idea of a British Academy, Baker continues to support it, even going into details in his letter about how many Academy members should be chosen from the University of Oxford, and how many from Cambridge. His Reflections document also has lots to say about how foreign languages should be taught, proposing a large-​scale operation which would involve erecting huge theatre-​like buildings to house pupils. Baker is brutally honest about his lack of qualifications for writing a usage guide. ‘I have consulted nobody’, he says, adding that for financial reasons ‘I have no books’. His lack of a sense of relevance pervades his letter, and at some point there is a lengthy discourse about  –​believe it or not  –​how the celebrated actor David Garrick stands on the stage. Then he announces that ‘having gone from my principal subject in this preface, and rambled much, I shall continue to ramble on’. His ramblings involve talking about the teaching of painting, arguing for the establishment of an Academy of Painting. From this he moves on to mention a book of jokes that he wrote some years earlier but which had ‘hardly any sale’. As a taster, he provides a few sample jokes, including: Diogenes, being present at a performance of some very unskilful archers, went and placed himself close to the mark [target]. Being asked why he put himself there, ‘I am afraid’, said he, ‘if I stand anywhere else, some of their arrows will hit me’. Among the language issues that Baker’s Reflections discusses are the difference between imminent and eminent, the use of who versus whom, and the ubiquitous ‘grocer’s apostrophe’, where –​’s is used as a plural form. A grocer’s example might be apple’s for apples; Baker’s example is idea’s for ideas. Like his joke book, Baker’s Reflections does not seem to have sold very well, although later usage guides do make use of his work.

2.4  Johnson’s Dictionary Undoubtedly the high-​point of the eighteenth century’s output of language reference books was Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. He was born in 1709 in the city of Lichfield, close to Birmingham, and went to study in Oxford at the age of nineteen. His stay there was a short one; lack of money, plus perhaps indolence caused by depression, led him to leave after a year. He worked as a schoolmaster for a short time, then went to London and made a living largely writing articles for magazines. His big breakthrough came in 1746 when a consortium of booksellers suggested that he might produce an English dictionary. Johnson took 18

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to the idea enthusiastically. He first produced a Plan (1747), announcing that he would have the whole thing finished in three years –​an ambitious claim when you think that the French Academy took forty years to produce their French dictionary. In fact it took Johnson eight, but this is not at all bad given that the book included 140,871 definitions. The Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. Johnson also wrote poetry (his Vanity of Human Wishes appeared in 1749), an edition of Shakespeare (1765), and a kind of novella called The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759). There had been dictionaries of English before Johnson, but his was the first major one, and its influence was felt in the world of lexicography for centuries to come. The Oxford English Dictionary for e­ xample  –​appearing more than a hundred years later, and still considered the definitive dictionary of English –​ acknowledges over 1,700 definitions taken from Johnson. We discuss the OED at length in 3.2.3 (Chapter  3, section 2.3). Though his Dictionary has shortcomings, and cannot claim to be exhaustive, it is impressive in its coverage. Most dictionaries before that time had concentrated on ‘hard words’ –​a sensible aim given the abundance of new words, largely foreign borrowings, that came into English during earlier centuries. Johnson does not ignore ‘hard words’, and indeed one of the major criticisms of the American lexicographer Noah Webster (whose work is discussed in 7.3 –​Chapter 7, section 3) is that Johnson covers so many obscure items –​Webster’s examples are advesperate –​‘to draw dark’ (in the evening, or ‘vesper’ time) –​and morigerous, meaning ‘obedient’. But one of the important characteristics of the Dictionary is that it also covers everyday items. There are, for example, entries for the words of, the, and but. You might be tempted to think that less-​used words (like morigerous) are more difficult to define than everyday ones, but this is far from the truth. To appreciate the point, you might like to attempt your own definitions of a few common words. Activity 2E (Defining ‘everyday’ words) gives you the opportunity to do just this. Not easy at all. Johnson’s longest entry is for the ‘everyday’ word take. He identifies 133 different senses, includes 363 example quotations, and takes more than 8,000 words.5 There are two other major innovations in Johnson’s Dictionary. One is that he tries to identify the ‘primitive significations’ of words, then to introduce subdivisions carrying different shades of meaning. Take the word idle, for example. The ‘primary’ meaning, Johnson says, is ‘lazy’. But then another five meanings follow: ‘not busy’, ‘unactive’, ‘useless’, ‘worthless’, and ‘trifling’. The second innovation is Johnson’s use of quotations to provide examples of how the words he has defined are used. The greatest number of quotations are from Shakespeare –​17,500 in all, about fifteen percent of the total. Other writers he used extensively were Bacon, Pope, Milton, and Spenser. The Bible was also a common source, and this highlights an important aspect of Johnson’s undertaking –​that it had a moral as well as a linguistic purpose. Lexicographers, he believed, had a duty to look after the moral welfare of their readers, and for this reason cited writers had to be ethically, as well as aesthetically, acceptable. 19

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An example of a writer who failed the ‘ethics test’ was the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–​ 1679). His views were, for Johnson, too deterministic, and Hobbes’ idea that life was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, was not morally uplifting at all. ‘I scorned, sir, to quote him at all,’ Johnson explained to a friend, ‘because I did not like his principles’. Look at Activity 2F (The ways of idleness). It gives the six meanings of idle mentioned above. It also gives you six quotations exemplifying these meanings. You are invited to match the quotations to the meanings. This is not always easy, and the activity brings home the complexity of a dictionary writer’s task: distinguishing slightly different senses of a word and finding clear examples of them can be quite difficult. Attention is often drawn to the inaccuracies and idiosyncracies in Johnson’s Dictionary. To be sure, his etymologies were often suspect. About the word spider, for example, he says: ‘may not spider be spy dor, the insect that watches the dor [beetle]?’ Occasionally his definitions are just wrong: a pastern, for example, is part of a horse’s foot, but Johnson defines it as a ‘horse’s knee’. To his credit, he does not disguise his occasional pieces of ignorance, and is happy to admit when he has made a mistake. According to Johnson’s biographer, James Boswell, when a lady asked why he had misdefined pastern, he replied:  ‘ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance’. Then there is the word stammel. It is in the Dictionary. And the definition? ‘Of this word I know not the meaning’, Johnson says; (it is in fact a shade of red). As for idiosyncracies, the most famous is his definition of oats. It reveals his professed antipathy to Scotland (‘a very vile country to be sure’ he once called it). The definition is: ‘a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people’. If you would like to see more idiosyncratic definitions in Johnson, take a look at Activity 2G (‘Capricious and humorous indulgence’). But though idiosyncracies grab the attention, they were in fact very few. Crystal (2018) estimates that out of Johnson’s 140,871 definitions, fewer than twenty are idiosyncratic. Most are clear and perceptive. How prescriptive is Johnson? On occasions he does not fail to make his feelings towards certain words clear. About the word writative (like talkative but in writing) he says it is ‘a word of Pope’s coining, not to be imitated’. And he describes shabby as ‘a word that has crept into conversation and low writing; but ought not to be admitted into the language’. Nor does he flinch from criticising the usage of celebrated literary figures. He notices, for example, that Shakespeare sometimes uses the word prejudice simply to mean ‘mischief’, without any sense of the true, ‘judgement made beforehand’, meaning. The ‘mischief’ meaning is not, Johnson says, ‘derived from the original or etymology of the word: it were therefore better to use it less; perhaps prejudice ought never to be applied to any mischief, which does not imply some partiality or prepossession’. So there. In 2.1 (this chapter, section 1), we saw how Johnson had a change of heart –​ between the Dictionary’s initial Plan and its Preface –​regarding the ‘fixity issue’. In his initial Plan, the Dictionary’s aim is ‘to fix the English language’. In the 20

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Dictionary itself, to be sure, there is prescription, with plenty of fierce comments about how the language should be used. But there is also a lot of descriptive linguistics, statements about how words are used, rather than statements about how they should be used. Crystal (2018) puts it well; there was, he says, a ‘great change in [Johnson’s] thinking from purist to linguist’.

2.5  S  ome characteristics of eighteenth-​century English At the beginning of Chapter 1, we looked at a paragraph from Swift’s Proposal. We identified some differences between PDE and eighteenth-​century English. Most of the differences were to do with ‘graphology’, the term linguists use to describe what the OED calls ‘the study of written and printed symbols and of writing systems, including spelling and punctuation’.6 We did not discuss the differences in any detail. A look at the graphological aspects of the passage is a good starting point for a more detailed consideration of eighteenth-​century English. Here is Swift’s paragraph again: WHAT I had the Honour of mentioning to Your LORDSHIP ſome time ago in Converſation, was not a new Thought, juſt then ſtarted by Accident or Occaſion, but the Reſult of long Reflection; and I  have been confirmed in my Sentiments by the Opinion of ſome very judicious Perſons, with whom I conſulted. They all agreed, That nothing would be of greater Uſe towards the Improvement of Knowledge and Politeneſs, than some effectual Method for Correcting, Enlarging and Aſcertaining our Language; and they think it a Work very poſſible to be compaſſed, under the Protection of a Prince, the Countenance and Encouragement of a Miniſtry, and the Care of proper Perſons choſen for ſuch an Undertaking. I was glad to find Your LORDSHIP’s Anſwer in ſo different a Style,from what hath been commonly made uſe of on the like Occaſions, for ſome years paſt, that all ſuch Thoughts muſt be deferred to a Time of Peace: A Topick which ſome have carried ſo far, that they would not have us, by any means, think of preſerving our Civil or Religious Conſtitution, because we were engaged in a War abroad. Before reading on, look at Activity 2H (A linguistic lament). It asks some specific questions that will help you to explore graphological differences.

2.5.1  Graphology The first point Chapter 1 mentioned in relation to Swift’s passage was the two different forms of the letter ‘s’, the long and the short ‘s’: [ſ] (written [ſ] in italics), and [s]‌. The two letters do not represent different sounds. What distinguishes them is that the ‘short s’ is used in word-​final positions (at the ends of words), 21

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and word-​initially when the word has a capital letter. [ſ] is used word-​initially and medially, never finally or as a capital letter. The word politeneſs shows a case where ſ is used medially, immediately followed by a word-​final s. Then there are capital letters. For many writers in the EModE period, initial capital letters were associated with ‘important words’, particularly nouns. This tradition was still followed by some in the eighteenth century. So Thomas Dyche, who wrote one of those usage guides (his was called A Guide to the English Tongue, and appeared in 1707), says that ‘All Emphatical or Remarkable Words’ should be given an initial capital letter. There’s one word in the Swift extract that is so ‘emphatical’ that it is written entirely in capitals. It is the word LORDSHIP, and the capital letters are a way of showing due reverence to the addressee’s important position. Indeed, throughout Swift’s entire letter, the word LORD is always in capitals. After all, Robert Harley was the equivalent of Prime Minister. But there were also restrictions associated with *parts of speech (or word classes as they are also called). Sometimes a pronoun could be capitalised, sometimes adjectives, but by far the majority of capitalised words were nouns. You can see this in Swift’s passage, where it is mostly nouns that have an initial capital. But not always: in the final sentence there are two adjectives, when Swift talks of our Civil or Religious Conſtitution. There’s a ‘That’ in They all agreed, That … Notice too the capital ‘A’ in Time of Peace: A Topick which ſome …; possibly here the colon is regarded as the equivalent of a full stop, so the capital effectively introduces a new sentence. And not all nouns have capitals, showing that some criterion of ‘emphasis’ or ‘remarkableness’ may be in play. So ‘time’, in ſome time ago, ‘years’ in ſome years paſt, ‘means’ in by any means do not have initial capitals. Look also at the word use. It has a capital in of greater Uſe, but not in made uſe of. The example suggests that the rules controlling capitalisation were a little loose. As one writer puts it, ‘the Writers Fancy must only guide him’.7 Such ‘fancy’ leads Swift (or his printer, of course –​we can’t be sure who makes capitalisation decisions) –​to have That with a capital in the passage, but not always in his letter as a whole. The element of ‘writer’s fancy’ led to individual differences in capitalisation. Daniel Defoe, for example, used it a great deal. Look at this sentence of his: ‘But as they are Only Numbers Irregularly Mixt They are Uncapable of Acting in Any Capacity’. It is difficult to discern rhyme or reason here. The arbitrariness of capitalisation must have irritated printers no end. The lack of clear principles for when to use an initial capital meant they had to look carefully at every word before printing it. This irritation doubtless led them to push for a simpler principle, whereby every noun was to begin with a capital. This is in fact what happened. Daniel Fanning, who wrote yet another usage guide –​ The Universal Spelling Book of 1756 –​says that nouns (not just ‘Emphatical or Remarkable’ ones) ‘should be wrote with a Capital Letter’. Over time, extensive initial capitalisation for nouns was becoming the rule –​just as it is in German today. 22

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There is just one more episode to this lengthy capital story. Once all nouns started with a capital, you could argue that the procedure had lost all significance. Before, you could at least use a capital to indicate emphasis or ‘remarkableness’. Now, with every noun having a capital, this advantage was lost. As Dyche put it: ‘’Tis grown Customary in Printing to begin every Substantive with a Capital, but in my Opinion ’tis unnecessary, and hinders that remarkable Distinction intended by the Capitals’. As a result, extensive initial capitalisation disappeared rather dramatically from printed texts in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The result was our modern system, where just one category of nouns normally carries an initial capital; you are invited to think what this category is. Another aspect of our modern system also occurs in Swift’s letter –​putting a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. Indeed, it was common in Swift’s time to take the principle a little further. The first word of a paragraph is always written entirely in capitals. The example in the extract is the word WHAT, and the principle is followed throughout Swift’s document. Swift’s punctuation is a little different from ours too. Modern-​day German uses a comma to introduce subordinate clauses using that, and there is one example in the passage:  They all agreed, That. We do not do this today; nor indeed does Swift consistently –​there are occasions in his document where there is a comma, and others where there is not. Notice also the colon in that all ſuch Thoughts muſt be deferred to a Time of Peace: A Topick which ſome have carried ſo far. It’s not inconceivable to find a colon here in PDE, though we might rather expect a comma or a semi-​colon. The use of spaces around punctuation marks may also seem odd to you. There’s a space after the comma in Thought, juſt then ſtarted (as there would be today), but none in ſo different a Style, from. On the other hand, there are spaces both before and after the comma in for ſome years paſt , that. Quite possibly spacing decisions are to do with the printer’s need to maintain text that is ‘justified’: a justified text has straight lines on both the left-​and right-​hand sides of the page, and to manage this, a printer needs some freedom to manipulate the letters and spaces in each line.

2.5.2  Grammar One major grammatical difference between EModE and LModE is that in the later period, more complex verb forms were coming into use. Though there are no examples in the Swift passage, one form on the increase was what we call the *‘continuous’ or ‘progressive’. This is formed by using a part of the verb be, followed by the main verb carrying the -​ing ending. PDE examples are he is going, he was going. Its main use today is to describe an action that is ongoing and temporary. In Shakespeare’s time, you often find non-​continuous (called ‘simple’) forms where we today would have a continuous. For example, in Hamlet, Polonius asks the hero, What do you read, my Lord? where today we would say What are you reading?8; in passing, think what the difference is 23

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in PDE between What are you reading? and What do you read? The continuous form was certainly found before the eighteenth century (and indeed there are examples in Shakespeare), but their use just about doubled every century from 1500 onwards.9 Another structure that was increasing in use was the *passive, formed by using a part of the verb be plus the past participle form of the main verb. So ‘active’ He opened the door would become passive The door was opened by him; try describing in linguistic terminology the operations involved in changing this active sentence into its passive equivalent. In PDE we are happy to combine continuous and passive forms. The sentence The house is being built, for example, joins together a passive (is built) and a continuous (is being). Until late in the eighteenth century, the passive-​continuous was not common, and the active was used instead. So The house is building could have a passive sense, meaning The house is being built. Occasionally you still find this ‘active-​passive’ form used today. An internet seller might for example tell you that Your order is shipping on Friday. The meaning is actually passive: Your order is being shipped on Friday. This passive-​continuous combination only started to come in at the end of the eighteenth century. The OED cites an interesting early example. In 1797, the poet Coleridge wrote a letter to the philanthropist Thomas Poole. He tells Poole that the first words he ever uttered as a child came about after he had burned his hand on some coals from the fire. The hand was dressed by a Mr Young. Coleridge says: ‘while my hand was being dressed by Mr Young I spoke for the first time’. So his first words were not ‘mama’ or ‘papa’, but ‘Nasty Mr Young’.

2.5.3  Vocabulary As we have seen, eighteenth-​ century linguistic sensibilities could easily be offended. Swift was upset by abbreviations like pozz and mob, and Johnson too had violent dislikes; go back to 2.4 (this chapter, section 4) to see what he thought about the word shabby. As further evidence of delicate lexical sensibility, here is what the poet John Armstrong10 says in 1758 about the word subject-​matter:  ‘in the name of every thing that’s disgusting and detestable, what is it? Is it one or two ugly words? What’s the meaning of it? Confound me if I ever could guess’.11 It’s difficult for us today to understand what there was to be upset about. The spirit of the age, too, was against the introduction of large quantities of new words. Reactions to foreign borrowings were commonly negative. ‘An Englishman’, Defoe says, ‘has his mouth full of borrow’d phrases … he is always borrowing other men’s language’. Though even Swift could be persuaded that, occasionally, there might be reasons for the introduction of new words into

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the language, everything in this chapter will convince you that it was overall an age of consolidation, of standardisation, of ‘fixing’  –​rather than of rapid growth. Not surprising then that the increase in adoption of new words into the language slowed down during the century. Words that did make their way were often more likely to be short-​lived, in comparison with words entering in earlier times. Nevertheless, there were some eighteenth-​century word inventions. ER2.1 (18c timelines) is an activity which invites you to explore some of these; you will need access to the OED to do this activity.

2.6  Prescription and description How to characterise the eighteenth century linguistically? We have seen that as far as the actual language is concerned, English then was not so different from English now. We have also established that after a long period of unrestrained growth, the eighteenth century followed the seventeenth in turning its attention to questions of ‘fixity’, correction, and standardisation. Concern with such matters inevitably brings with it plenty of both prescription and proscription, and the century has become known for these features. But we have also seen, particularly in the work of Johnson, that while strong views towards usage are evident, description was far from being ignored. So much so that we can indeed say that the eighteenth century was an age of description as well as prescription. There was considerable public interest in matters linguistic, and the amount of scholastic work devoted to describing the language –​its grammar, its lexis, and its pronunciation –​was very considerable. Here, to close, is another, particularly clear, example of the prescriptive and the descriptive co-​existing. It concerns the work of a clergyman turned scholar, John Upton. His focus is on Shakespeare’s language, and his 1746 book, Critical Observations on Shakespeare, is full of detailed linguistic observations on Shakespeare’s texts. The prescriptive Upton can be critical of Shakespeare’s English, speaking of ‘his far-​fetched expressions’, and saying that ‘he condescends not to grammatical niceties’. But the descriptive Upton is concerned less with judging ‘what Shakespeare ought to have written’ and more with trying ‘to discover and retrieve what he did write’. To achieve this, Upton says, we need to understand the linguistic rules Shakespeare follows. The way to do this is by looking at his texts, rather than at exemplars of ‘refined’ eighteenth-​century usage to ascertain where Shakespeare ‘went wrong’. Like the linguistic century as a whole, Upton is more descriptive, and a little less prescriptive, than at first meets the eye. Prescription co-​existing with description is something we shall find again in the next century, the nineteenth … and the next chapter.

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Activity section 2A  ‘The depravity of our taste’ (a) Try first to understand what is being said in the letter in 2.1. This is not so easy. Here is a glossary that will help, but try to work out the meanings of the words unknown to you before you look at it: poz, positive, certain plenipo, representative Jacks, ordinary people uppish, well-​off, rich kidney, disposition phizz, physiognomy (face) hipps, depression rep, reputation banter, make fun of country put, country bumpkin (b) The extract is full of apostrophes standing for missing letters. Say what those letters are. For example, in the second word (cou’dn’t), the apostrophes replace ‘l’ and ‘o’. The full version is ‘could not’. (c) Make a guess as to what linguistic features in the extract Swift may have disliked. The features are discussed in the text below the letter.

2B  Between you and I Think about your own native language. Identify some specific language items –​ they may be grammatical forms or uses of specific words –​which are regarded by some as unacceptable or substandard (like between you and I in English). Identify too what the correct, acceptable form might be. Explain what is ‘wrong’ with the proscribed form.

2C  What not to say Here are some sentences that eighteenth-​ century (or sometimes nineteenth-​ century) prescriptivists would say contain ‘mistakes’. Some are taken from Lowth’s Grammar, and most are taken from well-​known authors. The first example, to start you off, is one you have seen already, in 2.3. (a) Read quickly through the sentences, and try to identify as many of the so-​ called ‘mistakes’ as possible. (b) Under the sentences (1) to (10) are descriptions of the mistakes, (i) to (x), in jumbled order. Match the sentences and the descriptions. AS (this means you can find the answers in the Answer Section). 26

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(1) ‘Horace is an author, whom I am much delighted with’ (Pope) (2) ‘The Duke of Milan/​And his more braver daughter’ (Shakespeare) (3) ‘Give not me council/​nor let no comforter delight mine ear’ (Shakespeare) (4) ‘They had indeed some boats in the river, but they were very small, and rather served to just waft them over, or to fish in them, than for any other use’ (Defoe) (5) ‘It is me’ (Lowth’s example) (6) ‘That he may the stronglier provide’ (Hobbes) (7) ‘Knowing that you was my old master’s good friend’ (Addison) (8) ‘as carry with them the idea’s of some hurtful terrible things, inhabiting darkness’ (Locke) (9) ‘You would find three or four in the parlour after dinner, whom you would say passed their afternoons agreeably’ (Locke) (10) ‘When you are acting towards them in consequence of what your justice and honour requires’ (Melmoth) The descriptions: (i) The wrong form after the verb be. (ii) Preposition separated from the word it qualifies. (iii) A singular verb after a plural noun phrase. (iv) An apostrophe when no letter has been omitted. (v) The use of -​er to form the comparative of an *adverb. (vi) Use of *object whom instead of subject who. (vii) A double comparative. (viii) A double negative. (ix) The use of a third person singular verb after you. (x) A split *infinitive.

2D  ‘Just pronunciation’ To give you an idea of Walker’s method for transcribing words, Figure 2.1 shows five pronunciations from his Dictionary: 2

/

2

bur niſh 33

/

4

doun kaſt 1

4

/ 2

1

2

e – mad jin – aſhun 4

/

1

2

poſt hu – mus 1 /

kom – pla ne Figure 2.1  Pronunciations based on Walker’s (1791) Dictionary.

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(a) Work out what these words are in PDE. (b) What do you think the symbol [′] means? What does its position in a word tell you? (c) What about the symbol [–​]‌? (d) Though you will not be able to answer this in detail, what kind of information do you think the numbers above the vowels give us? (e) If you are familiar with phonetic script, identify what symbols Walker uses that would not be used in phonetics today.

2E  Defining ‘everyday’ words To appreciate how difficult it can be to be a dictionary writer, try to provide definitions (as precise as you can) for one or two of these common words, covering as many different meanings as possible. For each meaning, give at least one example sentence illustrating your definition as clearly as you can: give (as verb) subject (as noun)

call (as verb) detail (as noun)

find (as verb)

Now, if you really want a challenge, try the same for one of the three words mentioned in the text: of, the, but. Really not easy at all!

2F  The ways of idleness  (AS) As mentioned in the text, Johnson’s Dictionary gives quotations to illustrate the use of his word entries. Here are six for the word idle: (1) Suffice it then, thou money god, quoth he, That all thine idle offers I refuse Spencer (The Faerie Queene) (2) No war or battle’s sound Was heard the world around, The idle spear and shield were high up hung Milton (The Hymn) (3) For shame, so much to do, and yet idle. Bull (4) The answer is both idle in regard of us, and also repugnant to themselves Hooker (Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity) (5) They astonish’d, all resistance lost, All courage; down their idle weapons dropp’d Milton (Paradise Lost) (6) For often have you writ to her, and she in modesty, Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply Shakespeare (Two Gentlemen of Verona) 28

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Each of these quotations illustrates one of the six meanings Johnson identifies for the word. These are given below. Match the quotations and the meanings. This is not always straightforward, and you may find you have different matchings from Johnson’s (given in the Answer Section). This all goes to show what a difficult task writing a dictionary is. The meanings: (a) Lazy, averse from labour (b) Not busy; at leisure (c) Unactive; not employed (d) Useless; vain; ineffectual (e) Worthless; barren; not productive of good (f) Trifling; of no importance

2G  ‘Capricious and humorous indulgence’  (AS) (a) Here are nine ‘idiosyncratic definitions’ from Johnson’s Dictionary. They are for the words: 1.  stoat 4.  palmistry 7.  lexicographer

2.  excise 5.  pension 8.  stockjobber (stockbroker)

3.  patron 6.  heresiarch 9.  reformer

Match the definitions with the words. Then in each case identify what it is that makes the definition ‘idiosyncratic’. (a) ‘The cheat of foretelling fortune by the lines of the palm’. (b) ‘A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words’. (c) ‘A low wretch who gets money by buying and selling shares in the funds’. (d) ‘A leader in heresy; the head of a herd of hereticks’. (e) ‘A small stinking animal’. (f) ‘A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid’. (g) ‘One of those who changed religion from popish corruptions and innovations’. (h) ‘An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country’. (i) ‘One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery’.

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(b) Here are two ‘contorted definitions’ from the Dictionary: • ‘anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distance, with instercices between the intersections’ • ‘a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serocity’ Any ideas what the words being defined might be (one is easier than the other)? (AS).

2H  A linguistic lament Here are some questions about the graphology in the Swift passage: (1) The one letter in the passage not used in PDE is [ſ]. It represents the same sound as [s]‌. When is one used, and when the other? (2) What parts of speech (nouns?, verbs?, adjectives?, pronouns?) start with a capital letter, in a way which would not normally happen in PDE? (3) Are there any cases in the passage where one part of speech sometimes has an initial capital, sometimes not? (Don’t count cases where a word has a capital because it is at the beginning of a sentence, as opposed to in a sentence, where it does not.) (4) There is one word which is written, twice, entirely in capitals. What is it? Why capitals? (5) Focus on Swift’s punctuation, which seems a little strange and erratic. How?

Answer section 2C  What not to say 1 (ii); 2 (vii); 3 (viii); 4 (x); 5 (i); 6 (v); 7 (ix); 8 (iv); 9 (vi); (10 (iii).

2D  ‘Just pronunciation’ (b) It indicates main stress. The symbol is put after the syllable carrying that stress. (c) It separates off affixes. (d) They show different vowel qualities. So [u]‌with a 2 above is the vowel in ‘tub’, while [u] with a 3 is as in ‘bull’. (e) The long ‘s’ [ſ] for what would today be written [ʃ], and [dj] for today’s [dʒ].

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2F  The ways of idleness 1 (e); 2 (c); 3 (a); 4 (f); 5 (d); 6 (b).

2G  ‘Capricious and humorous indulgence’ (a): 1 (e); 2 (f); 3 (i); 4 (a); 5 (h); 6 (d); 7 (b); 8 (c); 9 (g). (b) network and cough.

Further reading Lynch’s Introduction to Lynch (2004) offers a readable background account to Johnson’s Dictionary, and the book itself includes Johnson’s Preface, and selections from the Dictionary. Van Ostade (2010) provides a detailed account of Lowth and his work. Görlach (2001) Eighteenth-​Century English gives very thorough coverage of the century, including not just linguistic aspects, but culture and literature too. Osselton (1984 and 1985) are interesting studies in spelling and capitalisation, covering the eighteenth century and before. Both are reprinted in Rydén et al. (1998). This edited collection of papers contains much of interest relevant to the eighteenth century, though the period it covers is broader (1500–​1800).

Notes 1 2 3 4

You can see the womb connection in the word hysterectomy. Section 2.3, particularly the discussion of Lowth, owes much to van Ostade (2010). Lowth (1762), pp. xii–​xiii. Lowth’s ‘devilish status’ also relates to his views on word classes. Hollmann (2016) argues that this is undeserved. 5 This discussion owes much to Lynch (2004). 6 ‘Graphology’ can also mean something different: the study of handwriting and what it reveals about a person’s character. 7 From the anonymous Thesaurium Trilingue Publicum: being an Introduction to English, Latin and Greek, 1698. Cited by Osselton (1985), p. 456. 8 The example, from Hamlet 2.2, is used by Rissanen (1999) 9 This is according to Denison (1999), p. 143. 10 Armstrong wrote under the pseudonym of Launcelot Temple. 11 Quoted in Baugh and Cable (2013), p. 280.

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The nineteenth century English, standard and non-​standard

3.1  Language and history 3.1.1  ‘Ignorant tradesmen’ In eighteenth-​century Britain, only male house-​owners were able to vote to select a Member of Parliament (an ‘MP’). The practice caused much discontent. In May 1793, for example, the tradesmen of Sheffield presented a petition for parliamentary reform that would allow those without property a say in the choice of their MP. Parliamentary records report the progress of the Sheffield petition in full. The petitioners, the records say, ‘are in general tradesmen … unpossessed of freehold land, and consequently have no voice in choosing members to sit in parliament’. One MP calls them ‘ignorant tradesmen’. The petition was rejected by a huge majority of MPs. One of the main reasons was linguistic. Speaker after speaker points out that the language in which the ‘ignorant tradesmen’ presented their case was not appropriate for a petition to Parliament. MP Mr Duncombe for example (the records say) ‘did not approve of the manner in which [the petition] had been worded’. The petitioners ‘were only manufacturers, and not very well acquainted with the language required for addressing the House’. MP Mr Ryder also opposed the petition, ‘on the grounds that it was not worded in a manner sufficiently respectful to that House’. Then, unkindest cut of all, Mr William Wilberforce –​the celebrated politician and philanthropist deeply involved in stopping the slave trade –​said: ‘it was necessary that persons coming forward as petitioners should address the House in decent and respectful language’. Think about what linguistic features of an ‘ignorant tradesman’s’ language might be considered inappropriate to a formal context like the parliamentary one. Consider this in relation to your own context and language, whether it is English or not. The ‘ignorant tradesmen’ story says much about attitudes towards language in the century about to begin  –​the nineteenth. It also says much about the social and political situations of the time. This section gives some background history, focusing on four important (and related) elements:  the growth of the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, the development of science and technology, and the social upheaval which these elements caused. Language will not be mentioned much in the section –​that discussion comes later –​and you are 32

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invited to think, as you read, what implications for the English language might be associated with each of these elements.

3.1.2  The British Empire Some say that John Dee (1527–​1608) –​a curious mixture of magician and scientist –​was Shakespeare’s model for the character of Prospero in The Tempest. He was also an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and seems to have been the first person to use the term ‘British Empire’. He certainly encouraged the Queen to support expeditions to the Americas with the aim of setting up colonies. It was during the latter part of the sixteenth century that the British seriously started to collect territories. Parts of the Americas, as well as Britain’s near neighbour, Ireland, were early acquisitions. During the next three centuries, the Empire spread over huge areas of the globe, through Africa, Asia, Australasia, and more of the Americas (Canada and the Caribbean). By 1913 the Empire covered twenty-​five percent –​ a whole quarter –​of the earth’s land areas. It was the Empire ‘on which the sun never set’; it covered so much of the globe that at any given time one of its territories was always in daylight. Its Empire gave Britain huge power, particularly during the nineteenth century when the so-​called Pax Britannica (‘British peace’) marked a period of relative stability, comparable to the period of peace during the early Roman Empire, called the Pax Romana.

3.1.3  The Industrial Revolution The growth of the British Empire was fuelled by an industrial revolution, defined in the OED as ‘a rapid development of industry, chiefly as a result of the introduction of new or improved machinery and large-​scale production methods’. When the term is given capital initials –​Industrial Revolution –​it refers to the development which took place in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was an important event. Indeed, one economist (McCloskey, 2004) describes it as ‘certainly the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants, perhaps the most important since the invention of language’. Part of the event’s importance was because of an invention which was, on the face of it, a modest one. The spinning jenny, invented in the English county of Lancashire in 1764, was a machine that produced thread. It brought an end to the laborious methods of making textile products by hand. Indeed, the replacement of hand labour by machine production was a major feature of the Revolution in general. The invention of steam engines was important here –​they were the same machines used to drive trains, but in this case they were static, used to harness energy for the production of goods. The Industrial Revolution and the Empire were made for each other. The new speedier means of production helped satisfy

33

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the growing market created by the Empire, while the Empire’s very existence stimulated the Revolution’s inventions.

3.1.4  Science and technology William Whewell (1794–​1866) was a true polymath, and among his skills was inventing new words. Two that are particularly relevant to our discussion are ‘scientist’ and ‘linguistics’. The first was truly a word of its time, since the nineteenth century saw huge developments in the fields of science and technology. Inventions abounded. Some were minor, though very practical –​the safety pin was invented in 1849, apparently roughly simultaneously by an American, Walter Hunt, and an Englishman, Charles Rowley. In 1804 the first steam locomotive was seen, and in 1821 Michael Faraday produced an electric motor. The first public railway came in 1825 and Crawford Long’s anaesthesia in 1842. Then there was Darwin’s theory of evolution (1859), Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite (1867) and Edison’s phonograph (1877). Karl Benz’s automobile appeared in 1885, the same year as Louis Pasteur’s vaccine. In the mid 1890s there was Guglielmo Marconi’s radio, together with Wilhelm Röntgen’s X-​ray. And the list could be made much longer.

3.1.5  Social upheaval The population of England grew dramatically during the nineteenth century, from about nine million in 1801, to forty-​one million in 1901. Because of the growth of industry, urbanisation increased, so that by 1851, more than half the population of England lived in towns. The population of Manchester quadrupled between 1801 and 1871, Birmingham grew seventy-​three percent, Leeds ninety-​nine percent  –​all three of these cities being associated with the Industrial Revolution. Movements of population of this sort led to huge social problems –​poverty, hunger, and every form of deprivation. The novels of Charles Dickens often vividly depict the poor conditions of the time. Many people escaped, with fifteen million leaving Britain between 1815 and 1914. But accompanying the huge deprivations, there was also a spirit of reform which made the period one of great social change. We have already mentioned the problem of poor parliamentary representation. A series of reform bills (in 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1885) dramatically increased enfranchisement rights (of males –​women had to wait till 1918). Other parliamentary acts helped the conditions of the poor: in 1833, the Factory Act restricted child labour in factories, and in 1846 the Corn Laws were repealed –​before then, grain prices were protected by high tariffs, to the benefit of the farmers. The repeal introduced an element of free trade, leading to a drop in grain prices, to the benefit of the poor.

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Of particular relevance to us are the educational reforms, especially the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which eventually led to compulsory primary education. There were also new adult education colleges, which contributed to a growth in literacy rates. Overall, there was great interest among the population in matters of literacy. People wanted to be able to read and write. There was huge growth in autobiographies and diaries of working-​class folk; Burnett (1974) contains a fascinating collection of extracts from working-​class autobiographies. Letter writing increased too, while ‘by 1872’, Mugglestone (2006a) says, ‘around 15 million telegrams were being sent each year’. Various economic factors helped to stimulate the increase in reading. Fast and cheap printing techniques were introduced in the 1830s, while methods of paper production improved, and made it easier to produce paper. Taxes decreased too. Since 1712 there had been a tax on British newspapers, which put their cost out of the reach of many people. Some regarded this as a ‘tax on knowledge’, and after a long fight, newspaper stamp duty was abolished in 1855; then, six years later, the tax on paper was withdrawn. In all, reading-​matter gradually became more readily available –​and more affordable, not just to the rich few, but to the less rich many. Our look at nineteenth-​century British history has been brief. If you’d like to explore it some more, take a look at Activity 3A (More history).

3.2  The interest in matters linguistic So: there was more interest in ‘matters linguistic’, there was increasing literacy, and there was a growing belief that language was for everyone, not just the educated few. With so many new readers and writers, there came a need for instruction on how to develop language skills. Hence the appearance of many new books about language use: grammars, usage guides, pronunciation manuals, dictionaries.

3.2.1  More books about language Some of the eighteenth century’s guides continued to be popular. Indeed Murray’s 1795 English Grammar (mentioned in 2.3)1 is described as ‘without doubt the most popular and frequently printed grammar of English during the nineteenth century’.2 It was reprinted forty-​five times before 1830. Typical of the newer guides was one written by someone calling himself ‘the Hon. Henry H’. His contribution was entitled P’s and Q’s. Grammatical hints for the million. Its second edition sold for one shilling in 1855, and for your money you also got a chapter on public speaking thrown in. It was clearly aimed at the new market  –​‘the million’ who ‘never acquire, or else very quickly get rid of, the knowledge … leading them to speak and write … with … correctness’.3 Another volume with 35

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a title intended to appeal to that same million was Mudie’s 1841 A Grammar of the English Language Truly Made Easy and Amusing, by the invention of three hundred moveable parts of speech. A more weighty contribution was offered by William Cobbett (1763–​1835). He had an interesting life, first working as a farm labourer, then moving on to more turbulent pursuits. He served for a while in the British army, lived temporarily in revolutionary France, then became a journalist in America. This was followed by a stretch in an English prison, after which he became an MP. He also found time to write profusely, sometimes on language matters. In 1819 his Grammar of the English Language appeared, to be followed later by a grammar of the French language. He had specific audiences in mind. One was his young son, and the Introduction to his Grammar is addressed to ‘My dear little James’ who, his father thought, needed good grammatical knowledge to enter into the world of books. But Cobbett, very much a social progressive at heart, also had a wider audience in mind. The full title of the book says it all, stating that it is intended for the use of schools and of young persons in general: but more especially for the use of soldiers, sailors, apprentices, and plough-​boys. Cobbett’s Grammar is important because it really is based on the idea that ‘language is for all’.

3.2.2  Shibboleths With so much interest shown in matters linguistic, it is no surprise that the eighteenth-​century preoccupations with prescription and proscription should continue into the nineteenth; and so it was. Some of the language books written in the period follow a principle we came across in 2.3: the idea that focusing on ‘mistakes’ is a good pedagogic strategy for teaching correct language use. A prime example is William Hodgson’s popular 1881 book Errors in the Use of English which, it says in the Introduction, aims to teach correctness ‘by furnishing examples of incorrectness’. The kinds of mistakes that Hodgson and all the many other prescriptive books pick up, are much as in the eighteenth century. One nineteenth-​century addition is what today we call the ‘split infinitive’, where a word (usually an adverb) is placed between the word ‘to’ and its associated infinitive. The television series Star Trek (popular from the 1960s on) provides the example perhaps best-​known today, in the phrase to boldly go where no man has gone before. What is wrong with the split infinitive? The case against seems to be based on a rather specious comparison with Latin. In English an infinitive is sometimes accompanied by ‘to’, and sometimes not: compare He tried to open the door and She must read the book. In Latin, there was no equivalent to the ‘to’; the infinitive was just the one word –​a single entity, you might say. For English to be like Latin, the argument went, the single entity idea had to remain, so when the English infinitive appeared with ‘to’, nothing should come between that and the infinitive word. Here is what Hodgson has to 36

The nineteenth century

say: ‘Some writers are fond of placing adverbs between the infinitival “to” and the infinitive, as in “to bravely die” ’. Here is an example taken from an 1814 American children’s magazine called The Juvenile Port-​folio: ‘to seat Louis the eighteenth upon the throne of his ancestry; to bravely conquer, or to bravely die’. Activity 3B (Some grammatical ‘mistakes’) gives more examples of usage errors, all taken from Hodgson, and invites you to identify what they are. If you want to do this activity, do so before reading on. Activity 3B contains a typical selection of the kinds of ‘mistakes’ that Hodgson, among many others, notes. One is the use of an adverb as an adjective (the entertainments were seldom and shabby says sentence (1), incorrectly using the adverb seldom as an adjective. Sentence (2)  contains another error much commented on in the nineteenth century  –​mixing up between (which should only be used when two items have been mentioned) and among, which is used for more than two; it mentions four races, but uses between. Another category of errors found in the Hodgson examples involves mixing different constructions together in the same sentence. Sentence (3) for example has truth will prevail; it never has and it never will. The second will is short for will prevail, with the infinitive form of the verb correctly following will. But has needs to be followed by the -​ed form of the verb. It must be has prevailed, not has prevail. Sentence (4) also involves mixing two constructions together. The latter part of the sentence –​ trying to entertain her and succeed so ill –​begins by using a verb ending in -​ing, which is just what is required. But the writer then switches to an infinitive succeed, where succeeding is needed. A third set of errors involves *concord. In (5) for example (the introduction of such beverages … have not been without their effect), the subject is the singular noun introduction, which needs a singular verb: has instead of have. For the same reason, you need its instead of their. The concord is also wrong in (6): I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent. Here the subject of the relative clause is those, so the verb needs to be the plural are, and the word my needs dropping. You will find discussion of the other sentences –​(7) to (10) –​in the Answer Section. The writers of books like these were often as explicit about their aims as they were about their audiences. The Hon Henry H noted that good grammar was necessary for a ‘comfortable passage through life’. It also opened up paths to knowledge: ‘grammar’, William Cobbett said, ‘is the gate of entrance to them all’. But it was also a question of morality. Recall that in the eighteenth century, Johnson was concerned with the moral dimension of language use (see 2.4). In the nineteenth century the widespread belief was that good use of language led to morally-​acceptable behaviour. Richard Trench, an archbishop who became involved in the development of the Oxford English Dictionary (we shall discuss this in 3.2.3), had much to say on this theme. Indeed, he produced a published lecture entitled ‘On the morality in words’. It ended with a biblical quotation: by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned (Matthew 12.37). There was also very much a social element to insisting on ‘good’ language habits. As well as talking about ‘comfortable passage through 37

The nineteenth century

life’, Henry H also mentions ‘respectability’. Correct use of language was certainly regarded as a sign of good character, while bad language use indicated a bad character. Attitudes like these show that the ‘mistakes’ that Hodgson and others identified were regarded as more than inconsequential slips. Mugglestone (2006: 285) described them as ‘shibboleths’ –​serious linguistic taboos which one breaks at one’s peril. These attitudes also go a long way to explaining the reaction of the irate MPs to the inappropriate language of the ‘ignorant tradesmen’, mentioned in 3.1.1. The nineteenth-​century world of shibboleths extended beyond grammar into pronunciation. Two of the direst were to do with the letter ‘h’, as Box 3.1 shows.

Box 3.1  ‘h-​shibboleths’ We have already met the man who called himself ‘the Hon. Henry H’. As his pen-​name suggests, he was interested in the letter ‘h’. He tells the story of how he once heard a small child telling his mother that he had ’urt his ’and. The child had, Henry H surmises, ‘hurt his hand’. Despite the fact that the child drops his H’s (’urt for hurt, and ’and for hand), Henry H comments, ironically: ‘to my surprise, his mother did not ask him what he meant’. Henry H’s story reflects what another writer, Charles William Smith, calls ‘the most vulgar, and the least excusable’ vice of pronunciation of English: ‘the abuse of the *aspirate’.1 The aspirate in question is the /​h/​sound, and there are in fact two types of abuse. One is ‘h-​dropping’ –​what the child does, omitting the /​h/​where it should be pronounced, particularly (but not only) at the beginnings of words. The other abuse is ‘h-​insertion’, where /​h/​is pronounced where it should not be, in words like exile or ignorance, pronounced as if written ‘hexile’ and ‘hignorance’. You may be familiar with examples of both these faults from the 1964 film of the musical My Fair Lady (based on Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion). The Cockney flower girl, Eliza, is trying to improve her elocution by reciting the tongue-​twister: ‘in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen’. Her version is ‘ln ’artford, ’ereford and ’ampshire, ’urricanes ’ardly hever ’appen’. Don’t miss the one example of ‘h-​insertion’ here: hever for ‘ever’ … in fact the only time Eliza produces /​h/​. We’ll return to Eliza and Pygmalion in Box 5.1. Both ‘h-​dropping’ and ‘h-​insertion’ were extremely common among uneducated folk, and the practices were frequently-​recognised phonetic markers of social class. But the association was not necessarily with the poor; the ‘new rich’ were also guilty  –​what Henry H calls ‘rich nobodies, with plenty of mony but no education’. It is astonishing that at least four books were written on the topic of ‘aspirate abuses’. Henry H’s Poor letter H: its uses and abuses was the first, appearing in 1859. Henry H gives his (H-​filled) address as Holly House, Hertfordshire, and 38

The nineteenth century

his book is full of anecdotes like the ’urt his ’and one above. Indeed, he starts the book with the story of how he, ‘though very aristocratic … delight[s]‌to mix, of course incognito, with the common people’. He notes that, when drinking, the ‘common people’ often consume what they call ’ock, referring to the wine called ‘hock’. They also talk about their future plans: their haims and hends. The book, amusingly written throughout, was hugely popular, selling 43,000 copies by the mid 1860s. He finishes it with a diverting piece of verse, full of examples of h-​ dropping and h-​insertion. You can find it in ER3.1 (‘Harrogance and Hinsolence’). Charles William Smith’s 1866 book is about ‘the aspirate’ but also deals with another sound many people made mistakes over, the /​ r/​ . Its title is Mind your H’s and Take Care of your R’s. Smith describes the relevant pronunciation rules relating to both letters, and follows these with a series of ­exercises –​practice in pronouncing such delightfully meaningless sentences as How many hares has he had?, and The horse’s hoof hit her head. There are also word pairs to practise: hair and air, harm and arm, high and eye. Other books are Ellen Eccles’ Harry Hawkins’ H Book (1879), and the rather more theoretical The Letter H. Past, Present and Future (1880) by Alfred Leach.   Smith, C. W. (1866), p. 1.

1

3.2.3  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) The nineteenth century, then, produced a variety of language-​related books. Many were intended for the large audience of readers wishing to increase their communication skills in English. Some were original, many were derivative. But there is one book that towers high above the rest –​without doubt the most influential of the nineteenth century’s language books. It was a dictionary. Charles Talbot Onions (1873–​1965) was a waspish man, a scholar with an astringent wit. He was also highly productive, writing a book on English syntax, and a glossary of Shakespeare’s words. But his main claim to fame lay elsewhere. In the 1920s he could be found in the library of Oxford’s Magdalen College, a cold place in winter, wrapped in a blanket. He was working on what has been called ‘the greatest dictionary of any language in the world’ –​the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED.4 Onions was its fourth editor, and the OED’s story began decades earlier, in 1844, when a group of scholars in the recently-​formed Philological Society expressed an interest in compiling a new dictionary of English. One of their members, Richard Trench, produced a report entitled On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries. The deficiencies were many, including scant coverage of obsolete words and, with the notable exception of Johnson’s Dictionary (discussed in 2.4), a lack of quotations illustrating words in use. In 1858, the Society proposed the creation of a comprehensive new dictionary, to be called A 39

The nineteenth century

New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. A number of editors worked on the project, the best-​known being the Scottish philologist James Murray. During his editorship, in 1879, the Society came to an agreement with Oxford University Press to publish the work, and much later, in 1933, the name was changed to the Oxford English Dictionary. A huge number of volunteer workers (over eight hundred in the 1870s) were recruited to work on the project. They were assigned particular books, and asked to copy out onto slips of paper example passages illustrating the use of specific words. By the time Murray became editor, there were nearly two tons of quotations slips. All kinds of people became volunteers. A major contributor was an American army surgeon, W.C. Minor, living in England. Having murdered a man, he was held in an asylum for the criminally insane, where he occupied much of his time filling out slips for the OED. The story of his connection with the Dictionary is told in Simon Winchester’s (1999) book, The Professor and the Madman (US title) or The Surgeon of Crowthorne (British title). It is easy to impress with OED statistics. The original idea was that the book would be finished in ten years. But after five they had only reached the word ‘ant’; much more time was needed. The last volume was published in 1928, 84  years after the idea was first mooted. It contained 400,000 words in ten volumes. When the second edition appeared in 1989, it was 21,728 pages long, in twenty volumes. Today, the OED advertises itself as having 600,000 words illustrated by 3.5 million quotations, covering over a thousand years of English. In 1992, the OED first appeared on a CD-​ROM. Since then, an online version has been made available  –​much updated, with new material constantly being added.5 Viewing is by subscription; many educational institutions, especially universities, hold subscriptions allowing their students free access. One of the important aspects of the OED is that it goes back well into history. A second important characteristic is that it follows Johnson by supporting the definitions with copious quotations –​examples of the word in use through the ages. The different meanings of each word are looked at in turn, and for each meaning the first quotation given would be the first instance found of the word being used in that sense. But be careful: for a number of reasons, you can’t assume that the OED’s first quotation will be the first time the word was ever used. Before reading on, think why this should be. One reason is that many words were first used in speech rather than writing, and by the time they were written down, they may already have been well into circulation. Also, though the OED’s source of texts is constantly growing (as more and more become digitalised) there are still very many texts that have not been searched. As the quantity of searchable material increases, more and more ‘new first quotations’ are certain to come to light. But despite these reservations, we can cautiously say that the OED’s first quotations do at least give some indication of when words first came into use. If you would like details of what information the OED contains, take a look at ER3.2 (What the OED gives). There

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is also an activity which explores its available resources. It is ER3.3 (Getting to know the OED). You need access to the OED Online to do this Activity.

3.3  Developing a standard English Identifying shibboleths is part of the process of developing standard forms of English; telling people what they shouldn’t say is a way of pointing out what they should say. We have already seen how the eighteenth century devoted time to fixing a standard English, and the nineteenth century continued the process. But where did the standard come from? Think about this question before you continue reading. Consider your own language, whether it be English or not. What is its most accepted, or received, form, and what are its origins? In the case of British English, the roots were both geographical and class-​ related. In the sixteenth century, the English scholar, George Puttenham, talked about the best English being ‘the usual speech of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx [60] miles, and not much above’. Notice that he mentions both geography (London) and social class (the court). These criteria continued into later centuries. A standard for pronunciation was developed too, and it was during the nineteenth century that the term Received Pronunciation (RP) came into use. Just before then, in 1785, Walker (whose Pronouncing Dictionary was mentioned in 2.3) had introduced the notion of ‘received’. He talks of London pronunciation being ‘undoubtedly the best … that is, not only the best for courtesy, and because it happens to be the pronunciation of the capital, but best by a better title, that of being more generally received’. The first person actually to talk of RP was the linguist A.J. Ellis, who seems to have been the model for Bernard Shaw’s Professor Henry Higgins in the play Pygmalion and the film based on it, My Fair Lady –​both mentioned in Box 3.1; recall that Eliza was an h-​dropper and pronounced his name ’Enry ’Iggins (and who knows, perhaps Shaw gave him names beginning with H just to accentuate the joke). Ellis wrote, over a period of twenty years, a huge, five-​volume work, the full title of which indicates the breadth of his scholarship. It is On Early English Pronunciation, with especial reference to Shakspere and Chaucer, containing an investigation of the correspondence of writing with speech in England, from the Anglosaxon period to the present day, preceded by a systematic notation of all spoken sounds by means of the ordinary printing types. Alongside RP, there were other, competing terms for the same pronunciation. ‘Public School English’ was one, because it was used in the so-​called ‘public schools’ intended for wealthy and aristocratic pupils. Other terms include ‘Oxford English’ and ‘Standard Pronunciation’. RP, though, won the day. What did nineteenth-​century RP sound like? There are some recordings made soon after the invention of the phonograph which capture the voices of 41

The nineteenth century

famous people. One on YouTube is called ‘Historical voices of famous people’.6 It includes the voices of the statesman William Gladstone, the explorer Ernest Shackleton, Queen Victoria, and Florence Nightingale. Unfortunately the sound quality is poor, and the recordings give little information about what their accents sounded like. There is another recording on YouTube of the philosopher Bertrand Russell.7 He was born in 1872, and although the recording was made well into the twentieth century, it does give a flavour of a historical RP accent.

3.4  A variety of varieties 3.4.1  ‘Slipper English’ Prescription is, we have suggested, the mother of standardisation. The prescriptive efforts of all those books about language use contributed significantly to the standardisation of English during the nineteenth century. But this is only part of the story, and it is a little ironic that in a century so concerned with standardisation, there should be so much variety in the forms of English during the period. The variety was along various dimensions. There were differences in *register, differences according to social class, different regional dialects, different types of slang. A glance back to the sixteenth century will illustrate one type of variety. Sir Walter Raleigh’s name is still known to us today as a courtier, gentleman, and explorer. But someone who knew him declares that ‘notwithstanding his so great mastership in style and his conversation with the learnedest and politest persons, yet he spake broad Devonshire to his dying day’.8 His English, in other words, followed the standard model when he wrote, but he spoke in dialect. In the nineteenth century too it was common for people to use more than one language style: a formal way of writing and for certain sorts of speech, and what might be called a ‘slipper English’ –​an informal style used when wearing their slippers at home. Even well-​known authors, who might have been expected to avoid the kinds of errors Hodgson drew attention to, allowed themselves to indulge in shibboleths when using English ‘in their slippers’. The examples in Activity 3B are deliberately chosen to show this, because many of these errors were committed by educated men or women of letters, who (some might say) should have known better! Thus example (1) (seldom and shabby) is from the pen of the novelist Thackeray. Jane Austen is responsible for both (4)  –​and succeed so ill –​ and (8) –​ those kind, while the poet Shelley produced (6) –​those who am. Mugglestone (2006) plots these forms of variation in detail, and an author she mentions more than once is Charles Darwin. For example, when he was writing informal letters, he seems to have been rather cavalier about his uses

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The nineteenth century

of the apostrophe. Sometimes he uses it where he shouldn’t (do you know it’s name? he writes in a letter), while on other occasions he omits it, writing about pigs jaws and birds feet.

3.4.2  Social class Perhaps you have already gathered that nineteenth-​century Britain was a highly class-​conscious society, and that language use was a prime class marker. Time and time again we come across dire warnings about the perils of not speaking or writing properly, a very serious matter for anyone interested in social advancement. As the playwright and critic Bernard Shaw put it: ‘people know very well that certain sorts of speech cut off a person for ever from getting more than three or four pounds a week all their life long’.9 One of those language-​use books, Kington Oliphant’s 1873 Standard English, is particularly stern. The educated class, Oliphant says, produces all that is lofty, while the middle class is blamed for ‘day by day pouring more sewage into the well of what can no longer be called English undefiled’. Oliphant’s words relate back to a famous sixteenth-​ century phrase: ‘well of English undefiled’. You may like to find out who used this phrase, and who they were talking about (AS). It was not just pronunciation and accent that were a question of class. Grammar was also involved. The linguist Kenneth Phillipps studied Victorian language and class differences in detail. The upper classes, he notes, had the same aversion to shortened forms that we saw in Swift (in 2.1). So piano for pianoforte was frowned upon, as well as port for port wine and photo for photograph. Here are some grammatical examples of what the nineteenth and early twentieth century upper classes smiled, rather than frowned, upon:10 • Use of the present tense for future action For example: Lady Cork … goes out of town next week to produce her seventh daughter (Nancy Mitford). Phillipps says that this usage suggests the ordered lives of the upper classes, where when once something is arranged, it means it really will happen. • Use of a past tense where PDE would use the *present perfect I never was at his house, Jane Austen wrote. Today, in British English, we would prefer I have never been at his house. • Using a *transitive (or *reflexive) verb *intransitively A reflexive verb example:  Such a ceaseless flow of contemporary anecdote I  never heard. And yet she never repeats (Disraeli). In PDE, we would say repeats herself. • Use of the *perfect infinitive after a past tense Mrs Gaskell: I quite expected to have seen Mr Thornton. Phillipps comments that this usage was distinctly old-​fashioned, but was a clear ‘class indicator’.

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In Box 3.2 there is another example of class language differences, related to the names of meals. It also shows how the upper classes continued to differentiate their language from the lower classes well into the twentieth century:

Box 3.2  Meal names and U/​non-​U One of the areas in which upper and lower classes differentiated themselves linguistically was in the names given to meals. In the nineteenth century, the upper classes followed breakfast with the main meal of the day, called dinner, taken at midday. As the century continued, this main meal was eaten later and later, perhaps partly because the rich could afford expensive candles to allow more evening activities; so eating after dark was possible. The later dinner became, the longer the stretch between it and breakfast. To ease hunger pangs, a small midday meal was introduced, called luncheon, or lunch for short. Because of the upper-​class aversion to shortened forms, the word lunch tended to be avoided. This is ironical because according to some, the word lunch was used before luncheon, and is related to the word ‘lump’, used to describe a hunk of bread. A late-​night snack, just before going to bed, was called supper. The lower classes tended to have their main meal at midday, so this was called dinner. Work patterns could disrupt this custom, so a substantial meal in the evening became necessary, and this was known as tea. As is often the case, class distinctions like this overlapped with geographical regions. So the breakfast → lunch → dinner sequence was associated with the south, and the breakfast → dinner → tea one with the north. In the twentieth century, upper and lower class terms came to be called ‘U’ (upper class) and ‘non-​U’ (lower class), and in the 1950s the linguist Alan Ross wrote a paper about U and non-​U language uses (Ross, 1954). This was followed in 1956 by a book on the topic, edited by the novelist Nancy Mitford. Here are some of the U and non-​U usage examples that she gives. For the midday meal, lunch (U)  and dinner (non-​U) are on the list. Here are some others: U

non-​U

bike scent pudding ill lavatory

cycle perfume sweet sick toilet

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The nineteenth century

3.4.3  Dialect The novelist Charles Dickens’ (1812–​1870) first novel was The Pickwick Papers (1836). Initially issued in monthly parts, it was selling badly until Chapter 10 was reached. After that, the book had phenomenal success. What caused the change was the introduction of the amusing and colourful character, Sam Weller, a Cockney who became Pickwick’s servant and travelling companion. In ME, the word cockney meant ‘a pampered child’. It came to mean ‘sissy’ (Shakespeare used it in that sense), then ‘puny town dweller’. By the nineteenth century it referred, as today, to people born in the eastern part of London:  to be a true Cockney, you had to be born within the sound of the bells of St Mary-​le-​Bow Church in Cheapside, east London. Here is a passage from that Chapter 10. Sam is telling a story about his father, whose wife dies, leaving him four hundred pounds –​a good deal of money in those days. To claim the money, he goes to a lawyer’s office, dressed up for the occasion in his best clothes. He is so well-​dressed, that a ‘touter’ (a street salesman) sees him, thinks he is going to get married, and tries to sell him a marriage licence. The passage is written in nineteenth-​century Cockney dialect. Read the passage, and ask yourself what unusual language characteristics it contains: My father, Sir, wos a coachman. A  widower he wos, and fat enough for anything—​uncommon fat, to be sure. His missus dies, and leaves him four hundred pound. Down he goes to the Commons, to see the lawyer and draw the blunt—​very smart—​top boots on—​nosegay in his button-​hole—​broad-​ brimmed tile—​green shawl—​quite the gen’l’m’n. Goes through the archvay, thinking how he should inwest the money—​up comes the touter, touches his hat—​ “Licence, Sir, licence?!”—​ “What’s that?” says my father.—​ “Licence, Sir,” says he.—​“What licence?” says my father.—​“Marriage licence,” says the touter.—​“Dash my veskit,” says my father, “I never thought o’ that”. The passage contains two slang words. Blunt means ‘money’, and a tile is a hat (which goes on your ‘roof’, or head). Dash my waistcoat is meant as a mild oath, with the word dash meaning ‘damn’ (a usage still occasionally found today). There are also some spellings which capture pronunciation characteristics of Cockney. The sounds ‘v’ and ‘w’ are sometimes confused: archvay is ‘archway’, inwest is ‘invest’, and veskit is ‘weskit’, which is how the word ‘waistcoat’ was pronounced (and sometimes still is, in both British and American English). Notice also the abbreviation gen’l’m’n: think how Swift would have hated this. Another typical Cockney characteristic is omission of the plural -​s on four hundred pound: it should of course be ‘four hundred pounds’. You might also have spotted that Sam tells his story in the ‘historical present’ –​recounting past events in the present tense. This is common in Cockney, though it is found elsewhere too; indeed, notice that the paragraph above the passage also uses the historical

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The nineteenth century

present to introduce Sam’s story. But above all, Cockney distinguishes itself by its pronunciation. If you want to hear what Sam Weller’s Cockney sounds like, there is a YouTube clip of a passage from The Pickwick Papers being read aloud.11 We’ll return to Cockney, in its PDE form, in 5.2.1. Cockney is a regional dialect. You can probably guess what the prescriptivists, concerned with setting up a standard English, thought about regional dialects. ‘Depraved’, ‘proper pronunciation maltreated’, ‘incorrect pronunciation’, ‘disintegrating influences’ were some of the terms Mugglestone (2006) finds used. Despite such condemnation, the nineteenth century was the period when the study of dialects was beginning to become established as a branch of language study. The English Dialect Society was founded in 1873, and at the end of the century, the philologist Joseph Wright was well into writing his six-​volume English Dialect Dictionary, published in full in 1905. For a small group of islands, Britain had a surprisingly large number of different dialects: ‘talking just of England’, Millward (1989) says, ‘diversity among the regional dialects … particularly pronunciation is greater than in any other part of the world where English is spoken as a native language’. Ellis, whose five-​volume tome was mentioned in 3.3, contributed significantly to the study of dialects. He distinguished forty-​ two different dialects in England and the Scottish Lowlands. Why do you think there were so many? Part of the reason is that from earliest times travel between different areas was difficult, resulting in the development of local dialects, each slightly different from neighbouring ones. There are still a large number of dialects today: Baugh and Cable (2013: 308) report seventeen different vowels or diphthongs now used in the word house, and that is just in the six most northern counties of England. And it is not just sounds. Upton and Widdowson’s An Atlas of English Dialects (2006) contains maps showing different word forms and their distribution. To choose the word chimney, almost at random: you find through Britain chimney, chimdey, chimbley, chimley, chummock, chimbey, chimmock, and chimblet. We shall take a detailed look at British dialects in Chapters  5 and 6. But now might be a good time to think a little about dialect differences in your own context. Consider some of the linguistic characteristics of one or more dialects you are familiar with. Someone who studied an English dialect in detail was the poet and philologist William Barnes, who hailed from Dorset in the south-​west of England. One of his contributions to dialect studies was the 1864 book:  A Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect with the History, Outspreading, and Bearings of South-​Western English. In the early pages of this book, wishing to show that the Dorset dialect was as capable of expression as any other form of English, he gave a dialect rendition of Queen Victoria’s 1863 speech at the opening of Parliament. This is given in Activity 3C (We be a-​bid), where you are invited to ‘translate’ Barnes’ version back into standard English.

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The nineteenth century

3.4.4  Slang Slang is yet another language variety. It is often regarded as a ‘low’ or ‘disreputable’ form of language, and of course its use upset the prescriptivists. Hence yet another of the language-​guide writers, George Frederick Graham, wrote in 1869: ‘among the many signs of the corruption of the English language … is the prevalent use of slang words and phrases’.12 Slangs sometimes have a regional aspect to them, being associated, like Cockney, with just one part of the country. They are also often ‘secret languages’, spoken by a group of people sharing some interest, and often intended to exclude others who are not members of the group. The word cant is often used to describe this type of secret language. One nineteenth-​century English slang that has all these characteristics is related to the Cockney dialect we have already seen. It is ‘Cockney rhyming slang’. This was, according to some, developed during the 1840s by market traders and street hawkers who wished to communicate with each other about such things as the price of goods, in a way that potential customers and others would not understand. To do this they invented phrases which rhymed with the standard English word. For example, the slang phrase for ‘wife’ was trouble and strife, and for ‘look’ it was the phrase butcher’s hook. An additional, fascinating, feature of Cockney rhyming slang was that the slang phrases often became abbreviated, such that the rhyming part disappeared. So trouble and strife became just trouble (meaning ‘wife’), and butcher’s hook became butcher’s. If you said to someone Take a butcher’s at this, it meant take a look at this. Many pieces of Cockney rhyming slang had their origins in the nineteenth century. The OED gives this 1887 example, taken possibly from a song. What do you think plates of meat and Barnet Fair are? As she walked along the street With her little ‘plates of meat’, And the summer sunshine falling On her golden ‘Barnet Fair’. Plates of meat are, of course, ‘feet’, and Barnet Fair means ‘hair’. If you want to explore more examples of nineteenth-​century Cockney rhyming slang, take a butcher’s at Activity 3D.

3.5  Nineteenth-​century  words Take a look at Figure 3.1. It’s a ‘Timeline’ from the online OED, and it shows the number of words with first citations in the OED, from the year 1000 till the present day. What does the Timeline tell you about the growth of English lexis in the nineteenth century?

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The nineteenth century

Number of results

154485

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

1600

1700

1800

1900

2000

Century Intervals of: 10, 50, 100

Figure 3.1  Number of words first recorded by the OED, in fifty-​year periods. From the OED Online.

The Timeline clearly shows that the nineteenth century was a period with ‘unremitting fertility of lexis’.13 The bars for 1800–​1850 and 1850 to 1900 are by far the highest in the Timeline. For the former period, the ‘first-​citation’ figure is 105,948, for the latter 153,578. If you are interested in things lexical, you might like to use the Timeline to put all the fifty-​year periods in order, according to the number of first citations. This will reveal which periods were most and least lexically productive in the history of English. Perhaps you can account for why some are more or less productive. When we interpret the Timeline, we need of course to remember the warnings made in 3.2.3 about using the OED’s first citations. They are not always the first occurrences of words, so can’t be used as definitive statements about when words first appeared. Also, when looking at the Timeline’s dramatic figures for the nineteenth century, you must bear in mind that many are in fact already-​existing words with some ‘new’ added element; they may, for example, be being used in some ‘new’ meaning. We shall explore this in 3.5.2. But despite the warnings, we can cautiously say that the Timeline gives a guide to the number of new words introduced over the centuries. There are two major reasons why the lexis of a language grows. One is through extensive contact with other languages and cultures. Our brief survey of the history of English in 1.3 shows how this happened at two particular points

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The nineteenth century

in history before the nineteenth century. In 1066 and thereafter, the contact came through the Norman invasion, bringing many Norman and French words into the language. Then, in the EModE period (particularly the Elizabethan ‘age of discovery’) global exploration put English into contact with languages across the globe. In both cases the method of expanding the language was ‘borrowing’, with words coming into English from other languages. The second stimulus for lexical growth is the introduction of new ideas and inventions into the culture, with new words required to express new concepts. Different languages have preferred methods for inventing new words. We again saw in 1.3 that in the case of Germanic languages, using compounds, and affixes, were particularly popular methods. We will look at nineteenth-​century borrowing, and methods of word creation in turn. Our brief survey of the period’s history at the beginning of this chapter (3.1) made mention of the Empire, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of science and technology. We have so far not looked at their effect on the language. But when we come to look at the mass of new words entering English during the nineteenth century, these are important causes. The Empire meant contact, and this led to borrowing, while the Industrial Revolution, science, and technology created a need for new vocabulary.

3.5.1  Borrowing Many, though not all, nineteenth-​century borrowings were Empire-​related. To give you a sense of the extent of borrowing, and where the borrowed words (called ‘loanwords’) came from, we’ll look at just some of the new arrivals. You’ll notice that in the lists below, a number have no Empire connection –​those from Italy, the Slavic countries, and Germany, for example; they came about simply through expanded contact with those nations. All the words we will look at have nineteenth-​century first citations in the OED.14 They have been put into nine lists, (a) to (i); each containing words coming from one language, language group, or geographical area. Before reading on, try to identify these languages (groups, or areas): (a) vendetta (b) guerrilla stampede (c) kindergarten (d) mazurka (e) cashmere (f) geisha (g) boomerang (h) chipmunk (i) mamba

spaghetti camisole bonanza hinterland troika chutney rickshaw budgerigar toboggan trek

scherzo picaresque vamoose poltergeist polka loot bonsai koala pow wow voodoo

fiasco silo

studio lasso

rodeo

samovar polo

swastika

thug

kookaburra

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The nineteenth century

List (a) contains words from Italian. Particularly interesting is fiasco. The literal meaning in Italian is ‘bottle’, and the word is connected with our English ‘flask’. Today’s meaning is ‘a mess’ or ‘failure’. Why should ‘bottle’ mean ‘failure? It’s not really known, but one nineteenth-​century British etymologist, Walter Skeat, suggests that it is because an empty bottle ‘fails to please’. List (b) consists of words from Spanish, with several of the examples coming from Mexican Spanish through American English. Vamoose (or vamos), for example, is from the Spanish meaning ‘let’s go’. One of the earliest OED citations is from a New York monthly magazine called Knickerbocker, where someone says:  Be off, you good-​for-​nothing rascals—​vamos! The words in (c) are from German, and (d) from Slavic languages –​mazurka from Polish, polka from Czech, troika and samovar from Russian. India, with its multitude of languages, was an important member of the British Empire, and many new words came from there. Some are shown in (e), and more are discussed later, in 9.4.3. Thug is an interesting one. Hindi thag meant ‘swindler’ or ‘thief’. Originally, thugs were groups of violent highway robbers, devotees of the goddess Kali. They travelled across northern India, stealing, murdering, and causing mayhem. The word geisha gives away that list (f)  words are from Japanese. List (g) words are from Australia –​all in fact from Aboriginal languages. You might be surprised to find budgerigar on the list. It comes from the combination of Aboriginal ‘budgeri’ meaning ‘good’, and ‘gar’ meaning ‘cockatoo’. A  budgerigar is apparently a good cockatoo; one suggested reason for their goodness is that in times of drought, they were good at finding water, and Aborigines used to follow them to it. You will find more Aborigine borrowings in 8.1. The words on list (h) are from Native American languages (and you will find more later, in 7.2). A powwow was originally a ‘shaman’ or ‘healer’. The word was then applied to a ceremonial meeting, usually with singing, dancing, and eating. When the word came into American English, it was used to describe conferences or discussion meetings. List (i)  words are from Africa. Mamba is from the Xhosa language  –​an interesting ‘click language’ this; you might like to use the internet or a linguistics book to find out something about click languages. Voodoo is from the Dahomey language, spoken in what is now Benin. Trek is rather different. It is Germanic in origin, and was used in Cape Dutch by the Dutch settlers who lived in what is now South Africa. They were a group of people who often came into conflict with the British, who also had colonial interests in the area. It refers to a long journey, often made by ox cart. It is associated with the Dutch verb trekken, ‘to pull’ (and with today’s German word tragen, meaning ‘bear’ or ‘carry’). Exploring word origins can be fun. If you’d like to look at some more, there are another six in Activity 3E (Words from where?). This invites you to find the origins of some nineteenth-​century words; best done if you have access to an etymological dictionary; if not, the internet may do.

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The nineteenth century

3.5.2  New words, new forms, new meanings If we explore the nineteenth century part of the Timeline a little, we can find examples of English employing some of its preferred methods for vocabulary expansion. Let’s concentrate on one year, chosen at random: 1850. For this year, the OED Timeline has more than three thousand entries: notice the high number. Some are ‘old’ words with new meanings, often scientific or technological, to cater for the new concepts these fields brought with them. For example, the word abducted had been found since 1623 in the sense we use it today. But in 1850 it came to be used in the study of anatomy, to refer to a muscle, or part of a limb, that moves away from the body. Similarly, the word abrasive, with a first citation in 1601, was in 1850 first applied to substances like chemicals. Sometimes an already-​existing word is adapted for use as a different part of speech; a favoured process in English, called ‘functional shift’. For example, the 1604 noun chocolate was used as a verb in 1850, when one Bayard Taylor wrote: we arose in the moonlight, chocolated in the … dining room. This example also shows that though many 1850 inventions (as in the nineteenth century in general) were related to science, not all were so. Campsite and ceramic have first citations in 1850, as does the amusingly colloquial ankle-​biter, used to describe a small child. And how are you, John?—​and how’s Molly, and all the little ankle-​biters? wrote someone in the American magazine, Harper’s, dated September 1850. The word ankle-​biter is an example of the compounding process which 1.3 identified as characteristically Germanic. More scientific examples for 1850 are angle-​ plate, chain-​bolt, chemico-​dynamic, diffusion coefficient, earth orbit, and there are very many more. 1.3 also mentions adding an affix –​a suffix or prefix –​as a favourite English word-​formation method. Hence the adjective caustic, first cited in 1555, gave us the adverb caustically in 1850. The nineteenth century was, Görlach (1999: 119) says, ‘a period of -​isms’, and -​ism was indeed a favourite suffix. His examples all come from the year 1831, and include animism, dynamism, humorism, industrialism, narcotism, philistinism, servilism, socialism, and spiritualism. Another popular suffix was -​ize. Think about the function of this suffix; what is it used to ‘do’ in English? And if you feel in exploratory mood, use the internet to find out when the spelling -​ise is used instead of -​ize. Other popular science-​related suffixes were -​metry, -​logy, -​graphy. Notice incidentally how many of the suffixes we are considering have Greek origins. The classical languages, Greek and Latin, had been in common currency throughout the western world for many centuries, so when terms were sought for scientific concepts that would make them comprehensible throughout the world, it was natural to base the new words on Greek or Latin. One area where this is particularly obvious is medicine, where the names of diseases, medicines, and many other terms often have Greek or Latin roots. So there’s pneumonia, which is a Latin word related to the Greek pneumon meaning ‘lung’. The origin

51

The nineteenth century

of the word penicillin is interesting. The Latin name of the mould from which it comes is Penicillium notatum. The mould is shaped like a paint brush, which in Latin is penicillus; the word is related to the English pencil. You may like to think of some more medical words with Latin/​Greek origins, in English or another language. At the other end of words are prefixes. Görlach’s list includes the following (and once again, both science and Greek origin are there):  anthropo-​, bio-​ , thermo-​, and photo-​. Think about what these four signify. The OED editor, James Murray (mentioned in 3.2.3), drew particular attention to photo-​words. He noted that there were 240 using this affix in the OED. All but three come from the nineteenth century, and not surprisingly, the vast majority follow from the introduction of photography in 1839. In this section we have mentioned some of the ways in which English expanded its vocabulary in the nineteenth century:  borrowing, compounding, functional shift, and affixation. These are indeed common methods of vocabulary expansion, and have been used in many languages at many points in time. In Chapter 11 (11.3) we will look at another period of rich scientific and technological invention: the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries. One major stimulus for new words is the internet, and this has even given us its own specific genre, known as ‘Netspeak’. In 11.3, you will be asked to think of new words stimulated by the internet; but why not give a thought now to some such words, particularly ones using the methods we have been discussing.

3.6  The setting sun It was a century of the standard and the non-​standard. In a highly class-​conscious society, there was growing interest among the populace in how to use English properly. Standards were set up. But at the same time, behind the standard  –​ giving the language scene great richness and depth –​stood many non-​standard varieties. With the Empire, the language grew. It was an Empire, you will recall, on which the sun was never supposed to set. As we saw in 3.1.2, the phrase was intended to mean that there was always some part of the Empire in daylight. There is of course another meaning: that it would never die. But in the twentieth century, two world wars shifted balances of power. British colonies became independent one by one. India’s independence was in 1947, and on 1 July 1997 the territory of Hong Kong was given back to the Chinese, from whom it had been leased 99 years earlier. The sun had finally begun to set. When British English is discussed in much of the rest of this book, it will be about the language in an increasingly non-​imperial context.

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The nineteenth century

Activity section Activity 3A  More history Our walk through nineteenth-​century British history, in 3.1, was brief. Here is a chance to explore some of its aspects in more detail. There is no need to explore them all –​choose just one or two that interest you: (a) The extent of the British Empire. If possible, find a map showing its extent at some point during the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Find out in which former British colonies English is still in considerable use today. (b) The Industrial Revolution. Explore how this developed. Think about its social effects. How will society have changed? How will the lives of individuals have changed? (c) Section 3.1.4 says that the list of nineteenth-​century scientific and technological developments could be made much longer. Find other developments to add to the list. (d) Charles Dickens. Explore his life and works. If possible, find a passage in one of his novels which describes some aspect of the poverty and social deprivation of the time.

Activity 3B  Some grammatical ‘mistakes’  (AS) Here are ten sentences, all taken from Hodgson, exemplifying errors in the use of English. Identify what they are (sometimes no easy task), and where possible say what the correct version would be. Some of the sentences contain more than one error. To help with this, the parts of the sentence in which the errors occur are given underneath the sentences; but only look at them if you need to. Finally, try to explain, using as much grammatical terminology as you can, what the error is in each case. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

My Lord Duke’s entertainments were both seldom and shabby. Stirring up at the same time no little ill-​will between the various races  –​ English, French, Scotch, and Irish. He ridicules the notion that truth will prevail; it never has and it never will. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life –​trying to entertain her –​and succeed so ill. The introduction of such beverages as tea and coffee have not been without their effect. I confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent … The boat pushed off to the shore, but speedily returned with a dying man, which the Chinese had placed in the boat.

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The nineteenth century

(8) I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes. (9) A piano for sale by a lady about to cross the Channel in an oak case with carved legs. (10) I am neither an ascetic in theory or practice. Words where the mistakes occur: (1) seldom; (2) between; (3) never has and it never will; (4) succeed; (5) have, and their; (6) am; (7) which; (8) those; (9) in an oak case with carved legs; (10) or. (1) –​(6) are discussed in the text. The answers to (7) –​(10) are in the Answer Section.

Activity 3C   We be a-​bid  (AS) Here is Barnes’ Dorset dialect translation of Victoria’s speech:15 HER MAJESTY’S SPEECH TO THE HOUSES ON OPENING THE PARLIAMENT, 1863 (In Dorset) My Lords an’ Gentlemen! We be a-​bid by Her Majesty to tell you, that, vor-​all the hwome war in North America, is a-​holden on, the common treade o’the land, vor the last year, don’t seem to be a-​vell off. The treaden bargain that Her Majesty have a-​meade wi’ the Emperor o’ the French, have, in this little time, yielded fruits that be much to the good o’bwoth o’ the lands that it do work upon, and the main steate o’ the income, vor all there be many things ageanst us, ha’n’t a-​been at all hopeless. Her Majesty do trust that thease fruits mid be a-​took, as proofs that the wealth-​springs o’ the land ben’t aweakened. ’T have a-​been a happiness to her Majesty to zee the law-​heeden mind, that happily do show itself all drough Her dominions, and that is so needvul a thing in the well-​been and well-​doen ov steates. A vew plans, that wull be handy vor betteren o’things, wull be a-​laid down vor your overthinken, and Her Majesty do earnestly pray that in all o’your meetens to waigh things over, the blessens ov Almighty God mid guide your plans, zoo as to zet vorward the welfeare an’ happiness ov Her People. (a) ‘Translate’ the speech into standard English. There’s a glossary below, but you may like to attempt your translation before looking at it. (b) Based on this small piece of text, identify some of the characteristics of the Dorset dialect. 54

The nineteenth century

Glossary a-​bid, asked hwome, civil (home, domestic) a-​holden on, continuing treäde, trade a-​vell off, fallen off mid, may wealth-​springs, revenues ben’t, are not law-​heedèn, law-​abiding overthinkèn, consideration A translation is given in the Answer Section.

Activity 3D Take a butcher’s at this (AS) Here are some Cockney rhyming slang expressions. They all originated in the nineteenth century (though some of the example sentences given are twentieth century, and some others are invented). What might each slang phrase mean? When a word is short for a longer phrase, that too is given; don’t forget that the rhyming part will be with the end of the longer phrase. Answers are in the Answer Section. (1) Bees and honey ‘I want to do it, but I don’t have the bees and honey’. (2) China (short for China plate) ‘We like each other. He’s my China’. (3) Daisy roots ‘Your toes is poking out of your daisy-​roots’. (4) Frog and toad Pig’s ear ‘Fancy going down the frog and toad for a pint of pig’s ear?’ (5) Mince pie ‘My mince-​pies are waterin’ jes [just] like a pump’. (6) North and south ‘Dust floating about in the air, which gets in your north and south’. (7) Rub-​a-​dub ‘I gazed upon the motley crowd Within this rub-​a-​dub’. (8) Fisherman’s daughter ‘I’ll have some fisherman’s daughter in my whisky please’. (9) Light and dark ‘I’m taking the dog for a walk in the light and dark’.

55

The nineteenth century

All of these phrases, except for (9), are in the OED Online. If you have access to this, find out when they were first cited. Sometimes when you click the ‘quick search’ button the phrase does not come up, but you will see examples beside the word ‘quotations’.

Activity 3E  Words from where? Use the online OED, or another dictionary which gives etymologies, or just the internet, to find where these nineteenth-​century words come from. pyjamas

tycoon

balcony

sherbet

taboo

tundra

Answer section Activity 3B  Some grammatical ‘mistakes’ The examples not discussed in the text are (7) –​ (10): (7) The wrong relative pronoun is used here. Which is used for things. The dying man is a person, and hence whom should be used. (8) A clear concord shibboleth here too: those kind. (9) Here the error is one of phrase positioning. Adverbial phrases need to go as close as possible to what they relate to. Here it sounds as if the lady is in an oak case, which has carved legs. Or even, that she crossed the Channel in such a case. (10) Negative neither should be coupled with negative nor. Positive or goes with positive either.

Section 3.6.2  Social class In his poem The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser (c.1552–​1669) referred to the ME poet Chaucer as the ‘well of English undefiled’.

Activity 3C  We be a-​bid (a) A possible translation: My Lords and Gentlemen! We are commanded by Her Majesty to inform you that despite the fact that civil war in North America is continuing, general trade with the country does not seem to have fallen off during the last year.

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The trade deals that Her Majesty has made with the French Emperor, have, in this short time, yielded fruits that are beneficial to both parties, and the general income, though there are many impediments, has been far from hopeless. Her Majesty trusts that these fruits may be taken as proof that the revenues of the country have not been weakened. It has pleased Her Majesty to see that the law-​abiding attitudes are happily seen throughout her dominions –​so necessary for the well-​being and proper actions of states. Some plans, useful to improve matters, will be set out for your consideration, and Her Majesty earnestly prays that in all your meetings to consider these, the blessings of Almighty God may guide your plans, so as to improve the welfare and happiness of Her people. (b) Some characteristics of the Dorset dialect (not all those shown in the passage are mentioned here): • ‘v’ for ‘f’: vor = ‘for’, vew = ‘few’; this reflects Dorset pronunciation. • Use of the prefix a-​on past participles: a-​bid = ‘asked’, a-​took = ‘taken’. • Be used for all present tense parts of verb be: we be, that be. Notice also the negative form: ben’t (= ‘are not’) • Frequent use of do in the present tense: do trust, do show. • Use of o’ for ‘of’: ‘o’ the land’, ‘o’ your meetens’. • Use of Germanic words where Romance words would be more commonly found: hwome (‘home’) = ‘civil’, wealth-​springs = ‘revenue’.

Activity 3D Take a butcher’s at this (1)  bees and honey, money; (2)  China, mate; (3)  daisy roots, boots; (4)  frog and toad, road, pig’s ear, beer; (5) mince pies, eyes; (6) north and south, mouth; (7) rub-​a-​dub, pub; (8) fisherman’s daughter, water; (9) light and dark, park.

Further reading Mugglestone (2006) gives a readable overview, showing how factors like industrialisation and urbanisation had their effect on the language. Görlach (1999) is also a useful overview, with plenty of detailed information on vocabulary development. There are several interesting accounts of the history of the OED, including Brewer (2007), Mugglestone (2005), and Gilliver (2016). Winchester (1999), mentioned in the text, is not linguistically-​orientated, but tells a fascinating story.

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Fisher (1996) is a collection of his papers on the emergence of standard English. One of the papers is particularly relevant to this chapter:  ‘The History of Received Pronunciation’. Franklyn (1953) gives an account of Cockneys and their language.

Notes 1 As you have doubtless realised by now, 2.3 means Chapter 2, section 3. From now on, we’ll just use the abbreviated forms; the first number always refers to the chapter, the following numbers to the section. 2 Alston (1968) Introductory note to Murray (1795). 3 H, the Hon. Henry (1855), p. 8. 4 Baugh and Cable (2013), p. 334. 5 The online version can be found at www.oed.com. 6 www.youtube.com/​watch?v=3e5NY7V9bcs. 7 www.youtube.com/​watch?v=fb3k6tB-​Or8. 8 From Aubrey’s Brief Lives (Dick, 2016: 318). 9 Cited by (Baugh and Cable (2013), p. 307. 10 They are taken from Phillipps (1984), p.70. 11 At www.youtube.com/​watch?v=dIrOSqQmYz0. 12 Cited by Görlach (1999), p. 99. 13 The phrase is Mugglestone’s (2006), p. 299. 14 There are, though, one or two words which are introduced before the nineteenth century, though often as a ‘foreign word’, not properly coming into English until the nineteenth century. 15 For simplicity, the diacritics Barnes uses to indicate pronunciation have been omitted –​for example, the original has a-​meäde rather than a-​meade.

58

4

A short interlude about variety

4.1  Bad press Chapter 3 talks a lot about varieties, particularly in 3.4, where we look at varieties of nineteenth-​century English associated with different registers, social classes, regional dialects, slangs. There are many more types of variety to come in the rest of this book –​in fact, most of it is about varieties. In Chapters 5 and 6 we will look at the accents and dialects of the British Isles. After that, we move on to consider the spread of English to other parts of the world –​America, Africa, Asia, Australasia. We will not then be concerned with dialects –​you can’t really describe Australian English as a ‘dialect of English’. The types of English spoken by other countries are different ‘versions’ or ‘varieties’ of the language, each with its own history.1 What is the difference between a dialect and a language? One day in 1943, at the end of a lecture he had given, Max Weinreich, a Russian Jewish linguist, asked the question: ‘what is a language?’ A member of his audience gave him an answer which so impressed Weinreich that he took it to his own, and it has now become well-​known. ‘A language’, the answer was, ‘is a dialect with an army and a navy’. The definition captures the fact that the difference is a question of power; one language variety comes to the fore, not through any linguistic qualities it possesses, but through political and social dominance. The dialects which have an army and a navy become the standard form of the language. ‘Standard English’ –​which from now on we shall call StE –​is the accepted norm of the language in England, armed with sufficient military might to defend its associated accent, RP (discussed in 3.3). The Scottish norm is known as ‘Scottish Standard’ (SSE), while the United States has ‘General American’ (GA), and Australia ‘General Australian English’ (AusE), and so on. We saw a number of times in both Chapters  2 and 3, that varieties which depart from StE have had a bad press. Some of the terms used to describe them in 3.4.3 were: ‘depraved’, ‘proper pronunciation maltreated’, ‘incorrect pronunciation’, ‘disintegrating influences’. We saw too how prescription and proscription were used as tools to halt this depravity, maltreatment, and disintegration. It’s not only dialects and slang that can cause these effects. Any deviation from the standard norm will do, and we’ll see in Chapter 7 that the British were quite capable of blaming Americanisms for the language’s perceived fall from grace. 59

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We’ll report there that in 1866, Henry Alford –​an English churchman –​talks about ‘the process of deterioration which our Queen’s English has undergone at the hands of the Americans’. There is no history in this chapter. But since so much of the rest of this book is about variety –​and because of the bad press variety has received –​it’s worth a short interlude to think about varieties, and about attitudes towards them. We’ll start by doing some detailed analysis of one small area of a British English dialect.

4.2  Do and have in Berkshire In StE, verbs in the present tense mostly end with an -​s *inflection in the third *person singular: we say he likes and not he like. For all the other persons, there is no inflection at all; it is I like, you like, we like, and they like –​all without a final -​s. But these forms are often different in British dialects. Here, for example, are some sentences from the dialect of Berkshire, a county just west of London. They are taken from Trudgill (2004). Use these sentences to formulate the ‘rule for forming the present tense in the Berkshire dialect’: I sees him every day We often stops in at that pub You goes there sometimes too They often buys us a drink The rule in this dialect is a simple one: in the examples, all the verbs take the -​s inflection –​for every person, not just the third person singular. From this point of view, we might say that the Berkshire dialect is ‘simpler’ than StE  –​in the dialect just the one form is used throughout, while in the latter there are two forms: sometimes there’s an -​s, sometimes there isn’t. But Trudgill then goes on to show a way in which the Berkshire dialect is more ‘complex’ than StE. It concerns the verbs do and have. Look at these two groups of StE sentences, (a) to (c) and (d) to (f). (a) He does the weekly shopping on Thursdays. (b) They do the same thing every year. (c) We do what we can, but it’s not enough. (d) Do you like classical music? (e) He doesn’t want the money. (f) They don’t live in France, do they? What is the difference between the two sets? Think about this before you read on. In the first set of sentences, (a) to (c), do is acting as a normal or ‘main’ verb, and it means ‘to perform’ or ‘to make’. In the second set, do is an *auxiliary verb (the main verbs being like, want, and live). Sentences (d) to (f) show common 60

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uses of do as an auxiliary: in (d) it is used to form a question, in (e) to form a negative, and in (f) for a *tag question; (we’ll have much more to say about tag questions in 6.2 and elsewhere). The same is true for the verb have. As a normal verb it means ‘to possess’ or ‘to own’, as in He has a new car. But, like do, it can also be an auxiliary verb, used to form the present perfect tense, as in I have seen the film already. If you would like more examples of these two uses of have, in ER4.1 (Have) there are six examples, like (a) to (f) for do above. Look now at another six sentences, again taken from Trudgill (2004); they show the use of do and have in the Berkshire dialect. As with the sentences we looked at earlier, they are divided into two groups: in (g) to (i) do and have are main verbs, and in (j) to (l) they are auxiliaries: (g) I dos a lot of overtime (h) My children always has their meal about now (i) We often has a drink in there (j) There don’t seem to be a lot to show for it, do there? (two examples of the verb do here) (k) You always have worked as many hours as you could (l) They haven’t got much patience In (g)  to (i), the verbs do and have are being used as normal verbs, and they follow the ‘Berkshire rule’ we saw at the beginning of this section: they take an -​s not just in the third person singular, but for all the persons shown: so it’s I dos instead of I do, and so on. In sentences (j) to (l) the verbs are being used as auxiliaries, and there’s not an -​s in sight, not even for the third person –​we have do there instead of does there. So, in StE the forms of do and have are the same whether they are main or auxiliary verbs. In this respect, the Berkshire dialect is a little more complex than StE:  the forms are different according to whether the verbs are main or auxiliaries.

4.3  Good or bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong? Our brief look at the Berkshire dialect reveals two important things. We noted that when do and have operate as main verbs, the Berkshire dialect ‘simplified’ the verb system by just having the one -​s ending on all forms. This might lead you to say that the dialect is a ‘reduced’ or ‘simplified’ version of the language, and indeed it is common to hear people use this argument to dismiss dialects as inferior, ‘substandard’ versions of the language. But when we look at how do and have operate as main verbs and auxiliaries in Berkshire, we find that the dialect is, in other respects, more ‘complex’ than StE, because it uses different forms according to whether the verbs are main or auxiliary. 61

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‘Simpler in some respects, more complex in others’ is something that you very often find when you try to compare languages. It’s the reason why generalisations about languages or varieties being simpler or more complex than each other are often difficult to justify. You may also want to ponder the very idea that ‘simpler’ –​even when it can be shown to apply to a language or variety –​necessarily means ‘substandard’. Might not simplicity even be regarded as a good thing? We look more closely at the topic of simplicity in 12.2.2, when we consider the role of English as a global language. Our Berkshire example also shows that the use of do and have in the dialect is rule-​controlled. Whether or not there is an -​s ending is not arbitrary; it is governed by whether the verb is a main one or an auxiliary. This is important, because people are sometimes tempted to believe that dialects are ‘slovenly language’ where there are no rules. But dialect speakers are not being ‘slovenly’, and there are rules at work. Dialect speakers choose to say things in a particular way. It is their preferred way of speaking, and is the result of a deliberate, personal choice. Their speech marks their identity –​not as a ‘slovenly person’, but as a member of a particular community; it shows where they come from and who they are. As Trudgill (2004: 47) says about dialects: ‘they all have grammar. It’s just that their grammar is different’. As we begin to look, in the chapters that follow, at the spread of English throughout the world, we need to approach its varieties with the right attitude. Trudgill (2004: 2) yet again: ‘dialects are not good or bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong  –​they are just different from one another’. This holds for all manner of varieties, not just dialects. Many can be called non-​standard. But not substandard. If you enjoy working out ‘language puzzles’, like how do and have operate in the Berkshire dialect, take a look at Activity 4A (Where often goes) which looks at another syntactic area, presented as a ‘puzzle’.

4.4  ‘Variation attractors’ In 3.2.1 we came across The Hon Henry H, a shady character about whom virtually nothing is known. He was much obsessed with the letter ‘h’ and its pronunciation, or lack thereof. In Box 3.1, we used the terms ‘h-​dropping’ and ‘h-​ insertion’ to describe two of the most common nineteenth-​century shibboleths. As we come, in the following chapters, to look at English throughout the world, we will find many types of variation covering many linguistic levels –​particularly sounds, grammar, and words. Books like Kortmann et al.’s A Handbook of Varieties of English (2004) provide lists of the ways in which the varieties of English worldwide differ; and Chambers (2003) talks of ‘vernacular universals’ –​processes which lead to variation among languages and dialects worldwide. 62

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Though the types of variation are indeed many, there are some elements of language that seem particularly susceptible to change. It will help our discussion of varieties if we identify a few of these. Our list is below; and we call them ‘variation attractors’. The letter ‘h’ is one. It ‘attracts variation’ not just in British English  –​where some dialects h-​drop and others do not  –​but in some international varieties too. Nearly all of our variation-​attractor examples are taken from British dialects, the subject of Chapters 5 and 6, but like variations in the pronunciation of ‘h’, they are also found in varieties we shall look at in later chapters.

4.4.1  Sounds The letter ‘r’ The letter ‘r’ is very interesting, and a major variation attractor. In RP, a written ‘r’ is sometimes pronounced, and sometimes not. But in some British dialects it is always pronounced –​though, (just to make life even more difficult), with various different pronunciations. The letter is so interesting that it even has its own noun:  rhotacism, which the OED defines as the ‘unusual pronunciation or pronounced production’ of ‘r’. If you would like to work out the rules of r-​ pronunciation in British RP (and Australian too), look at Activity 4B (Rhotacism). Do this before reading on. The activity shows that where the ‘r’ occurs before a vowel (and is hence ‘pre-​vocalic’), it is pronounced, as in rob, royal, enrich, across, arrest. Otherwise it is not pronounced, as in actor, arm, heart, car, and fever. An exception is when a word ending in ‘r’ is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, in which case some speakers may pronounce the ‘r’ –​for example, in a phrase like far and wide. Languages or dialects which do not pronounce the ‘r’ before a consonant or in word-​final position are called ‘non-​rhotic’; otherwise they are ‘rhotic’. Not all Englishes are non-​rhotic. GA (American English), which we look at in Chapter 7, is generally rhotic, though there’s discussion in 7.5 about the use of rhotacism in New  York. Some British dialects are rhotic too. In Scots (Chapter 6), for example, the ‘r’ is pronounced almost wherever it is written. There are various ways in which ‘r’ can be pronounced; linguists generally recognise eight. If you’d like to learn something about four of the most common, take a look at ER4.2 (Four r’s). It includes samples of the different ‘r’ sounds.

Diphthongs and long vowels ‘Diphthongs versus long vowels’ is quite a common theme in British dialect studies; (if you are unsure what these are, take a look at ER5.1). Here is just one example (you will come across more in the next chapter). In south-​east English, and RP, the word face is pronounced with a diphthong –​/​feɪs/​. But in many parts of Britain, the long vowel /​e:/​is used instead of a diphthong, so the 63

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pronunciation is /​fe:s/​. In fact, the long vowel pronunciation was once found in all regions. The south-​eastern diphthong came along later but, because of the status of the south-​east, it began to spread more widely. But large parts of Britain, including Scotland, Wales, Devon, and Cornwall still use the long vowel. In GA too, you can find a monothong where RP has a diphthong. An example given in 7.4.1 is the word beard. If you’d like to practise hearing the difference between a diphthong and a long vowel, go to ER4.3 (Boats and rain).

/​t/​, and other plosives We need some phonetics to discuss this –​you may like to look forward to ER5.1 (Sounds, and /​fəʊnetɪk skrɪpt/​) for some relevant information. The sound /​t/​is one of a group described in phonetics as plosives. Other members of the group are /​p/​, /​b/​, /​d/​, /​k/​, and /​g/​. They are produced by an explosive release of air following a closure of the air passage at some point in the speech organs. The closure can be at different places: in the case of /​p/​and /​b/​it is between the two lips, in /​t/​and /​d/​it is between the tongue and the *soft palate, and for /​k/​and /​ g/​it is between the back of the tongue and the soft palate. Another place where closures can occur is between the vocal cords. The resulting sound is known as a ‘glottal stop’, and its phonetic symbol is [ʔ]. It’s used in many languages, and in fact, Crystal (2004:  532) says, ‘the glottal stop is inside us all, part of our phonetic ability as human beings, waiting to be put to use. We use it every time we cough’. You find the glottal stop in some non-​standard varieties of English, most commonly instead of a /​t/​, though it can also replace /​d/​or other plosives. In Cockney, for example, it occurs where a /​t/​is found intervocalically –​between vowels, that is –​and this is called ‘t-​glottalisation’. So RP /​bʌtə/​(‘butter’) is in Cockney pronounced /​bʌʔə/​. It can also be used instead of a /​t/​or /​d/​at the end of words, for example in the words fat and broad. As we shall see in following chapters, some Scottish dialects also use glottals, as do other varieties in the world. If you’d like to hear some samples of glottals, and be given some practice at identifying them, look at ER4.4 (A bit of butter). Chapter 7 is about English in America, and there (in 7.4.1) we shall see that an intervocalic written /​t/​tends to be pronounced not as a glottal, but as a /​d/​. So butter is pronounced as if written budder.

/​ŋ/​ This is the sound used in RP for the ‘ng’ in sing, and also in the suffix -​ing (in helping, for example). Phoneticians describe it as a ‘velar’ sound, because it is formed by an obstruction involving the back of the tongue and the soft palate, or ‘velum’. Velar sounds, produced right at the back of the mouth, cause problems for different types of speakers, including children learning their first language. Life becomes phonetically simpler if the velar is replaced by an ‘alveolar’ sound.2 These are produced more to the front of the mouth; where the obstruction is 64

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formed by the front of the tongue and the bony ridge above the upper teeth, called the ‘alveolar ridge’. The process of substituting a velar sound with an alveolar one is known as ‘alveolar substitution’. Young children do it when they replace the velar sounds /​k/​and /​g/​with their alveolar equivalents /​t/​and /​d/​, saying cat as if it were ‘tat’, and god as if it were ‘dod’. The velar that concerns us here is /​ŋ/​, and is replaced by many speakers of English by the alveolar /​n/​. This substitution is often reflected in spelling; so in varieties where this happens, singing may be written singin’. You find it in some British dialects: Chapter 1’s English 3 extract contains the Scots word scunnerin, which has lost its final ‘g’. Cockney, and the dialect of Norwich (a city in the east of England), are two other varieties which show this form of alveolar substitution. Some American varieties also have it. The English 2 extract in Chapter 1 (from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) doesn’t have any spellings which suggest alveolar substitution, but there are plenty of them in Twain’s book. Here are four: two gals flyin’ ’bout you, what you doin’ with this gun?, makin’ up the camp fire, and about the killin’.

4.4.2  Grammar There are grammatical variation attractors too. Often they reveal processes of regularisation and simplification: irregular forms are made regular, and where you have two forms in StE, a single form can be used for both. Here are examples of seven variation attractors. They are all from English dialects, and in fact have been taken from the Survey of English Dialects (the SED –​a dialect collection which we describe in 5.1)3. There are two sentences for each of the variation attractors. First identify how each phrase or sentence deviates from StE. Then put them into seven groups of two sentences each, according to the type of deviation. Explain, using linguistic terminology, what the deviation is: (1) Find out where this leak start from (Norfolk). (2) He didn’t save nothing else (Essex). (3) When us used to be on the farms us used to go on (Devon). (4) I could’ve went anywhere [that] I wanted to (Gloucestershire). (5) I used to go to Kendal them two days (Lancashire). (6) We didn’t do too bad really (Lincolnshire). (7) I joined the bell-​ringers in ’92, forty-​nine year this month (Lincolnshire). (8) Your stones crosses every joint (Yorkshire). (9) It was done pretty quick (Devon). (10) [We made] a good thirty, forty gallon [of cider] (Somerset). (11) That’s what they farmers used to want (Essex). (12) He was never wealthy nor nothing (Shropshire). (13) You never knowed anything about it (Gloucestershire). (14) I can remember she (Devon). 65

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The seven variation attractors: • In 4.2 we saw examples of the Berkshire dialect’s non-​standard endings in the present tense. One example was we often stops in at that pub, where the -​s ending is used after we. Sentence 8 is the same, and it is likely that the speaker uses this ending throughout the present tense –​for all persons. In 1 you find the opposite: the -​s suffix is not used where it should be. Again, the speaker probably uses this form throughout the present tense. • In StE it is common for there to be just one negative element in a clause, but multiple negatives are often found in non-​standard varieties. Sentence 2 has a double negative: didn’t and nothing, and in 12 there are three: never, nor, and nothing. We came across other examples of double negatives in 1.2’s ‘English 2’ passage; go back to the passage and find three of them. • Regular verbs in English use the suffix -​ed to form both the past tense and the past participle:  so love becomes loved. But we have a good number of irregular verbs, like drive, where the past tense and past participle are different (drove and driven). In non-​standard varieties, irregular verbs are often made regular. So in 13 we have knowed instead of knew. Sentence 4 shows another common feature: the past tense form went is used for the past participle gone  –​past tense and past participle forms are hence the same. Look back to the excerpt from Huckleberry Finn (1.2), and find the example of the opposite process –​a past participle form being used for the past tense. • Pronouns are often non-​standard in dialects. Sometimes an object pronoun will be used for a subject; so us is used instead of we in 3. In 14 you have the opposite: the subject pronoun she occurs where StE would have her. • In 1.2’s Mark Twain extract (English 2) there is the phrase them new clothes, where a personal pronoun (them) replaces a *demonstrative *determiner (sometimes called a demonstrative adjective)  –​in this case these or those. Sentence 5 does the same (them two days) and 11 is similar, only this time the subject pronoun they is used (they farmers). • Sentences 6 and 9 show adjectives being used as adverbs (bad and quick). This is particularly common when the adverb would end in -​ly (quickly and badly): the suffix is just dropped. It’s something you also find in GA, and it is mentioned in 7.4.3. • Another suffix that is sometimes dropped is the -​s which is used in StE to form a plural noun, turning year into years, for example, as in sentence 7. In 10, the noun is gallon. This often happens when the noun occurs with a number, as in these two examples. The feature is a good example of one that some people might regard as ‘slovenly’ (‘those lazy people who can’t even be bothered to make their nouns plural’). But there is rhyme and reason to the practice, as well as a historical precedent. ER4.5 (Forty-​nine year) explains. Before you bid farewell to these seven grammatical variation attractors, go back over them one final time and notice how they illustrate the processes of regularisation and simplification, mentioned at the beginning of this section. 66

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4.4.3  Words It is difficult to make generalisations about lexical variation attractors, beyond the fact that all varieties of English show much richness in the creation and use of non-​standard lexical forms. Box 4.1 illustrates:

Box 4.1  Being left-​handed In 1970, soon after the SED was published, an article appeared in The Times newspaper, entitled ‘Eighty-​eight ways of saying left-​handed’. As an example of the richness of English dialects, it mentioned that the SED had found eighty-​eight ways of expressing the idea of ‘left-​handed’. Here are some of them: back-​handed, cack-​handed, car-​pawed, Coochy-​gammy, gammy-​handed, south-​pawed, cuddy-​handed, golly-​handed, kay-​pawed, Marlborough-​handed. There’s a common association, in some people’s eyes, between left-​ handedness and awkwardness, even stupidity, and this is reflected in many of the expressions above. Cack for example means ‘excrement’, and indeed the word cack-​handed is often used in StE to mean ‘awkward’. Similarly, car (nothing to do with automobiles) comes from a Gaelic word cearr, meaning ‘wrong’. Gammy too is used today to mean ‘misshapen’ (in StE, someone may today say that they have a gammy leg). A particularly curious expression is Marlborough-​handed. Marlborough is a town in the English county of Wiltshire; apparently the people there had a reputation for clumsiness. Incidentally, you can also see similar negative associations at work in our word sinister. It has overtones of evil; in Latin it meant ‘left’ or the ‘left hand’. A couple of the expressions above use the word -​paw rather than -​handed, and south-​paw is an interesting one. The term is still used in boxing, to refer to a left-​handed fighter. But why ‘south’? The OED suggests that ‘south’ may suggest a lower or more inferior position. In American slang, northpaw is now used to refer to a right-​handed person.

4.5  Traditional and mainstream dialects When you saw some of the fourteen examples in 4.4.2, it may have occurred to you that they come from what you might be tempted to call ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ dialects –​sentences like when us used to be on the farms us used to go on, and you never knowed anything about it. You are right, and if you are able to listen to the recordings in the SED collection, you will certainly come across some very strange pieces of language. Indeed, when you think of dialects in general, what may come to mind are ‘quaint’ language practices used in rustic communities, probably just by very old folk. These are what Trudgill (2004: 17) calls 67

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‘traditional’ dialects. He distinguishes them from ‘mainstream’ dialects. These deviate less from norms like StE, and are spoken by the majority of the population in a specific area, including the young. They are less ‘quaint’, though they do include specific features that make them non-​standard. In the following chapters we will come across the traditional, but we’ll mostly concentrate on the mainstream.

Activity section Activity 4A  Where often goes (AS) In StE, the adverb often (along with other adverbs indicating ‘indefinite frequency’) generally only appears in certain sentence positions. The sentences on the left show the acceptable positions. The sentences on the right might have been said by a speaker of German as a first language, and would not be acceptable in StE. Use these examples to specify both the StE and the German rules for where the adverb often can be placed. Acceptable in StE

From German speaker (not acceptable in StE)

(1)  She often writes letters. (2)  He has often said that. (3)  He’s often doing silly things. (4)  She writes letters often. (5)  She has said that often.

(6)  She writes often letters. (7)  He has said often that. (8)  Often has she said it.

Activity 4B  Rhotacism In British RP and Australian English, a written ‘r’ is sometimes pronounced, sometimes not. Here are some words containing the letter ‘r’: (i) rob (vi) heart

(ii) actor (vii) across

(iii) arm (viii) car

(iv) royal (ix) arrest

(v) enrich (x) fever

If you speak one of these versions of PDE, look at (a). If not, look at (b). (a) Use the examples to try and work out the ‘rule’ which controls whether an ‘r’ is pronounced in RP/​Australian (hint: the relevant factors are the position of the letter in the word, and the surrounding sounds). (b) In the examples above, a British RP or an Australian speaker would pronounce the ‘r’ in (i), (iv), (v), (vii), (ix). The ‘r’ is not pronounced in (ii), (iii), (vi), (viii), (x). Use this information to work out the ‘rule’ which controls when the ‘r’ is pronounced (hint: the relevant factors are the position of the letter in the word, and the surrounding sounds). The ‘rules’ are discussed in the text. 68

A short interlude about variety

Answer section Activity 4A  Where often goes In StE, the adverb often can be placed: • Before the main verb (­example 1). • Between an auxiliary and the main verb (­examples 2 and 3). • At the end of the *clause (­examples 4 and 5). The sentences on the right reveal that in German often (and other adverbs of ‘indefinite frequency’) can also be placed: • After the main verb (­examples 6 and 7). • At the beginning of the sentence, with the subject and (auxiliary) verb inverted (­example 8) –​see the Glossary under ‘inversion’.

Further reading Trudgill (2004) is mentioned a number of times in this chapter. The book is a brief, highly readable introduction to the study of dialects. Chambers and Trudgill (2010) is a much fuller, more academically-​written discussion of dialectology, the study of dialects. Linguistic features common to many versions of English in the world (some of which are on our variation-​attractor list) are found in Kirkpatrick (2011) and Seidlhofer (2004). These are discussions about the use of English as a *lingua franca in various parts of the world, an issue which we focus on in 11.2. 4.3 contains a ‘language puzzle’, and Activity 4A (Where often goes) gives you one to do. If you enjoy puzzles like these, take a look at Chapter  2 of Dakin (1973). He invents a language called ‘Novish’. He gives some sentences in the language and asks you to work out some aspects of the language’s grammar.

Notes 1 Mesthrie (2009) contains a fuller list of the different types of English. 2 The word ‘lenition’ is used in linguistics to refer to the process of ‘weakening’ a sound to make it easier to articulate; this is what children are doing. 3 The BL shelfmarks for the sentences are: (1) C908/​60; (2) C908/​18; (3) C908/​31; (4) C908/​ 62; (5) C908/​43; (6) C900/​07166; (7) C908/​53; (8) C908/​6; (9) C900/​03606; (10) C908/​ 65; (11) C908/​20; (12) C908/​54; (13) C904/​62; (14) C908/​30.

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5

‘A tongue of small reach’ England

5.1  British dialects, and dialect studies Richard Mulcaster (c.1531–​1611) was an educational writer as well as headmaster of two celebrated schools:  Merchant Taylors’ and St Paul’s. His best-​ known book was the Elementarie, written in 1582. It was a guide to teaching, particularly of English, and it argued passionately in favour of the widespread use of that language, including in contexts where Latin was the norm. The book’s final section is entitled ‘The Peroration’ (the word means a ‘conclusion intended to inspire the reader’). In it, Mulcaster argues that English is a language to be proud of, even though it ‘is of small reach, it stretches no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all’.1 Mulcaster might have added that English, even on this small ‘island of ours’, took many different forms. We have already mentioned, in 3.4.3, the extraordinary number of English dialects on ‘this island of ours’. To drive home the point: Svartvik and Leech (2016: 81) tell how one of the authors took a train journey from Lancaster (in the north-​west of England) to Glasgow in Scotland –​ about a hundred and sixty miles  –​and found the speech of his Glasgow taxi driver ‘totally incomprehensible’. That distance can make a lot of difference in terms of British dialects. You will not be surprised to learn that standard varieties, like StE and SSE (Scottish Standard English), have been well-​studied by linguists over the centuries. But what about the many dialects? Some have been pitifully neglected, to the point that they are occasionally in danger of dying out, perhaps without any written texts left in existence. Few of them have been studied in much detail. As we saw in 3.4.3, things did begin to change in the nineteenth century. The English Dialect Society was founded in 1873, nine years after William Barnes had published detailed studies of his Dorsetshire dialect. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, an English Dialect Dictionary appeared, written by an English philologist Joseph Wright (one of whose students was J.R.R. Tolkien, of Lord of the Rings fame). Interest in dialectology was on the increase. A major development was the Survey of English Dialects (SED), undertaken at the University of Leeds and associated principally with Professor Harold Orton. The Survey appeared in book form, with the Introduction published in 1962 (Orton, 1962), and other volumes followed. Its main aim was ‘rescue dialectology’, attempting 70

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to capture dialects which were fast dying out. Over three hundred locations in England were studied. Scotland too had its own dialect survey, known as the ‘Linguistic Survey of Scotland’, undertaken by the University of Edinburgh. It was in two parts, one looking at Gaelic (the Celtic language spoken largely in the Highlands and Islands of western Scotland), and the other at Scots  –​the versions of English spoken throughout Scotland. The results were published in Mather & Speitel (1975: 86). An interesting additional type of language survey was undertaken in Scotland through a Census. Since 1801, the various countries making up the UK have had a population census every ten years, asking questions about the country’s demographics. In 2011, the Scottish Census decided to ask its population questions about their use of Scots. There is a website that shows what questions were asked, provides useful information about Scots, and includes spoken and written samples of it.2 Surveys aside, two Scottish English dictionaries have also been produced: A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue records the language up to 1700, and The Scottish National Dictionary continues from that date. These are brought together in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, which is available online.3 How do you study dialects? What methods are available, particularly when there are few written texts in the dialect? Think about how you would answer these questions before reading on. ‘Field linguistics’ is the name given to the discipline which involves collecting and studying linguistic data from informants who speak a language or language variety –​usually one about which little is known. Questionnaires or face-​to-​face interviews are generally used. For the SED, a long questionnaire was produced to find out what dialect words were used in particular situations. Many of the informants were elderly folk working in farming, and sometimes the field linguists found they had to resort to such measures as dressing in old clothes to gain the confidence of their informants. A good number of the questions were farm-​related. For example, one of the questions was ‘When a cow shows signs of giving birth, you say she …?’ This attracted almost twenty answers in the southern area of England, including ‘she a-​heading for her calving’, and ‘she’s bad for to calve’. The Scottish Survey also used a lengthy questionnaire –​a postal one, which asked about the use of two hundred words. The Scottish Survey had a pronunciation component, with informants being asked to pronounce one hundred and seventy-​five words, and the SED too collected samples of actual dialect speech. Before the days of tape recorders, this was a laborious process: the data needed to be written down and phonetically transcribed. Phonetic transcriptions remain a useful tool for field linguists, even now that we have more advanced recording facilities. An excellent resource for audio clips of dialects can be found at the British Library ‘Sounds’ site.4 It includes 287 samples from the SED collection, as well as others from a project known as ‘BBC Voices’ undertaken, like the SED, with the University of Leeds. The BBC samples involve people talking about their dialects, and in their 71

‘A tongue of small reach’: England

dialects. If you are interested in hearing how English dialects can differ –​and how much variety there is –​you could do no better than choose a few clips at random from this website and listen to them. As we mentioned in 3.4.3, a useful way of presenting dialect data uses maps, showing where particular forms are used. Associated with the SED is the large-​ scale Linguistic Atlas of England (Orton et al., 1978). Upton and Widdowson (2006) provide a more manageable and more readily-​available version. Map 5.1 is a page from this book, dealing with the word adder.

ETHER

HAGWORM

HAGWORM

ADDER

ADDER

ADDER

ETHER

VIPER ADDER

VIPER VIPER VIPER ADDER

Map 5.1  The word adder and variations. From Upton and Widdowson (2006: 130).

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‘A tongue of small reach’: England

The map shows the words used to describe an adder in various parts of England. The word adder is a particularly interesting one. It is Germanic, and in OE (Old English) was nædre, in Middle English naddre. Over time, the phrase a naddre came to change into an adder  –​the ‘n’ at the beginning of the noun naddre became part of the indefinite *article ‘an’. In early days, the word could simply refer to a snake, of whatever type. Ether, the form shown in two areas on the map, is the same word, with a different pronunciation. The example shows how maps like this can tell us about linguistic influences on the language. Viper, the word used in some southern areas, is of Romance origin (the modern French word is vipère). Like many French words, it came into Middle English after the Norman conquest. Hagworm is a word of Norse derivation, and it is found in areas where the Vikings invaded. The Old Norse for ‘snake’ or ‘serpent’ was ormr (associated with our word ‘worm’), while hag was a copse or bog; there is still a village in Northumberland called Haggerston, in an area which used to be very boggy. Activity 5A (Leaping insects) involves looking in more detail at a dialect map. A useful concept for the study of dialect sounds was introduced by Wells in his 1982 book, Accents of English. In Volume 1, he introduces what he calls ‘lexical sets’. These are groups of words, chosen because each contains a specific vowel or diphthong in its stressed syllable. The RP and GA pronunciations are given for each vowel, and the words are used as a yardstick for comparing pronunciation in different varieties. Take for example the RP sound /​ɜː/​that occurs in words like bird and earn. Because GA is a rhotic language the sound there is /​ɜːr/​. The word Wells chooses to use as his model of this sound is NURSE (lexical set words are conventionally written in capitals). It is useful to have a word like this as a model by which we can study other accents. For example, as we shall see in the next chapter, the Scots pronunciation of the vowel in NURSE is /​ʌr/​. The last paragraph contains some examples of phonetic symbols (/​ɜː/​, /​ɜːr/​, and /​ʌr/​. As Culpeper (2005: 28) says: ‘trying to tell people about sounds on paper is tricky at the best of times’. For the study of dialects, variation –​and indeed of all language –​it is helpful to understand and be able to use phonetic script. It’s a way of ‘writing sounds down’. If you are unfamiliar with phonetic script, take a look at ER5.1 (Sounds, and /​fəʊnetɪk skrɪpt/​), which also gives some basic information about how sounds are described; there’s also a list of the phonetic symbols used in this book, on page xii. During the course of this chapter, we’ll talk about ‘voiced’ and ‘unvoiced’ consonants. If you are unfamiliar with these concepts, now might also be the time to look at ER5.2 (Voicing). In this chapter and the next we’ll concentrate on the British Isles. They are just a tiny group of islands in the North Atlantic, made up of two sovereign states:  the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We can’t possibly do justice to the large number of varieties in the Isles, and will concentrate on just eight. These are (covered in this chapter):  Cockney, Multicultural London English, Estuary English, the West

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‘A tongue of small reach’: England

WELS ENGL H ISH

NORTHERN DIALECTS

EN IRI G SH LI SH

SCOTS

Country dialect, northern dialects, and (covered in Chapter 6), Welsh English, Scots, and Irish English. These are roughly indicated in Map 5.2.

ST WE TRY UN CO

Y KNE COC • MLE ARY ESTU H IS L G N E

Map 5.2  Major variety areas of the British Isles.

The map comes with apologies to Shetland, Orkney, and the Channel Islands, which are not on it. If you don’t already know, find out where they are located. Our coverage will be rather general, and must come with several ‘caveats’. Caveat 1 is that within most areas, there are variations, sometimes significant 74

‘A tongue of small reach’: England

ones, which we will not cover. Caveat 2 is that dialects do not have sharp geographical boundaries –​they often mingle, picking up characteristics from each other. Also –​Caveat 3 –​variations are often not just defined by regions; very often their use has a socio-​economic dimension. In our brief survey, look out for occasions when these three caveats apply. There are various overviews of accents in the British Isles, available online, allowing you to hear examples.5

5.2  England We’ll start in London:

5.2.1  Cockney We have already mentioned Cockney, the east London dialect, in 3.4.3, where a nineteenth-​century example was given from Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers. Look back to remind yourself what was said about Cockney there. Look back also to Activity 3D (Take a butcher’s at this) which is about Cockney rhyming slang. Here are some more features of Cockney. Read through the points first. Then you’ll be given a passage of Cockney today, and asked to identify examples of these points. To start with pronunciation: • One of the pronunciation characteristics of Cockney is h-​dropping. We came across this in Box 3.1, and identified it as one of our variation attractors in 4.4. • Another common characteristic is how the letters written ‘th’ are pronounced. Some phonetics is needed to explain this, and at this point you may find it useful to refer back to ER5.2 (Voicing). In RP there are two pronunciations of written ‘th’. In words like anything, through, thinking, and thought the sound is unvoiced, and the phonetic symbol used is /​θ/​. The other RP pronunciation is as a voiced sound, in the words mother and that. The phonetic symbol is /​ð/​. Cockneys maintain the voiceless/​voiced distinction, but instead of unvoiced /​θ/​they use unvoiced /​f/​, and voiced /​ð/​becomes voiced /​v/​. The result is that the words above are pronounced as if written ‘anyfing’, ‘frew’, ‘finking’, ‘fort’; and for the voiced examples, ‘muver’ and ‘vat’. You may like to work out in phonetic terms what Cockneys are doing when they change /​θ/​ to /​f/​, and /​ð/​ to /​v/​. It’s to do with what parts of the speech organs are touching, and reference back to ER5.1 (Sounds, and /​fəʊnetɪk skrɪpt/​) will help here (AS). • Possibly Cockney’s most distinctive sound is the glottal stop, which we again discussed in relation to variation attractors (4.4.1). You’ll remember from our discussion there that it often replaces a /​t/​intervocalically or at the end of words. 75

‘A tongue of small reach’: England

• Yet another feature identified as a variation attractor in 4.4.1 is ‘alveolar substitution’, with the /​ŋ/​of the suffix -​ing often pronounced as if written -​in. • Cockney also has some distinctive diphthongs. Particularly salient is the one in the words gay and face –​represented by FACE in Wells’ lexical sets, discussed in 5.1. In RP the sound is /​eɪ/​. Cockneys pronounce this as /​aɪ/​ • Another diphthong change is from RP /​aʊ/​to something like /​æə/​. This occurs in words like pound and how. There’s a phrase often used in elocution to practise the RP pronunciation of /​aʊ/​. It is ‘how now brown cow’. A Cockney would pronounce it as if it were written something like: ‘Haar naar braan car’. Now for grammar: • The use of the ‘historical present’. This was discussed in 3.4.3, in relation to Sam Weller’s Cockney dialect. • Omission of the auxiliary be in questions. • One of the grammatical variation attractors discussed in 4.4.2 is the use of was throughout the past tense of the verb be. • Yet another of our variation attractors found in Cockney is the use of a pronoun instead of a demonstrative determiner; 4.4.2 referred back to Huckleberry Finn’s phrase them new clothes (‘English 2’ in 1.2). ER5.3 (Down the pub) contains a short passage spoken in a Cockney accent. Before you listen to the recording, read its transcription, given below. Your task is first to identify some words where the pronunciation points mentioned above might appear. Where, for example, do you expect to hear h-​dropping? Then listen to the recording, and check whether your predictions were right. Finally, concentrate on the transcription, and find examples of the grammatical points mentioned above. Here is the passage: So I go down the pub, and there’s my mate John, having a pint all by himself. ‘What you doing here?’ says John, ‘I thought you was goin’ on holiday today’. So I tell him: ‘I was, mate, but me father’s ill, so it’s all off’. ‘Oh bad luck, son’, he says. ‘Still, come and have a pint. That’ll make you feel better. Cheers.’ Notice two terms of endearment often used in Cockney, both meaning ‘friend’:  one is mate and the other is son. Incidentally, another common one, used to a member of the opposite sex, is love. The passage also shows Cockney use of the preposition down to mean to. The Irish playwright, Bernard Shaw was mentioned in 3.4.2, where he expressed his awareness of how using a non-​standard dialect like Cockney could have negative social consequences, and he wrote a play on the topic. Box 5.1 describes the film that came out of the play.

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Box 5.1  My Fair Lady Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion (mentioned in Box 3.1), was first performed in 1913. In Greek mythology, Pygmalion  –​a king and a sculptor  –​fell in love with one of his statues, which then came to life. In the play, a professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, attempts to rid a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, of her broad Cockney accent. In the process he falls for her. A version of the play became a successful Broadway musical called My Fair Lady, and this was turned into a film in 1964. The American Film Institute places it within the top hundred American films ever made. Eliza’s speech reveals several of the Cockney characteristics we have been discussing, and Professor Higgins tried to eradicate them by, among other things, getting her to say tongue-​twisters. The characteristics included both h-​dropping and h-​insertion, and we looked in Box 3.1 at the tongue-​twister she was made to practise in relation to these. Another Cockney characteristic is her pronunciation of RP /​eɪ/​ as /​aɪ/​, and her tongue-​twister this time is ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain’, which Eliza pronounces as ‘The rine in Spine sties mainly in the pline’. You can hear Eliza’s attempts at both these tongue-​twisters on YouTube.1 Eventually, after hours of fruitless practice at ‘The rain in Spain’, Higgins delivers an emotional speech to Eliza, telling her about the glories of the English language, which Eliza is ruining with her Cockney. Eliza is so emotionally touched that her pronunciation is suddenly transformed into faultless RP –​a good illustration of how emotional factors can affect language learning!2 In another amusing scene, Higgins takes the linguistically-​reformed Eliza to the racecourse, to show off her new way of speaking. Her accent has become perfect RP, but her grammar and vocabulary remain Cockney. If you can access the clip, identify the elements of Cockney grammar and lexis that she uses at this point. Then, during the horse races, she gets so excited about the progress, that for one wonderful moment she returns to her old Cockney accent.3  At www.youtube.com/​watch?v=MJr9SSJKkII.   You can see this moment in the film at www.youtube.com/​watch?v= xmADMB2utAo&t=201s. 3  At www.youtube.com/​watch?v=P_​5RyXYhdP8. 1 2

5.2.2  Multicultural London English Cockney: the dialect of east London. Or is it? Since the end of the Second World War, there have been demographic changes in London and the south-​east of England. Much of east London was bombed during the war, and as a result there 77

‘A tongue of small reach’: England

was an exodus from the area, particularly into the county of Essex, just east of London. There, new towns like Basildon and Harlow were built to receive those who were displaced. As some people moved out of east London, others moved in. After 1948 there was large-​scale immigration into the area (as indeed into England as a whole), from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere. After about 2004, immigrants from eastern Europe also arrived, particularly from Poland; you may be surprised that according to figures from the British Office for National Statistics, Polish was the second most used language in England and Wales in 2013. The result is that today, a large part of the population of east London boroughs like Hackney and Tower Hamlets  –​the ‘homeland’ of Cockney –​is truly multicultural … and multilingual too. Out of the many languages spoken in the area came a new variety of English, which has been given the name ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE). As the word London suggests, the variety has a regional basis. But remember 5.1’s Caveat 3: MLE also has socio-​economic dimensions, and in fact the word *sociolect is used to describe it. It’s a young person’s language, and many associate it with working-​class black youth. The caveats, though, don’t stop there, and it is typical of language varieties that dimensions like the socio-​economic and the regional, while present, are often not clear cut. As well as working-​class black youths, MLE is also used by young whites, sometimes from middle-​class backgrounds. In addition, there are also people in cities other than London who are picking up the variety. Its spread is partly through association with various genres of popular music, particularly the type known as ‘grime’, with grime singers like Stormzy and Dizzee Rascal being celebrities who use MLE. Indeed, if you want to know what the language is like, one way to find out would be to look at the lyrics of some grime songs.6 MLE is truly multicultural. When it first emerged, the newspapers called it ‘Jafaican’, for ‘fake Jamaican’. There are certainly Caribbean elements to the language: the MLE words mandem (‘men’), and girldem (‘girls’), for example, come from Jamaican Creole, as does whagwan, a word which means ‘what’s going on’; (we’ll come across Jamaican Creole again in 10.2). But the fact that Stormzy and Dizzee Rascal both have Ghanaian ancestry, suggests that MLE derives from various cultures, and it has indeed taken linguistic elements from many sources. As you might expect, there are Cockney features in MLE too. For example, as we saw in 5.2.1, Cockney uses a glottal stop for intervocalic and word-​final /​t/​. MLE does the same –​listen on YouTube or elsewhere to a singer like Stormzy performing, and you will hear this clearly. But given that MLE emerged in an area where Cockney was used, it’s perhaps rather more surprising just how little Cockney is found in the variety. There is no Eliza Doolittle h-​dropping, for example. And the FACE vowel, which in Cockney is /​aɪ/​, is more like /​e:/​a sound which is discussed in 4.4.1. Where did this pronunciation come from? A number of sources are possible, says Kerswill (2019); given the multicultural nature of MLE, it could be from Jamaican Creole, Indian or West African English. 78

‘A tongue of small reach’: England

One interesting grammatical feature of MLE is the use of man as a pronoun. It can stand for a number of StE pronouns, including the impersonal, and rather formal one. MLE where’s man going? can mean ‘where are you going? or (to put it into rather stilted English) ‘where is one going?’ Another MLE feature is the *quotative use of this is. In a sentence like This is me: ‘I’m going home’, it means ‘I said’. In Box 7.1, we’ll come across another recent and very popular quotative –​the formula be like, as in I’m like: I’m going home. Another curious MLE syntactic structure is the use of why for in questions. Why are you doing that for? or why for are you doing that? can be heard in MLE. Or is it so curious? After all, in StE what are you doing that for? is perfectly acceptable. If what for, then why not why for?7

5.2.3  Estuary English There’s a variety of English which is distinct from Cockney, but has elements of Cockney in it. It is known as Estuary English (EE). The estuary in question is that of the river Thames, though EE is in fact spoken in a much wider area of south-​ east England. It has been described as something between Cockney and RP. It’s an ‘up-​market Cockney’ for the Cockney speaker who wants to communicate with those outside their Cockney group. But at the same time it has elements of ‘down-​market RP’; many people feel that an RP accent sounds ‘posh’, and they wish to distance themselves from it. For them, EE can be the answer. Politicians, for example, may use it to provide the ‘common touch’ –​it makes them sound ‘of the people’. Thus a former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, introduced elements of EE into his speech. So too did Diana, Princess of Wales; EE helped her to be seen as the ‘people’s princess’. We can illustrate this intermediary nature of EE –​between Cockney and RP –​ by looking at the feature of glottalisation. Cockneys, 5.2.1 says, use a glottal where a /​t/​occurs intervocalically (with RP /​bʌtə/​ pronounced /​bʌʔə/​). EE avoids this, regarding it as being a little too markedly Cockney. But it does have glottals in word-​final positions. For example, in a phrase like I got it, there are two final /​t/​sounds which become glottals in both Cockney and EE; the pronunciation would be /​aɪ gɒʔ ɪʔ/​. A glottal is also found in other positions where there are not two surrounding vowels, as in ‘Gatwick’ (/​gæʔwɪk/​). Another phonetic aspect of EE is known as ‘l-​vocalisation’. This is where an /​l/​sound is replaced by a vowel or diphthong (in other words, it is ‘vocalised’). Thus RP /​hɪl/​ (hill) will be pronounced /​hiʊ/​, and the word milk will be /​ miʊk/​. A third aspect has an even stranger linguistic name: ‘yod coalescence’. ‘Yod’ is the name given to the tenth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and in phonetics it is used to describe the sound /​j/​. In RP this sound is found in the words ‘dune’ (/​djʊn/​) and ‘Tuesday’ /​tjʊzdiː/​). In EE, the sounds /​dj/​and /​tj/​, are replaced by /​dʒ/​ and /​tʃ/​, so they sound as if they were written ‘June’ and ‘Chewsday’. 79

‘A tongue of small reach’: England

EE is principally an accent, but there are some lexical and syntactic characteristics associated with it. Here are five mentioned in Crystal (1995).8 (1) A: What are you doing here? B: I came to finish those letters, didn’t I? (2) A: Did you go there last Wednesday? B: No, I never went there on Wednesday. (3) Don’t do it so quick. (4) So I goes down the shop and buys some. (5) The door came off of its hinges. Before reading on, identify the non-​standard feature in each case. You will notice that at least two of them are on our list of variation attractors. Which are they? Sentence (1) is what Crystal calls a ‘confrontational’ tag question, one which suggests that the person you are speaking to really should know something already. You might amuse yourself by thinking what B’s sentence would mean if it were a ‘normal’, and not a ‘confrontational’, tag. Under what circumstances would that be used? In StE, never means ‘not ever’, ‘on no occasion’. Sentence (2) shows that in EE it can refer to just one occasion. B’s reply means ‘No, I didn’t go last Wednesday’. In sentence (3) an adjective is used in place of an adverb. A variation attractor. Sentence (4)  also contains a variation attractor, where the present tense third person singular verb ending is used for all persons. Crystal notes that EE has some odd prepositional forms. As well as Sentence (5)’s off of (for off), you also hear inside of and outside of (for inside and outside).

5.2.4  The West Country Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons, came into being in the sixth century, and one of its rulers was Alfred the Great. The West-​Saxon dialect spoken there was one of the four main dialects of Old English. It was the origin of the West Country dialects of English that we now find in the south-​west counties of Devon, Somerset, Cornwall, Dorset, and Wiltshire. Sometimes people today regard these dialects as ‘rustic’; it’s true that West-​Saxon was not the dialect which led to StE –​that was Mercian –​but it has noble beginnings, having been spoken at the court of Alfred the Great. To hear some West Country sounds, go to ER5.4 (Somerset cider). Then, for some grammatical points, look at ER5.5 (Widecombe-​in-​the-​Moor). The points raised in these two sources are discussed below. A characteristic of traditional West Country English that is often exaggerated, sometimes to the point of caricature, is that it replaces the unvoiced sound /​s/​ with the voiced /​z/​(ER5.2 talks about voiced and unvoiced consonants). So the words in ER5.4’s example one can be spoken as if written zomebody, zaid, Zommerzet, and zider. Other unvoiced consonants can also be voiced, so /​f/​can 80

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be pronounced /​v/​, and a ‘fen’ (a low marshland) called ‘ven’. Sometimes this word ven(n) occurs in place names. For example, there is a small Devon village called Venn Ottery, in an area of low, marshy land. In 4.4.1 we identified the letter ‘r’ as a variation attractor. The West Country dialect is rhotic, as e­ xample 2 illustrates. Their version of ‘r’ is a retroflex one –​ ER4.2 describes what this is. It is the pronunciation that crossed the Atlantic to America with early settlers. Another of our variation attractors is ‘alveolar substitution’, where the sound /​ŋ/​is pronounced as /​n/​. This happens in e­ xample 3’s words morning, helping, hoping, something. A very distinctive characteristic of the West Country accent is the pronunciation of the diphthong in words like arrive. This is the RP /​aɪ/​, represented in Wells’ lexical set –​discussed in 5.1 –​as PRICE. It can be pronounced in the West Country as /​ɔɪ/​, as it is in ­example 4’s price, arrive, mice, and lie. Incidentally, you also hear /​əɪ/​for this RP sound. ER5.5 concentrates on grammar points. There is no need to spend time discussing these in detail, since all of them are on 4.4.2’s list of variation attractors; you are left to identify these, and state the points in linguistic terminology. All the examples are taken from an SED recording, made at Widecombe-​ in-​the-​Moor, a small village on Dartmoor, Devon (you may perhaps have heard the folksong called ‘Widecombe Fair’). You can find the recording on the British Library Sounds website.9 It is just six minutes long, and is worth a listen. The accent is a traditional one, not that easy to follow; ignore what you can’t understand, and the recording will at least give you a taste of the West Country dialect. If you are the kind of person who likes to write notes as an aid to the memory, why not do Activity 5C (A West Country summary).

5.2.5  The North Where does the North of England begin? For some excessively ‘southern-​centric’ people the answer is just north of London! Wherever you put the boundary, the North covers a very large area, and encompasses a wide variety of accents. There’s the accent of Birmingham (only just over a hundred miles north of London, and really in the Midlands rather than the North). Then there are two accents which have rather curious names. Lobscouse is a kind of sailor’s stew, and because Liverpool (in the north-​west of England) was a major seaport, their local accent became known by a shortened form of the word, as Scouse. On the other side of northern England lies Newcastle upon Tyne, and their local accent is known as Geordie, possibly a pet name for George, a common name among the mining folk of the area. Then there’s Yorkshire, England’s largest county, covering a substantial part of northern England. It has a number of local accents, sometimes quite different from each other. There are different accents too for Lancashire, 81

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for Cumbria, and many other areas. If you are interested in hearing samples of some of the accents mentioned, there are plenty available on the internet.10 ER5.6 (Paths, loves and boats) gives examples of how some speakers of northern accents would pronounce some RP sounds. Before you listen to the examples, read these descriptions of the sounds: • Probably the pronunciation feature most characteristic of northern dialects involves the RP vowel in words like path, past, dance, and can’t. It is /​ɑː/​. The northern version often uses a vowel close to the /​æ/​found in RP hat.11 This means that the words ant and aunt can be pronounced the same. The characteristic is deeply rooted in northerners, even when they modify their accents –​for example, if they go and live in the ‘/​ɑː/​-​ridden’ south of England for a long time. There are many northerners whose accents have become close to RP, but who reveal their roots by saying /​bæθ/​where RP has /​bɑːθ/​, for bath. • Northern dialects do not characteristically have the /​ʌ/​sound that RP uses in words like bus, love, must, flood. They use the vowel /​ʊ/​, the one in RP put. This means that words like putt and put, which are different in pronunciation in RP (/​pʌt/​ and /​pʊt/​), are pronounced the same. • One of our variation attractors relates to diphthongs and long vowels. Northern dialects tend to use long vowels which southern English has turned into diphthongs. In the words boat and don’t, for example, RP has the diphthong /​əʊ/​. In northern dialects, it is /​o:/​. Then there are the words rain and mate. The RP diphthong is /​eɪ/​, but northern uses the long vowel /​eː/​. Given this difference, you might like to work out how speakers with a northern accent would pronounce the sentence we saw in Box 5.1:  ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain’. It would be rather different than the Cockney version we saw in the Box. Example words illustrating these three points are: 1. path 2. cut 3. boat

past love don’t

dance must rain

can’t flood mate

put

putt

These are the examples given in ER5.6. Before you listen to them, try to produce the northern sounds yourself, following what is said above. Then check your sounds by listening to the recording. There are items from our grammatical variation attractors list aplenty in northern dialects. The examples below are all taken from Yorkshire recordings in the SED. You will be able to work out which variation attractors operate in each case: • When I were working at home. • Some walls has two lots.

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• Never take no notice of it. • They turned him down polite. • In them days. Here are three sentences illustrating further grammatical features. What is non-​ standard about each? 1. Some sheep [have] paint at back of head. 2. If thou dost, thou’s lost some time. 3. It’s a gift, is dry-​stone-​walling. Sentence 1 has a characteristic very common in some northern accents –​omission of a determiner, particularly the definite article. So StE the back of the head becomes back of head. Sometimes the definite article is there, but pronounced very lightly (as a /​t/​sound). This is often represented in writing by t’–​so you may see t’back of t’head. Sentence 2 shows a feature that has almost (but not quite) died out in northern dialect: the use of the thou form. EModE had the two forms thou and you, one use of the former being to address friends or people close to you. The distinction was rather like the tu/​vous and du/​Sie ones in French and German. By the nineteenth century, thou had fallen out of general use, and was restricted only to religious language … and some dialects. Box 5.2 is about the grammatical structure used in Sentence 3, a particularly interesting characteristic of some northern speech.

Box 5.2  Northern dislocation One way that many languages use to place particular focus on a given noun phrase is called ‘dislocation’. Here are two examples in English: (1)  They like their food, Ann and Mike (2)  Ann and Mike, they like their food In both these sentences the subject (‘they’) is ‘expanded’, or specified in more detail, as ‘Ann and Mike’. In (1), the ‘expansion’ is at the end, and this is called ‘right dislocation’. In (2), the ‘expansion’ is at the beginning, and this is ‘left dislocation’. To show that other languages do the same, here’s a French example: (3)  Elle est très intelligente, cette femme She is very intelligent, this woman Use of this strategy goes back as far as OE.

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Now take a look at these three examples of right dislocation, taken from an article on the topic, Durham (2011): (4) I was a little angel, me (5) He stayed with this other woman, John did (6) She got a great bargain, did her Mum (4) is like our earlier examples, except that the subject ‘I’ is not ‘expanded’, but just repeated using the appropriate pronoun form (me). But in (5)  and (6)  an extra verb is also added  –​the verb ‘do’, which acts as a *substitute verb in English. But notice a difference in word order:  in (5)  the ‘normal’ English word order (subject-​verb) is followed (John did), while in (6) there is ­*inversion (did her Mum). Right dislocations of all these sorts are common in northern English, as in the example:  It’s a gift, is dry-​stone-​walling. But different forms tend to be used in different regions. In the north-​east (where Geordie is spoken) there tends not to be a substitute verb. An example from Beal (2008) is: (7) I’m a Geordie, me. In Yorkshire, it is more common to use a verb, with or without inversion. Two of Beal’s examples are: (8) He’s got his head screwed on, has Dave (9) He’d done some laughing, had old Parr In these two examples, do is not used because you don’t need a substitute verb when there’s an auxiliary like have (has, had) in the sentence. The same is true if the verb is a *modal. So you could say: (10) John can swim very well, John can or (11) Peter must work harder, must Peter.

5.3  The three caveats At the start of this chapter (in 5.1), we noted the experience of the author whose train journey of a hundred and sixty miles led him into incomprehensible territory. You need not go so far. In a paper about people’s perceptions of dialect differences, Pearce (2012) looks at the speech of Newcastle and Sunderland, two cities in the north-​east of England. They are separated by just ten miles as the crow flies. Rivalry between these cities has always been strong, and Pearce notes that the inhabitants of each are aware of many differences between how they talk. A large number of these are to do with pronunciation, but there are 84

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grammatical and lexical differences also. In Sunderland, for example, they use the StE word our, while in Newcastle it is wor; (there’s an old Geordie folk song entitled Wor Geordie’s lost ’is penka –​‘our George has lost his marble’). In Newcastle, on the other hand, the StE mate is used, while in Sunderland it is marra. Pearce notes many more differences. In this chapter we have treated large swathes of England as if they were self-​ contained linguistic areas, with everyone within an area speaking the same dialect. At the chapter’s close, it is worth remembering the three caveats mentioned at the end of 5.1. Caveat 1 reminds us that within every variety there are many sub-​varieties which we have not had the space to deal with. Just ten miles  –​ let alone a hundred and sixty –​can make a big difference dialectically. The North also holds examples of Caveats 2 and 3. In recent years, linguists have observed the emergence of a ‘General northern English’ (GNE) accent. This retains some northern characteristics, one being that RP /​ɑː/​is pronounced as /​ æ/​; 5.2.5 describes how northerners are likely to maintain this pronunciation even after years of living outside the North. The existence of these stubborn characteristics means that their accents are still ‘northern’. But at the same time, many regional differences have disappeared, so that the once-​distinguishable accents of cities like Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield are beginning to merge. This is our Caveat 2. Caveat 3 is there too, because the speakers of GNE tend to be middle class, educated, and urban. There is a socio-​economic dimension to the accent’s use.12 We will find instances of our three caveats in the next chapter too … and indeed throughout the book whenever varieties are discussed.

Activity section Activity 5A Leaping insects The StE word is flea. But in some dialects of English, different words are used, and sometimes the word is dramatically different. Map 5.3 is taken from Upton and Widdowson (2006). The words used in four areas have been replaced by numbers: Here are four sentences showing the words used for flea in the four areas (1) to (4) on the map. Some are taken from Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary. First read the sentences, and try to work out what they mean (they are all written in dialect, so this is not always that easy): (a) He said tul th’ lodgin’-​haase keeper, ‘Aw hooap yo hev noa fleas abaat’ (In Wright; from West Yorkshire). (b) I couldna sleep for the flen; I were scroutin at ’em all night (In Wright; from Shropshire). (c) Aw sent him off wi’ a fleck in his ear-​hole, aw con tell ya (In Wright; from Lancashire). 85

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FLEA

(1)

FLEA (2)

(3) (4)

Map 5.3  The word flea and variations. Based on Upton and Widdowson (2006: 134).

(d) The sheets lily-​white, though aw says it mysel’; ‘maw darlin’, nee lops there to touch us’ (In the OED; from a Newcastle dialect song). Now here’s a test of your knowledge of English geography: say in which areas (1) to (4) the dialect forms (a) to (d) fall. If your knowledge of English geography is restricted, you will find the answers in the Answer Section. One of the four words is dramatically different from the other three. Think about the region where this word comes from, and ask yourself why the word 86

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from there should be so different. The answer is given below, where there is some more information about two of the ‘flea words’: Flen: Adding an -​en was once a way of making a noun plural in English, and we still have a few words –​like children and oxen –​which use this form. The -​en on flen was once a plural form. But when -​en plurals fell out of use in English, people stopped associating the suffix with plurality. So flen became regarded as a singular word, with a plural of flens. Incidentally, some dialects continue to have non-​standard -​en plurals; in Devon for example, you may hear housen being used as the plural of ‘house’. Lop is the dramatically different word. It is used in the north-​east, one of the areas of England invaded by the Vikings, and the word comes from the Old Norse hlaupa. It means ‘to leap’, and is indeed cognate with our word ‘leap’ … which is of course just what a flea does, (rather than flying). In modern-​day Geordie (the Newcastle upon Tyne dialect) you can still say ‘she’s as fit as a lop’ (like StE ‘fit as a fiddle’). It’s interesting also that a few decades ago, cheap cinemas in Darlington (another town in the north-​east) were called ‘penny lops’: rather unclean places where you might catch fleas just by sitting in the seats. In StE we have the phrase ‘flea pits’, which captures the same idea.

Activity 5B  Widecombe-​in-​the-​Moor Here are some sentences and phrases spoken in West Country dialect. Each illustrates one characteristic of West Country grammar. Identify what they are, and say how they differ from StE, or whatever version of English you are familiar with. The characteristics will be discussed in the text. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

I went down there as a boy with he. Two hundred an eight pound of flour. They don’t have nothing. Us used to have to walk it. After I come home from the 1914 war.

Note:  The sentences are taken from The Widecombe-​ in-​ the-​ Moor recording from the SED, accessed from the British Library Sounds website, https://​sounds.bl.uk/​Accents-​and-​dialects/​Survey-​of-​English-​dialects/​021MC0908X0031XX-​0100V1.

Activity 5C  A West Country summary Section 5.2.4 covers a number of pronunciation and grammar features of the West Country dialect in a short space. It might be valuable to take notes on the section, listing the various points, to provide a summary of the dialect’s characteristics.

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Answer section 5.2.1  Cockney pronunciation of /​θ/​ and  /​ð/​ The RP sounds –​unvoiced /​θ/​and voiced /​ð/​ –​are called ‘dental’ because the tongue is in contact with the teeth –​and, as ER5.1 tells you, dens is the Latin for tooth. In the Cockney sounds, unvoiced /​f/​and voiced /​v/​, the contact is between the lower lip (Latin labium) and the upper teeth. So the unvoiced/​voiced distinction is maintained, but the RP dentals become Cockney labio-​dentals.

Activity 5A (a) comes from area (4), (b) from (3), (c) from (2), (d) from (1).

Further reading There are a number of descriptions of English varieties available. Melchers and Shaw (2011) has a useful brief discussion. For more detail, there is Hughes et al. (2012), which is accompanied by a set of online recordings. For a wide-​ranging survey, which includes historical information, it is worth consulting a number of chapters in Burchfield (1994). Beal (2010) is another useful discussion of English dialects, looking at specific linguistic features that recur; these might be regarded as a more detailed and thorough collection of ‘variation attractors’. Altendorf (2017) is a chapter dedicated to Estuary English. Wales (2006) provides a detailed book-​length look at northern English, delving into its history and discussing linguistic perspectives of the ‘north–​south divide’ that continues to exist in England today.

Notes 1 Mulcaster’s spelling has been modernised. 2 www.ayecan.com/​read_​scots/​burns_​museum.html. 3 At www.dsl.ac.uk. 4 https://​sounds.bl.uk/​Accents-​and-​dialects/​BBC-​Voices. 5 For example:  www.youtube.com/​watch?v=-​8mzWkuOxz8, and www.youtube.com/​ watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk. This site:  www.youtube.com/​watch?v=2pZ-​Ny8q22o covers more accents (30 in all), and provides authentic samples. 6 You can find grime lyrics at: https://​genius.com/​Skepta-​king-​of-​grime-​lyrics#song-​info].

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7 The sociolinguist Paul Kerswill is a major figure in MLE research, and much of the information in this section is taken from his University of York ‘Multicultural London English Page’, at www.york.ac.uk/​language/​research/​projects/​mle/​. 8 Most, but not all, of these examples are taken from Crystal (1995). 9 At https://​sounds.bl.uk/​Accents-​and-​dialects/​Survey-​of-​English-​dialects/​021M-​C0908X00 31XX-​0100V1. 10 Some examples: Scouse: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=5eALDOPFZLg; Geordie: www. youtube.com/​watch?v=r09urAHaVwA; Yorkshire: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ScELa XMCVis; Birmingham: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=m3-​dqdnyxDA; Cumbria; www. youtube.com/​watch?v=ofWA7ERRwzs. 11 In fact the vowel has the front of the tongue slightly lower in the mouth, and the phonetic symbol is more accurately /​a/​. 12 GNE has caught the attention of the British press, but little has so far been published in the academic literature. The linguist Patrycja Strycharczuk is associated with the research in this area, and Strycharczuk et al. (in press) is about to appear.

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6

‘A tongue of small reach’ Wales, Scotland, Ireland

6.1  The Celts The Celtic League is an organisation, founded in 1961, which promotes Celtic identity. Three of the member nations are Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. But who are the Celts, and where do they come from? Polybius (c.205-​c.125bc) was a Greek politician and writer whose Histories described the rise of the Roman Empire. At various points he talks of battles between the Romans and the Celts. These Celts were fierce warriors, he says. In one encounter, their ‘whole army were shouting their war-​cries at the same time’, creating ‘such a tumult of sound that it seemed that not only the trumpets and the soldiers but all the country round had got a voice and caught up the cry. Very terrifying too were the appearance and the gestures of the naked warriors in front, all in the prime of life, and finely built men … The sight of them indeed dismayed the Romans … ’ As well as being fierce, the Celts were people with a well-​developed culture. Where they originally came from is uncertain; some say western Asia, others from further east. Early European Celtic settlements were in today’s Austria and Switzerland, but the Celts had a nomadic streak and spread both east and west from there: into Turkey, southern and central Europe, France, Spain, and the British Isles. Being accomplished warriors, they found themselves in conflict with various powers, particularly the Romans, to whose empire they posed a threat. They tended to stay in tribes rather than creating a single nation –​the closest they got to that was in Gaul (today’s France and surrounding areas). Julius Caesar defeated them there, in 52bc, at the Battle of Alesia –​now the village of Alise-​Sainte-​Reine in Burgundy –​and in Britain too they were forced northwards and westwards to the fringes. Eventually, the Romans built Hadrian’s Wall, to the north of which lay Scotland, to keep the Celts out of Roman England. Ireland was widely inhabited by Celts, and there they came into conflict not just with the Viking invaders, but principally with the Anglo-​Normans, rulers of England since the Norman invasion of 1066. This was the beginning of an Anglo-​Irish conflict that has lasted for centuries. And the Welsh?

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6.2  Wales With the arrival of the Anglo-​Saxon tribes in the fifth century, some Celts were driven to the area west of England and east of the Irish sea. We call this area Wales. The name comes from the Anglo-​Saxon wealas, one meaning of which is ‘foreigners’ –​a little unfair, since these particular wealas were in Britain before the Anglo-​Saxons; it’s the latter who are really the foreigners. The Celtic inhabitants of Wales –​the Welsh –​had their own language, now known as ‘Cymraeg’ (Wales was called ‘Cymru’), but the arrival of the Anglo-​ Saxons began a process of retreat for the Welsh language. The Acts of Union of 1536–​43 established English as the language of government and law, and Wales became a principality, unified with the kingdom of England. The Industrial Revolution led to the opening of coal mines in Wales, and this resulted in a large influx of English speakers, which helped to hasten the introduction of compulsory education in English. This increased the status of English, while that of Welsh diminished. Penhallurick (2008), contains a useful brief history of Welsh–​ English relations, and he cites an editorial in The Times newspaper of 1866, which captured a view of the time –​that the Welsh language was ‘antiquated and semi-​barbarous’.1 The English were ruthless in their oppression of the Welsh language; court proceedings, for example, had to be in English, despite the fact that sometimes jury members, and even defendants, spoke only Welsh. The efforts of the Welsh people to keep their language alive have been passionate and persistent. In 1962 the political activist, Saunders Lewis, delivered an influential radio broadcast with the English title ‘the Fate of the Language’, arguing that if action were not taken the Welsh language would soon die. In that year, the Welsh Language Society was set up. Today, the country is officially bilingual, and over half a million people speak Welsh. It is a first language in many rural areas, though Welsh-​only speakers have now disappeared; all Welsh speakers now also speak English. Welsh English is called, well, ‘Welsh English’, though the name ‘Anglo-​ Welsh’ is also used. As with the North of England, there are many dialects of Welsh English, the most distinct being in the north-​west, and in the mid-​south. With large numbers of bilingual people in the country, it is natural that there should be much code-​switching. This is where speakers alternate between one language and another, and it commonly occurs where two languages are spoken by members of a community; the topic will come up again –​in 7.2, 9.4.3 and Box 11.1. If you want to see some examples of code-​switching between English and Welsh, take a look at ER6.1 (Welsh with English). Here are four points about Welsh pronunciation. They are deliberately described using linguistic terminology, some of which may be new to you: (a) Introduction of a /​w/​glide between /​uː/​or a diphthong ending in /​ʊ/​, and a following vowel. 91

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(b) Intonation patterns with rises and falls exaggerated in comparison with RP; the pitch change often follows a stressed syllable. (c) Tendency to give full value to vowels which are reduced in RP, especially at the end of syllables. (d) Use of a voiceless alveolar *fricative that isn’t used in RP. Now listen to the examples of Welsh English pronunciation in ER6.2 (Welsh sounds). Though some of the linguistic terminology may be new to you, you will probably be able to match the points (a) to (d) above with the recorded examples (1) to (4). When you have done that, read the explanations below, which use less linguistic terminology. • One of the most distinctive characteristics of Welsh English speech is its intonation. This is often described as being ‘sing-​song’. It is more exaggerated than is normal in RP: the highs are higher, the lows lower, and the glides between the two particularly distinct. Example (1) in ER6.2 shows this. Notice that sometimes the pitch change happens on an unstressed syllable, in the word Peter, for example. • The examples in (2) illustrate a sound that is not found in RP, and comes into Welsh English from Cymraeg. It most commonly occurs at the beginning of place names, and is written ‘ll’. It is described as a voiceless alveolar fricative, and its phonetic symbol is /​ɬ/​. All of the examples in (2) begin with the word llan, which can mean ‘church settlement’. Probably the best-​known word using the sound is the name of a village on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. The place is small, but the name is very long; indeed, it is said to be the longest place name in Europe:  Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogog och. The sign on the railway station is a sight to be seen. The name means: ‘St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave’. It is usually called LlanfairPG for short. If you want to try pronouncing the word, there is a recording available online.2 • Welsh speakers often put more emphasis on unstressed vowels than RP speakers. In RP, the final ‘y’ in example (3)’s words is lightly pronounced as /​ɪ/​. The Welsh English pronunciation is /​iː/​. • What the examples in (4) show is that the Welsh sometimes put a [w]‌sound between a /​uː/​or a diphthong ending in /​ʊ/​, and a following vowel. So doing is /​duːwɪŋ/​ and power is /​pauwə/​. When we come, in later chapters, to look at varieties of English worldwide, we shall find that it is extremely common for other languages to leave their mark on the version of English used in a particular geographical location. It is not surprising, then, that Cymraeg should have influenced how the Welsh speak English. Penhallurick (2008a), who looks at the grammatical characteristics of Welsh English, discusses several instances where this happens. These include how Welsh English speakers form tag questions. If you are not sure what tag questions are, or how they are formed in StE, look at ER6.3 (Tags). The discussion below assumes you understand how this piece of grammar works. 92

Wales, Scotland, Ireland

ER6.3 reveals that the English way of forming tag questions is complex. In many other languages it is far simpler. Often they have a fixed formula which is added to the statement. In German one such formula is nicht wahr?, and in French n’est-​ce pas? –​both can be roughly translated as ‘is it not true?’ Cymraeg too, Penhallurick (2008a) says, has a fixed formula, which is ydy fe?, meaning ‘isn’t it?’. This is carried over into Welsh English. Here are three of Penhallurick’s examples: • I’ve heard the word, isn’t it? • We saw some the other day, isn’t it? • They had them in their hair, isn’t it? These sentences show that, unlike in StE, the isn’t it? tag is used whatever the verb in the statement. In Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, there is a Welsh soldier named Fluellen. At one point he announces:  here is … a most contagious treason come to light, look you.3 He uses the phrase look you about twenty times in the play, and it is also a favourite phrase of another Shakespearean Welsh character, Evans, in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The phrase is part of Shakespeare’s stereotype of how Welsh people speak, and it remains a stereotype today: people like to think the Welsh use it … much more than the Welsh actually do use it. It is a kind of tag, and Crystal & Crystal (2017) gloss its Shakespearean use as ‘can’t you see?’. It is also, Crystal (1995: 335) says, a direct translation of a phrase in Cymraeg. Another aspect of Welsh English grammar that comes from Cymraeg is illustrated in these sentences.4 What is non-​standard about them? Use linguistic terminology in your explanation. (1) (2) (3) (4)

Nineteen I was and had a girlfriend who was sixteen. Due to ill health, that was. ‘Husband’ I refer to him as. Very angry he was.

The sentences illustrate what is known as ‘focus fronting’. Where there is something the user wishes particularly to emphasise (in linguistic parlance to ‘give information focus’), it is put at the front. As sentences (1), (2) and (4) show, this often results in the verb being the last element in the clause, though this doesn’t happen in (3). Focus fronting is not unknown in other varieties of English, and indeed we came across something similar in northern English –​the ‘dislocation’ procedure discussed in Box 5.2. But it is particularly common in Welsh English.

6.3  Sexy Scottish? People find some accents likeable, others not. According to many surveys, the Birmingham accent (Brummie) is thought to be one of Britain’s least appealing. 93

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Also, according to many, Scottish accents are considered more pleasant, and even sometimes more ‘sexy’ than others. Scotland: almost half as big as England, nearly eight hundred islands (many uninhabited), capital Edinburgh, population almost five and a half million. As in Wales, there is a Celtic language, known as Scottish Gaelic. It is spoken by about sixty thousand people, largely living in the north-​west of the country, and in the Hebridean Islands, though (as in Wales) there are no longer any speakers who have it as their only language. Another interesting language of Scotland, long since died out, is known as Norn, and Box 6.1 below is about it. It used to be spoken in the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland. It is derived from Old Norse, the language spoken by the Vikings, who invaded the isles in about 800ad. The Scandinavian connection is understandable when you consider that, as the crow flies, Lerwick (the capital of Shetland), is a little closer to the Norwegian coastal city of Bergen than it is to Edinburgh, and is much closer to the Norwegian capital Oslo than to London.

Box 6.1  Norn The word ‘Norn’ comes from the Old Norse norroent mál, meaning ‘northern speech’.1 The Orkney and Shetland islands, once Norwegian, became Scottish in the fifteenth century. Scots very slowly began to replace Norn, though the latter continued to be commonly spoken in Orkney in the sixteenth century. The people tended to be Scots/​Norn bilingual in the seventeenth century, and Norn began to disappear in the eighteenth. Some say that one Walter Sutherland was the language’s last known speaker. He lived in the northernmost part of Shetland, and died in 1850. It is common in the process of ‘language death’ (Norn’s unfortunate fate), for the demise to be pushed on by negative social attitudes towards the disappearing language. Killick (1987) reports meeting a man whose mother used Norn words, but, the man said, ‘we were not encouraged to use words like that’. Despite such maternal prohibitions, about a thousand Norn words have remained in the local dialects. These include felkyo (‘witch’), speir (‘to ask’), and kye (‘cattle’). Killick gives an example of Orkney dialect which uses the last of these words. If you go and ‘stay the night with freends on an Orkney farm’, it says, ‘you might have difficulty getting to sleep, what with boglan kye, clankan hens, yarman gibbies and wheean sholts especially if your own bairns are girnan an greetan’. In Orkney dialect, bogle is ‘bellow’, clank is ‘cackle’, yarn is ‘mew’, a gibbie is a ‘tom cat’, when is ‘howl’ or ‘neigh’, a sholt is a ‘small horse’, girn is ‘whine’, a bairn is a ‘child’, and greet is ‘cry’. We will come across these last two words again later in the chapter.

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There has recently been an attempt to bring Norn back to life, in the form of a ‘Nynorn Project’, the aim of which is ‘to re-​create Norn as a usable (= living) language in order to see what it could be like had it stayed alive until our days’. The project’s website gives a detailed analysis of the language, as well as a version of the Christian Lord’s Prayer in Norn translation.2 Jakob Jakobsen, a nineteenth-​century linguist from the Faroe Islands (you are invited to consult a map to find out where these are), gathered together a large collection of Norn material, including texts and vocabulary. It was published in 1928–​32 as An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland. One of his texts was the following riddle, variations of which are found in Norway, Iceland, and England. The Norn version is on the left, the English translation on the right. The traditional English form is below them. You might like to work out the riddle’s answer3 (AS). But also, don’t miss the opportunity to take a look at the Norn words and see if you can see any connections with English words (and Norwegian ones if you happen to speak Norwegian!): Norn

English

Fira honga, fira gonga, fira staad upo skø, twa veestra vaig a bee, and ane comes atta driljandi

Four hang, four walk, Four stand skyward, Two show the way to the field And one comes shaking behind

The traditional English version:  Four dilly danders/​ Four upstanders/​ Two lookers,/​Two crookers/​And a wig-​wag.  This information is taken from Killick (1987).   The website is http://​nornlanguage.x10.mx/​index.php?nynorn_​phil. 3   Taken from https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Norn_​language. 1 2

In Old English times, the dialect of Northumbria (in the far north-​ east of England) filtered into the south of Scotland, and its progress –​to the point of dominance –​has been steady since. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland became James I of England, and in 1707 the Act of Union formally united the two countries. The two events practically guaranteed the dominance of English, and as in Wales, the English were resolute in their efforts to quash Scottish Gaelic. Scottish Standard English (SSE) is the accepted norm in the country. It is different in small ways from StE. But when we speak of Scottish dialects, we are talking about a much richer and varied picture. The word ‘Scots’ is used as an umbrella term covering the variety of Scottish dialects, and these can differ considerably. There 95

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are distinctive dialects in the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland; the north-​ east of the country has a dialect known as Doric; the Glaswegian and Edinburgh dialects are quite different from each other; and in the southern Lowlands, close to the English border, there is a dialect sometimes known as ‘Lallans’ (for Lowlands). When we need to refer to Scottish versions of English, covering both SSE and Scots, we’ll use the term ‘Scottish English’. The 2011 ‘Scottish Census’ was mentioned in 5.1. We have already met one of the Census website’s examples of written Scots. It appeared in 1.2 as ‘English 3’, and was taken from information panels in the Birthplace Museum of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns (1759–​96), in Alloway, south-​west Scotland. The passage is below, and we’ll look at it in a little more detail than in Chapter 1. Read over it a few times and try to ‘translate’ it into PDE. It is likely to contain some words which are new to you; try to guess what they mean before looking at the glossary underneath it. List the characteristics that distinguish the language from StE: Though his position in society wis ower laich for him tae hae the richt tae vote, Robert wis nanetheless passionate aboot politics and made his writin desk his ballot box. Scunnerin the weel-​daein and pooerfu, hooanever could prove a fykie business. Robert Burns loved the lassies. He fell in love aften an wi ease, and wi mony weemun frae a wheen o backgrunds. The wey he treatit his lovers wis different ilka time, and ilka relationship affected Robert in its ain weys.

Glossary laich, adj. low, lowly scunner, v. disgust (associated with the PDE verb ‘shun’) fykie, adj. fussy, tricky lassie, n. girl, woman weel-​daein, adj. prosperous a wheen o, adj. a good few. Wheen means ‘few’. The expression is interesting because its meaning changed from ‘a few’ (which emphasises the small number), to almost the opposite: ‘quite a few’ or ‘a good few’ ilka, adj. each The passage shows that Scots does indeed have a distinctive vocabulary. Fykie is of interest to us because it comes from Old Norse; so too does lassie. Mention has already been made of the connections between the northern isles and Norway. A broader connection, with most of Scotland (and indeed many parts of England), comes about through the Viking invasion (which started in the eighth century), and this gave Scots and SSE a good number of new words. One is the word bairn, meaning child, which we met in Box 6.1): the modern Norwegian 96

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word is barn. Take a look at Activity 6A (Scandinavian roots) if you’d like to explore some more Scandinavian words that came into Scottish English. You may well have come across some other distinctive Scottish English words, from various sources –​words like ain (own), auld (old), muckle (a large amount), dram (small drink), bonnie (good-​looking), and wee (small). You’ll notice that in the passage there are a few words which look a little like StE words, but which have a different spelling. Sometimes how a word is spelt will tell you about how it is pronounced, and some of the passage’s words are like this. Aboot (‘about’), for example, pooerful (‘powerful’), and hooever (‘however’). In RP, these words contain the diphthong /​aʊ/​, but in Scottish English, this is pronounced with the vowel /​u:/​. The spelling ‘oo’ suggests this Scottish pronunciation. ER6.4 (Scottish sounds) is quite a complicated sound discrimination exercise. The points it raises are discussed below. You need to do the exercise before reading on. You’ll recall that one of the pronunciation variation attractors discussed in 4.4.1 was ‘diphthongs and long vowels’. Examples 1 and 2 in ER6.4 have some instances. Thus RP /​əʊ/​in words like go, coat, snow, and boat is pronounced with the vowel /​oː/​. Similarly, the RP diphthong /​ɪə/​ in here, fear, deer, near is /​i:/​ in  SSE. Example 3 shows a situation in which RP has two sounds, and SSE one. RP /​ʊ/​ in foot and RP /​u:/​in goose are the same in SSE, the vowel being /​u/​in both cases. Example  4 shows the opposite situation, where there are distinctions in Scottish English that do not occur in RP. This is in words like nurse, bird, and heard. In RP, these all have the same vowel, /​ɜː/​. But as the example shows, in SSE these words have different vowels (with the /​r/​added to remind you that SSE is rhotic): /​ʌr/​ in nurse, /​ɜːr/​ in bird, and /​ɛːr/​ in  heard. The Scottish ‘r’ is sometimes trilled and sometimes tapped –​the difference is described in ER4.2. Example 5’s illustrations are heart, fever, morning, scar, carp. Another of 4.4.1’s variation attractors is the use of a glottal for a /​t/​. This is found in some Scots dialects (like Glaswegian) rather than in SSE. Example 6 shows this sound in the words butter, matter, hat, and let. There are two sounds that occur in Scottish English, but not in RP. Example 7 shows that written ‘wh’ is pronounced rather as if it were written ‘hw’ –​the phonetic symbol for this sound is /​ʍ/​, and it is described phonetically as a voiceless /​w/​. In RP it is just /​w/​. This occurs in words like what, whether, when, and why. In some Old English words, like hwæt and hwæþer (‘what’ and ‘whether’), the ‘hw’ spelling was there, though it later changed to ‘wh’. The Scottish English use of /​ʍ/​means that unlike RP, it distinguishes in pronunciation between when and wen (meaning a boil); also between where and wear, whether, and weather. Then there is the ‘ch’, most known for its occurrence in the word ‘loch’. The phonetic symbol for the sound is /​x/​. The sound is not used in RP, and indeed many English people pronounce ‘loch’ as if it were written ‘lock’. Example  8 gives the Scottish English pronunciation. There are two words in our earlier 97

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passage –​ laich and richt –​where the ‘ch’ spelling suggests the Scottish English pronunciation. Another common word using /​x/​is the Scottish interjection och. Like the associated German word ach, it often (though not always) expresses sorrow, and –​the OED suggests –​might be an imitation of the sound of a sigh. Most of the differences between StE and Scottish English are to do with lexis and pronunciation, but there are a few grammatical differences also. One of the most distinctive is to do with negation. The Scottish seem to have a dislike of the -​n’t forms found in StE, in words like won’t, and haven’t. So you will see and hear I’ll not go there (for StE ‘I won’t go there’), and I’ve not seen it (for ‘I haven’t seen it’). Nae is also commonly used for StE not, so in fact I’ll not go there may well be said as I’ll nae go there. Nae can also be added to auxiliaries or modals, to form words like didnae (‘did not’), hasnae (‘has not’), cannae (‘cannot’) and so on: hence I didnae enjoy the film, He hasnae got a job, I cannae swim. Another interesting feature of Scots is the plural pronoun yous. The StE pronoun you is used in both singular (referring to one person) and plural (more than one person). Scots distinguishes: you (singular) and yous (plural). Though educated speakers might avoid this, it is still heard. So a waiter might say ‘Have yous decided what to eat?’, or ‘Do yous want to order yet?’

6.4  Irish English The town of Drogheda is about forty miles north of Dublin, the capital of the Irish Republic. In the early seventeenth century, it was held by the Irish Catholic Confederation, most of the country being of the Catholic denomination. The neighbours in England had long since been disaffected by the Catholic Irish, so much so that in 1642 Parliament declared ‘that the country [Ireland] will be replanted with many noble families of this nation [England], and of the Protestant religion’. In 1649, Oliver Cromwell took his troops to Dublin, and laid siege to Drogheda. After rejecting a surrender, the town was stormed, and much of the population were massacred. Cromwell’s cold reaction was: ‘this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches’. England followed military action by a colonisation of the northern part of Ireland, peopling it with Protestants –​many of them Scottish –​who brought their languages, English and Scottish English, with them. There were large movements of Irish out of Ireland, which became a part of the United Kingdom in 1801, and in the mid nineteenth century famine caused millions more Irish to emigrate, very many to America. The Irish pressed for independence, fighting a guerrilla Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. The result was the creation of an Irish Free State in 1922, over which the Parliament of the UK had some restricted authority. But the northern part of the island insisted on maintaining its separateness, successfully requesting to opt out of this agreement, and thus in effect partitioning the island. It was not until 1949 that the Republic of Ireland 98

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was officially formed, while Northern Ireland still remains within the United Kingdom. The two parts of the island continue to be divided by religion; ninety percent of the Republic’s population are Catholic, while in the north, a third are Catholic and two-​thirds Protestant. With all these upheavals came linguistic changes. The Celtic language, Irish, was once dominant on the island, and indeed is still the first official language of the Republic. But only two percent of the population actually speak it, and Irish English is widespread. As in England and Scotland, Ireland has a great variety of accents of English, with the Northern Irish and Republic Irish accents being particularly distinctive. You can find examples of the principal accents on various internet sites.5 One of the ways to identify a Northern Irish accent quickly is by their pronunciation of the RP diphthong /​aʊ/​. Earlier in the chapter, we came across the sentence ‘How now brown cow’, often used in elocution training to practise the /​aʊ/​ diphthong. In Northern Irish, the diphthong would be rendered with the sound /​ɛʉ/​, the second element being a close, central, rounded vowel. This makes the sentence sound a little like ‘hiow neow breown keo’ –​though this is a very rough approximation; you can hear the proper sound online.6 A distinctive characteristic of some southern Irish accents is the use of voiceless /​t/​and voiced /​d/​for the RP voiceless–​voiced pair /​θ/​and /​ð/​; look back to ER5.2 if you need reminding about voicing. So the word thing might be pronounced as if written ‘ting’, and ‘that’ as if written ‘dat’. Northern Irish has a particularly distinctive intonation, which rises at the end of utterances, whether they are questions or not. It is said that the American actress Shirley MacLaine became confused by a Northern Ireland man who seemed to be ‘asking questions all the time’. As regards grammar, southern Irish has several characteristics which come from the Celtic language, Irish. One is the use of after, followed by the -​ing form of the verb. This is sometimes called the ‘after perfect’. Filppula (1999) –​a good source of information about Irish English grammar –​gives the example You’re after ruining me, which means ‘you have (just) ruined me’. Another common characteristic is the use of and as a *conjunction, often replacing ‘when’ or ‘while’. One of Filppula’s examples here is I only thought of him there and I cooking my dinner, where the sense is ‘while I was cooking my dinner’. In 6.2 we looked at ‘focus fronting’ in Welsh, and noted that it came from Cymraeg. A similar process is found in Irish English, again with Celtic roots in the Irish language. It is the use of what are known as ‘cleft sentences’. Here are some examples (again from Filppula): • It’s looking for more land a lot of them are. • It’s badly she’ll do it now. • It’s mostly missionary work we do in the Mother’s Union. Think first what the StE structure would be for expressing these ideas. Then try to explain just how this structure works; how are cleft sentences formed? Why are they called ‘cleft sentences’? (AS). 99

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Activity 6B (Irish questions and answers) draws attention to another feature of Irish English that comes from Irish. Look at this before reading on. There are several features of the interchanges in the activity that you might not be familiar with. One is the use of I amn’t; it’s by analogy with He isn’t, of course, but in many standard forms of English, we are used to I’m not. Then there is the lack of the subject pronoun I in (5). But the feature we want to draw attention to here is that the responses avoid the use of yes or no. In most standard versions of English, answers like They do in (1) are certainly not ungrammatical, but they would only be used if the speaker wanted to give a degree of emphasis to the answer. In the words of Filppula (1999: 160): ‘Irish has no exact equivalents of the affirmative and negative particles yes and no’. What Irish does is to repeat ‘the verb of the question, usually in the shortest available form’. An example he gives is the question in Irish: An dtiocfaidh tú? (‘Will you come?)’ and the reply, Tiocfaidh (‘I will come’).7 Because so many of the British coming into Northern Ireland were from Scotland, it is not surprising that Northern Irish contains elements of Scots. One example is the plural form of you, which we saw in 6.3. This is found in Northern Irish too, and where you might hear someone say Are youse coming? Remember that this is a plural, so this sentence would only be used where more than one person is being addressed.

6.5  A one-​way street, or two-​way traffic? In this chapter we have concentrated mostly on the way that users of English in the main Celtic areas of the British Isles –​Wales, Scotland, and Ireland –​have modified their versions of English, largely through the influence of their Celtic origins. But has it all been a one-​way street? How much has the English of the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish found its way into StE? In terms of words, the number is not large, but perhaps you can think of a few. Here are just three with origins that might surprise you. If you have resources to explore their etymologies, do so. Otherwise, there is the Answer Section. The words are: bog, kerfuffle, and penguin.

Activity section Activity 6A Scandinavian roots (a) The underlined words in the sentences below are of Scandinavian origin, found in Scottish English (though not always to this day). Guess their meanings –​sometimes easy, sometimes not. The Answer Section gives some information about where the words come from. 100

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(1) Oh, but John would look well in that, at the kirk on Sunday! George Douglas Brown, 1902 (2) [There was land] which he had given the present tenants a legal warning to flit and remove themselves from, notwithstanding of which they still continue their possession. Rev. John Mill, 1889 (3) So Janet tugged at the … apron and whimpered, ‘Don’t greet, mother, don’t greet. Woman, I dinna [don’t] like to see ye greetin’. George Douglas Brown, 1901 (4) But ye like to gar folk look like fools. Sir Walter Scott, 1816 (5) ‘It’s a dreich job,’ Galbraith answered wearily. John Macdougall Hay, 1914 (b) If you are interested in finding out about word origins, look up where these Scottish words come from (and the roots are not necessarily Scandinavian): haar (n)   boorach (n)   fash (v)   wersh (adj)   peely-​wally (adj)

Activity 6B  Irish questions and answers Look at this sequence of questions and answers in Irish English. They are taken from Filppula (1999).8 Do you notice anything linguistically strange in these examples? They will be discussed in the text: (1) Do people eat it still? They do. (2) Are you telling me their names? I amn’t. (3) D’you have the song? I haven’t, I only have the opening line of it. (4) So, you belong to that parish? Belong to that parish. (5) Do you remember Johnny Doran comin’ around? I do remember Johnny Doran comin’ around.

Answer section Box 6.1 Riddle The answer is a cow: four teats hang, four legs walk, two horns and two ears stick upwards, two eyes look forward, and a tail shakes behind.

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Activity 6A (Scandinavian roots (1) Kirk, meaning ‘church’, is originally Greek in origin, but variants of kirk are found in Scandinavian languages (Swedish kyrka, Danish kirke). As well as in Scotland, the form is also found in northern England. (2) Flit means ‘move house’, or more generally ‘go away’. The Norse word was flytja. The meaning remains in the PDE phrase moonlight flit –​ leaving accommodation without paying the rent. (3) Greet is from the Norse word grate, and means ‘to cry’. The Swedish is gråta, and the Icelandic, gráta. It was an irregular verb, with a past tense grat; I sat down and grat like a bairn, said one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s characters in 1893. (4) Gar means ‘to make’ or ‘to cause’. It is related to the Swedish göra, the Icelandic gera, gjöra (all meaning ‘do’). (5) Something dreary or boring is described as dreich, from the Old Norse drjúgr. The word is still very much in use, particularly to describe dull, dreary weather. The OED has a 2019 citation from Twitter: It’s a dreich rain that gets intae [into] ye, nae a rain ye can keep off by sticking up ye brellie [brolly, umbrella]’.

Section 6.4 Cleft sentences ‘Cleft’ comes from the verb ‘cleave’, meaning ‘to split’. A cleft sentence is one that is ‘split’ in order to place emphasis on a particular element. Invariably a cleft sentence is an elaboration of some other simpler sentence. Take, for example, the simple sentence: He married Jane. If you wanted to emphasise that it was Jane, rather than Mary or Sue, you might say It was Jane that he married. As in this, and our Irish English examples, cleft sentences often use it.

Section 6.5  Three words Bog is from the Irish bogach, meaning ‘bog’. Kerfuffle is from the Scottish curfuffle. Fuffle means ‘to put out of order’, and cur is (possibly) ‘twist’. Penguin According to the OED the probable derivation is from the Welsh pen gwyn meaning ‘white head’; the word pen in the sense of ‘headland’ appears in Welsh and Cornish names, like Penzance.

Further reading Two chapters, Penhallurick (2008) and (2008a) give a detailed account of Welsh English, as well as discussing Welsh–​English relations regarding language issues. 102

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For more information about Scots grammar, take a look at Miller (2003). The volume it appears in: The Edinburgh Companion to Scots (Corbett et al., 2003) is a useful reference book on the language. While focusing on the grammar of Irish English, Filppula (1999) is full of information about the variety and its Celtic roots. Volume 5 of the Cambridge History of the English Language: English in Britain and Overseas (Burchfield, 1994), contains chapters on Wales (Thomas, 1994), Scotland (McClure, 1994), and Ireland (Kallen, 1994).

Notes 1 Penhallurick (2008), p. 106. 2 At    https://​eurotalk.com/​blog/​2015/​09/​11/​how-​do-​you-​say-​llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogery chwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch/​ 3 Henry V, 4.8.20. 4 Sentences (1) to (3) are taken from Roller (2016). 5 For example, at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ee_​N3g4ORLk. 6 At www.youtube.com/​watch?v=FxtduqQrglY (the first sound covered on that clip). 7 Filppula’s examples are taken from Vennemann (2009). There’s an amusing further example of Irish English’s avoidance of yes and no at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=Hwstj9FJHGg. 8 The examples are cited in Vennemann (2009).

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‘Immigrants goes to America’ English in North America

7.1  Many hellos in America The musical and film West Side Story is about Puerto Rican immigrants living in New York during the 1950s. In one of its famous songs, called America, an immigrant sings the praises of the country. I like to be in America/​Okay by me in America, she says. Later in the song, the chorus sings:  Immigrants goes to America,/​Many hellos in America. Notice the plural noun immigrants followed by a singular verb goes. We have come across this already: in 4.2 we saw it in the Berkshire dialect, and in 4.4.2 it was one of our ‘variation attractors’.1 We shall also find it again later, in Box 7.2, where it is mentioned as a characteristic of the Newfoundland dialect. America was indeed the country of many hellos. To go back to the beginning:  Russia and Alaska are now separated by the Bering Strait, a stretch of water just 62 kilometres wide at its narrowest. But until about 11,000 years ago, there was a land bridge joining Asia and America at this point, and this was used by people crossing from north Asia to the American continent. They were the first ‘Native Americans’. Exactly when those to the east of America –​the Europeans –​first crossed the Atlantic, is open to discussion. First, perhaps, were the Vikings, but if so, they left few records of their stay. The year 1492 is an important date. This was when the Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, set sail westwards from Spain. After a five-​week voyage, land was sighted. It was what we now call the Bahamas. Columbus believed that the world was round, and he was indeed seeking a route from Europe to the riches of Asia, and back, which did not involve going through the enemy territory of Turkey. When he landed in America, he thought he had reached Asia. Cuba, he believed, was Japan, and he called the native Americans ‘Indians’, thinking of the Indian subcontinent. Soon after, in 1497, the Genoese explorer John Cabot (commissioned by the English king Henry VII) reached Newfoundland. He too thought that he had reached Asia. When he returned home, he told of fish-​rich waters, and this led to the despatch of fishing fleets from England, France, Portugal, Spain. So when the Englishman Humphrey Gilbert reached Newfoundland in 1583 he found it already well and truly ‘discovered’. Not colonised, though, so he took possession

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of St John’s (the Newfoundland capital) and the surrounding coast. This became the first English-​speaking colony in America. But the French were not to be left behind. Inland from the fish-​rich waters were animal-​rich lands, and in 1605 the French created a settlement in Nova Scotia. They called it Acadia. Later in the century (1682), one René-​Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, from Normandy, explored the Great Lakes region, and found his way to the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi. This took him down to the sea at New Orleans. He claimed the Mississippi basin for France, naming the area Louisiana (then an area much larger than the present US state with the same name), after King Louis XIV. The name ‘Cajun’ comes from these settlers who hailed from Acadia. Then in 1585, there was an expedition by Sir Walter Raleigh. He landed at Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. There was an attempt to create a settlement, but it failed, as did a second attempt soon after, when the settlers disappeared without trace. It is sometimes called the ‘Lost Colony’. In 1607, after a voyage lasting four months, three ships captained by Christopher Newport arrived at Chesapeake Bay in what is now Virginia, the state named after England’s Virgin Queen, Elizabeth. The settlement that was established was called Jamestown, again after a British monarch –​King James the sixth of Scotland, and the first of England, who became king following Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Life was hard, but the settlement started to thrive when the tobacco plant began to be cultivated (and for many centuries thereafter, Virginia tobacco became a favourite in Britain: no thanks to James I who, in 1604, wrote a pamphlet which described smoking as a ‘filthy novelty’, and talked about the ‘precious [utter] stink’, and ‘horrible Stygian smoke’. Jamestown remained the capital of Virginia for eighty-​three years. Life in England during James I’s day was not always very happy, especially if you did not follow James’ religious leanings towards the Church of England. In 1605, Guy Fawkes led a group of Catholics in an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament –​the so-​called ‘Gunpowder Plot’. Another religious group, the Puritans, caused problems for the King because they felt that the Church of England had not sufficiently purged itself of Catholic practices. At a conference in Hampton Court, the year before the Gunpowder Plot, the King expressed his displeasure: ‘I shall make them conform … ’, he said, ‘or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse’. Threats like this made the idea of fleeing to a ‘new world’ attractive, and an early group to be ‘harried out of the land’ came to be known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They were religious ‘Separatists’, who wanted to stand apart from the Church of England. They set sail from Europe in their ship, the Mayflower. Here is how one of their leaders, William Bradford, describes the arrival in their new world, America: Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. 105

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The year was 1620, and the ‘good harbor’ was considerably further north than they had intended; it was near Cape Cod in what came to be called New England. They established a settlement which they named Plymouth, after the city in England from which they had originally set sail. The ‘Separatist’ Fathers were firm in their views, and not favourably disposed to those who disagreed, including other dissident groups like the Quakers. Such groups had to find ‘new worlds’ of their own, and they settled in other areas between Cape Cod and Virginia. In the next twenty years, 15,000 immigrants moved to places like Connecticut, Maryland, and Rhode Island. The situation in 1664 was that the English held the eastern seaboard; the French were inland and to the north; and the Spanish were to the south. Relations between Britain and America grew worse as time passed, with Americans growing particularly resentful at taxes and trading restrictions imposed upon them from across the Atlantic. The American War of Independence broke out in 1775, and in 1776, Thomas Jefferson (who later became President) wrote a document explaining why. His ‘Declaration of Independence’ was one of a number of memorable, beautifully-​written documents associated with this period of American history. ‘We hold these truths to be self-​evident’, Jefferson wrote, ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. But the document was also a martial call to arms: in the next sentences, Jefferson argued that if these unalienable rights were ignored by any form of government, ‘it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government’. The War of Independence continued till 1783, at which point Britain lost control over most of what became the United States. The new country grew in strength and size, purchasing some territories, settling in others. Among the acquisitions were 828,000 square miles, stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi up to the Canadian border. The States bought it from France, at the point when Napoleon gave up all ambitions of further colonial adventures in America. Just fifteen million dollars was the price for the lot: that’s a little over $18 per square mile. The transaction, which took place in 1803, was called the ‘Louisiana Purchase’. Fifty-​eight years later, in 1861, America was engaged in another war –​this time with itself. Its Civil War –​the north (Union) versus the south (Confederacy) –​lasted till 1865. We don’t have the space to continue to look at American history beyond these early days. We have seen that one principal reason for immigration is colonisation. Another is ‘escaping the problems of the old world by going to a new one’. In the case of the Pilgrim Fathers, the escape was from religious persecution. Poverty and persecution are big themes throughout the history of immigration to the States. In 1776, when thirteen states declared independence, ten percent of the population were Scots/​Irish, and they came in large numbers in the mid nineteenth century, especially after the disastrous Irish potato famine of 1845–​9, which had a huge death toll –​no wonder that Boston is sometimes known as ‘the 106

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Irish city’. The Germans too came in numbers during the same period: farmers seeking good land, and those escaping political oppression. Between 1865 and 1920 about five million Italians, many from Sicily and the south, came to escape poverty. Then three million Jews arrived between 1880 and 1910, many escaping persecution in central and eastern Europe. At the end of the nineteenth century, Scandinavians came, many following agricultural disasters, the largest number to Minnesota and California. By 1890, there were 15 million immigrants in the United States; by 1926 the figure was 37 million, and by 2015, 47 million. Today the chances of an American citizen being of purely English stock are 1 in 5.2 Many hellos in America. Some people find it helps to remember events by associating them with dates. If you are like this, take a look at Activity 7A (Dates and events), which gives some dates and asks you to recall the associated events. It also gives you the opportunity to explore other parts of American history related to what has been said in this section.

7.2  Old languages in the New World The British, of course, brought their language with them to America. But our brief history suggests that there were other languages already there. The Native Americans had a huge variety of languages –​one estimate is three hundred –​from diverse language families, all being spoken in America by the time Columbus arrived. Spanish was being used in Texas about a hundred years before Jamestown, while Santa Fe, New Mexico’s capital, was set up as a Spanish colony in 1610, before the Pilgrim Fathers had set sail. As for French, one reason why the British wanted to collect taxes from the Americans (thus helping to aggravate the War of Independence) was that the French were threatening New England from their possessions in the interior when, as we have seen, they were moving down from their Acadia into the Mississippi basin. So English, Native American languages, Spanish, and French were all in the picture. Then there are all the languages later immigrants brought. With such a diversity of ethnic groups represented, you might expect America to be hugely multilingual. In fact, after their first generation, many immigrants let their languages of origin drop, making English their first language. Indeed, one commentator described the United States as ‘a veritable cemetery of foreign languages’.3 English truly dominated, and a hundred years after the revolution, America had the largest English-​speaking population in the world. Despite English domination, all the languages we have mentioned have contributed words to GA (the abbreviation, you’ll recall, for General American). We have already looked at some loanwords coming into English in the nineteenth century, in Chapter 3, and some of these have a clear American feel. Take a look back at 3.5.1 to remind yourself of what these were. There are some more in Activity 7B (Moccasins and cockroaches), taken from five languages or 107

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language groups: Native American, Spanish, French, Yiddish, and Dutch. If you want to do this activity, do so now before reading on. The words in the activity taken from Native American languages are: pecan, moccasin, wigwam, toboggan, and caucus. The last two might surprise you. Toboggan is from Micmac (the language spoken by the people of north-​east Canada, in which the word literally means ‘my friends’). Its original English meaning was ‘sled’, and even ‘vehicle’ in general. The word caucus today refers to a private meeting held ‘to select candidates for office before a party convention or election’ (OED). According to some linguists, the word comes from Algonquian (the language spoken by the Algonquian people, one of the most widespread of the Native American groups). In Algonquian, cau-​cau-​as-​u means ‘advisor’. The Spanish words in the activity are mosquito, rodeo, hammock, bronco, and cockroach. A bronco is a wild, untamed horse. The Spanish adjective meant ‘rough’, or ‘rude’, and you also found this meaning in GA, where someone’s behaviour could be described as ‘bronco’. As for cockroach, you will perhaps have come across the Spanish song ‘La Cucaracha’ (you can find it sung on YouTube and elsewhere). The first OED mention is from Virginia, in 1624, when it is described as ‘a certaine India Bug, called by the Spaniards a Cacarootch, the which creeping into Chests they eat and defile with their ill-​sented dung’. Lovely. The word’s journey into English is interesting because it shows a common process of ‘assimilating words by turning them into already-​known ones’. Cuca sounds a little like ‘cock’, and racha a bit like ‘roach’. So ‘cockroach’ it became. This is a good example of what is called ‘folk etymology’, where people make wrong assumptions about the origins of a word. We’ll see another example in Box 7.2. The words prairie, levee, mayday, brave, dime, come from French. Mayday has become an international distress signal. It has nothing to do with 1 May (called ‘Mayday’ in English), but is from the French m’aider –​‘help me’, in the sentence venez m’aider, ‘come and help me’. This is another example, like cockroach, of people changing an unknown word (m’aider) into one they know already (Mayday). You may be surprised that the word brave used as a noun to describe a Native American warrior comes from the French brave, where it is usually an adjective, meaning ‘brave’. The French origin of ‘dime’ may also surprise you. The word goes back ultimately to the Latin decima, meaning ‘a tenth part’. It came into English through French, and refers to the tenth part of a dollar: ten cents. Yiddish is a language used by Jews, particularly those from central and eastern Europe. It is based on German, but contains many Hebrew words, as well as ones from other languages. It is still in use in various parts of the world. The words of Yiddish origin in the passage are nosh (a ‘snack’ in GA), schlep (‘to drag’), schmuck (‘an idiot’), chutzpah (‘impudence’; the ‘ch’ is pronounced like the ‘ch’ in Scottish loch –​the sound, with the phonetic symbol /​x/​, is discussed in 6.3), and mensch. Like some of the other words on the list, this last is a German word, 108

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meaning, in German, a ‘person’. In Yiddish it is a particular sort of person: one who is honest and upright. The Dutch words in the activity are coleslaw, snoop, cookie, boss, and dope. Though boss is now used in English internationally, it first came into GA, from the Dutch word baas, meaning ‘master’, and, earlier, ‘uncle’. The root of dope lies in the Dutch word doop, meaning a sauce. There is also a Dutch verb doopen, ‘to dip’, revealing that our words dope and dip are connected. In GA, a dope was originally ‘any thick liquid or semi-​fluid used as an article of food, or as a lubricant’ (OED). Its use in relation to opium came about because opium can be smoked in a thick treacle-​like form. Some of these word origins may surprise you, but you will probably not be surprised at all by the general fact that when languages are in contact they take words from one another. Sometimes these forms of borrowing can lead to bizarre language practices. Look at this example, taken from the National Geographic magazine, November 1979, and used by Romaine (2001:182): ‘Americans from the mainland United States’, Romaine says, ‘would be as puzzled as non-​American tourists by the following street directions given in Hawaii by a local: “Go ewa one block, turn makai at the traffic light, go two blocks Diamond Head, and you’ll find the place on the mauka side of the street” ’. There’s no point in trying to work out what this means, unless you speak the Hawaiian language, because the directions use two Hawaiian words: makai, ‘towards the sea’, and mauka, ‘towards the mountains’; Ewa is a beach near Honolulu. As we saw in 6.2, ‘mixing’ languages together like this, often in the same sentences, is known as ‘code-​switching’. It is common, we mentioned there, when two languages are in intimate contact with each other.

7.3  GA comes of age A British film critic, Barry Norman, once asked: ‘why does Hollywood always cast English actors as villains?’4 You may have noticed that ‘baddies’ in American films often seem to have British accents. The accent clearly has a low image in some American eyes. In America’s early days it was often the other way round. Francis Moore was an eighteenth-​century English traveller. In 1735 he visited the American state of Georgia, and wrote an account of it entitled A Voyage to Georgia. He seems to have liked the town of Savannah, talking of its ‘very pleasant prospect’. But he is also critical of the type of English the inhabitants used. He says: ‘the Bank of the River (which they in barbarous English call a Bluff) is steep’. Disdainful British attitudes towards what foreigners, including Americans, ‘do’ to their language were not uncommon. Indeed, later, in 1866, Henry Alford –​an English churchman –​talks about ‘the process of deterioration which our Queen’s English has undergone at the hands of the Americans’. In his book, entitled A Plea for the Queen’s English he has a section entitled ‘American Debasements’. The Brits liked to think that English was, after all, their language, 109

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and it was up to those who spoke it in other countries to treat it with respect. Harrumph. How did the foreign speakers react to being scolded like this? Well, sometimes they were prepared to accept the ‘superiority’ of British English. After all, the old country’s tongue, and the culture that went with it –​Shakespeare, Milton and all that –​were much admired, and enjoyed great prestige. But when, after the War of Independence, America loosened its ties with Britain, attitudes began to change, and there was some unease at the use of English in America. There were even suggestions that America should adopt another language, like Hebrew, French or Greek. One politician responded: ‘it would be more convenient for us to keep the language as it was, and make the English speak Greek’.5 Pie in the sky, of course; neither was going to happen. Then there was the question of the language’s name. English was clearly the language of England. Why not call the new world’s language ‘American’? This was a battle that was slowly won, and it is now common for people to refer either to ‘American English’, or just ‘American’, or by the acronym we have been using: GA, for ‘General American’. A man who did much to establish the autonomy of GA was Noah Webster. Born in 1758 into a Connecticut farming family, he studied at a local school and managed to gain a place at Yale, paid for by his father’s mortgaging the family farm. He studied law, and then opened a private school in Connecticut. He was a strong supporter of independence from Britain, and indeed regarded Europe in general with some disdain. He energetically turned his attention to the American language. In 1783–​ 5 he produced A Grammatical Institute of the English Language –​in fact three textbooks together: a spelling book, a grammar, and a reader. In the work’s Preface he says: ‘Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny –​in that country laws are perverted, manners are licentious, literature is declining and human nature debased’. The first of Webster’s three books –​The American Spelling Book –​was a huge success. In 1829 it was published separately under the title of The Elementary Spelling Book, and sold over eighty million copies in the next hundred years. In this, and other of his works, he suggested some spelling reforms. Various writers about language have tried to reform English spelling through the ages. Before reading on, think about the whys and wherefores of spelling reform. Why might it be needed for English? What are the problems likely to be met when trying to reform spelling? Why needed? Well, English is notorious for not being spelt as it is pronounced. Spelling and pronunciation are often at odds. So the same written letters can have various associated pronunciations. For example, the written letter ‘o’ can be pronounced (in RP) as /​ɒ/​, in hot, or /​ʌ/​as in some, or /​ɪ/​as in women. Think too of the four words tough, bough, cough, and dough. The vowel sounds are all written ‘ou’, but each is pronounced differently, and the ‘gh’ has more than one pronunciation. The same is true the other way round: the same sound can be represented in writing in more than one way. Look at the spelling of the /​e/​ sound in these words: send, head, said, and any. You might like to think of some 110

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more spelling/​pronunciation mismatches in English. The result of them all is something that, if you are a native speaker of English you may not be aware of, but which gives non-​native speakers learning English a good deal of trouble. It is that, when you hear a word, you can’t be sure how it will be spelt –​and when you see a word written, you don’t necessarily know how it will be pronounced. In the nineteenth century, a number of authors invented strange spellings to ridicule the irregularities of the English system. One of them, dating from 1855, is ‘ghoti’ as a spelling for the word ‘fish’. The ‘gh’ is an ‘f’, as in the word ‘enough’. You are left to work out for yourself how the rest of ‘ghoti’ becomes ‘fish’. There have been many attempts at reform. For example, the English educator John Hart (c.1501–​74), talked of the ‘confusion and disorder’ of English spelling, and produced some proposals for change in his 1569 book, An Orthographie. And there have been many others. Often they do not get very far, because traditional spellings are well and truly lodged in people’s minds. Changes do not come easily, especially when reforms try (as they often do) to introduce new letters or symbols to represent sounds. Webster was aware of dangers like this, and initially he was critical of those, like his contemporary Benjamin Franklin, who proposed reform. But he was well aware of the inconsistencies of spelling in English, and in 1789 wrote Dissertations on the English Language. It contained an appendix: An essay on the necessity, advantage and practicability of reforming the mode of spelling, and of rendering the orthography of words correspondent to the pronunciation. Doubtless partly because he was aware of the practical problems of spelling reform, Webster was successful where many others failed. The changes he proposed have had a lasting effect on American spelling. Activity 7C (A question of honor) invites you to look at some examples of the rather small number of differences between British and American spelling. Before doing so, think of any that immediately come to mind. In the Appendix to his Dissertations, Webster gives his reasons for spelling reform. One is pure nationalism. ‘A capital advantage’, he says, ‘of this reform in these states would be, that it would make a difference between English orthography and the American’. Another, more language-​related aim, is one we have already mentioned, and is stated in the Appendix’s title: to render orthography ‘correspondent to the pronunciation’. One of the major ways of doing this is by ‘the omission of all superfluous or silent letters’. You can see this in some of Activity 7C’s examples. Thus in (1), the final ‘k’ is omitted because the pronounced /​k/​is already represented by the ‘c’. Then in (6), ‘ll’ is reduced to ‘l’. In (2) also, the GA version is a closer representation of how the words are pronounced (remember that GA is rhotic, so the final ‘r’ is pronounced). Webster was also keen to get rid of spellings that capture the foreign roots of a word, but do not well represent how it is pronounced. There are examples in (4), where the French ending -​que (for example on cheque) is changed to GA ‘ck’. In (7) too, the French ending -​gue is replaced by the simpler ‘g’. Example (8) shows Greek words with vowels represented by ‘ae’ and ‘oe’; GA sacrifices the Greek flavour in favour of spellings more fitting to the pronunciation. 111

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Not all of Webster’s spelling preferences were adopted. Look at this passage from the Preface to The American Spelling Book. Take note of how many of the changes he suggests have, and have not, been adopted: The spelling of such words as publick, favour, neighbour, bead, prove, phlegm, bis, give, debt, rough, well instead of the more natural and easy method, public, favor, nabor, bed, proov, flem, biz, giv, det, ruf, wel, has the plea of antiquity in its favour; and yet I am convinced that common sense and convenience will sooner or later get the better of the present absurd practice. In 2.1 we discussed how eighteenth-​century Britain was involved in establishing and fixing British English. It considered the possibility of setting up an academy to help achieve this. As America became more confident of its own version of the language, it had similar thoughts. In 1774, a piece appeared in the Royal American Magazine with a proposal:  ‘I beg leave’, it said, ‘to propose a plan for perfecting the English language in America … That a society, for this purpose should be formed … ’.6 Its suggested name was ‘The American Society of Language’. Britain eventually decided against the idea of an academy, but one indirect result was the production of a comprehensive dictionary, written by Samuel Johnson and appearing in 1755. What happened in America was very similar: no academy, but a dictionary. It was written by Webster. His first attempt was the 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. It was followed in 1828 by An American Dictionary of the English Language; notice the mention of America in the second title, but not the first –​reflecting an increasing desire to give GA its own distinct identity. After Webster’s death in 1843, the publishers George and Charles Merriam produced the work, and a variety of dictionaries associated with the two names, Webster and Merriam, are very much in use today. In his American Dictionary, Webster took the search for etymologies –​word origins –​very seriously. It is said that dictionaries of twenty languages lay open on his work desk, available for him to look up words and uncover possible origins. This rather haphazard search for etymologies sometimes led to inaccuracies. Two examples: the word speak, he suggested, came from an Ethiopian word sabak, which means ‘preach, teach, proclaim’. It is associated, he goes on, with the Italian word spiccare, ‘to shine’, or ‘thrust forth’.7 In fact it is a Germanic word, associated with the Old Frisian spreka and the Old Saxon spreken. Then there is the word papoose, meaning a Native American child. He notes that in the language of ancient Syria, called Syriac, there was the word babosa for ‘little boy’. He is suggesting that this might be the origin of papoose. In fact, the word comes from the Native American language Algonquian. But the shortcomings of Webster’s Dictionary are nothing in comparison to its achievements. It was the first great attempt to capture the American language, produced at a time when the tongue was establishing its own identity, separate from British English. This separation was important to Webster not just for narrow nationalistic purposes. As he writes in the Dictionary’s 112

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Preface: ‘Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language’.

7.4  A  merican, or Patagonian? British and American English In 1889, the English writer Rudyard Kipling published a collection of his travel letters, called From Sea to Sea. He describes how, when he was in Japan, he came into contact with Americans. ‘The American I have heard up to the present’, he says, ‘is a tongue as distinct from English as Patagonian’. We have already seen some differences in spelling. But how different are British and American English overall?

7.4.1  American and British pronunciation Unless an American is speaking with a very thick local accent, he is likely to be understood by a British listener –​much more perhaps than the Lancastrian mentioned in 5.1 understands the Glaswegian taxi driver, less than two hundred miles up the road. We have already mentioned one difference between British and American accents  –​that much of Britain is non-​rhotic, while a good part of America is rhotic. The reason why this difference came about is one that we often find when considering British/​American differences. At the time when England colonised parts of America, BrE was largely rhotic too. So Shakespeare, for example, would have pronounced the final ‘r’ in car (he does in fact use the word a number of times, to mean ‘carriage’ or ‘chariot’). English migrants brought their rhotic habits with them across the Atlantic. But then Britain went non-​rhotic (and, as we shall see in 7.5, America did not remain entirely rhotic either). We will see this ‘British English changed and American stayed the same’ syndrome a number of times in the following sections. ER7.1 (American Pronunciation) contains some examples, as well as showing other characteristics of GA pronunciation. Take a look at the activity now; what is discussed below relates to it. Example 1 in the activity shows another very noticeable characteristic of GA, and is another case of ‘Britain changed later’. It concerns today’s RP sound /​ ɑː/​in words like bath, dance, and glass. Up till the end of the eighteenth century, this sound was pronounced in BrE something like (though not identical to) the RP /​æ/​in British cat. So, to evoke Shakespeare once again, his pronunciation of bath would be close to /​bæθ/​. This is the sound that crossed the Atlantic. It is the sound in the GA pronunciations in (1):  bath, chance, glass. Britain later changed from /​æ/​to /​ɑː/​. A similar historical reason accounts for the example (2)  differences. The RP diphthongs /​ɪə/​ and /​eə/​  –​ in RP beard and care –​were monophthongs in Shakespeare’s time, and so they are in GA. 113

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(3) shows words where the RP vowels /​ɒ/​and /​ɔː/​ in bomb and bought are /​ɑ/​ in GA. (4) is about pronunciation of the unvoiced RP consonant /​t/​when it occurs intervocallically, in words like later, writer, little. GA tends to pronounce this as /​d/​(the voiced equivalent of /​t/​), as if the words were written ‘layder’, ‘wrider’, ‘liddle’. This means that in GA words like writer and rider are *homophones. Other GA homophonic pairs are mettle and meddle, matter and madder. In 6.3 we saw that in Scottish English ‘wh’ was pronounced /​ʍ/​. Because of this, Scottish English witch and which are not homophones, though they are in RP. GA is like Scottish, as the pronunciations of what, when, and which in (5) show. A characteristic of RP is that unstressed vowels are very often either omitted or *reduced in some way, and the result is often the weak vowel known as *schwa  –​written phonetically as /​ə/​; (if you need reminding about the schwa sound, be sure to look at the Glossary note). So a word like commentary is in RP often pronounced as if written ‘commentry’: the strong stress is on the first syllable, and the final vowel either gets lost or is pronounced as /​ə/​. GA tends to retain vowels in unstressed syllables. Or, to put it another way, to give more even stress to syllables in a word, even those unstressed ones. The other words in (6) –​ military and temperament –​show the same tendency. The words in (7) show that there are also differences in where RP and GA place the main stress on words. Linguists usually indicate the position of main stress by putting the mark [ˈ] in front of the stressed syllable. So the word applicable would be apˈplicable in RP, where the stress is on the second syllable. In GA it is ˈapplicable, with the stress on the first syllable. The other words in (7) are controversy and advertisement; use the mark [ˈ] to show where British and American stress falls on these words. Word stress is one of the areas where a language is particularly open to influence from another language variety which is regarded as more ‘status-​ful’ or powerful. Thus GA is having its effect on British stress patterns, and you will find Brits saying ˈcontroversy (in the American fashion) rather than the British contˈroversy. Perhaps you can think of other examples where stress patterns are changing in the version of English you are most familiar with.

7.4.2  American and British words There are some well-​known lexical differences between BrE and GA words. It is well known that British pavement is GA sidewalk, and that GA gas is British petrol. Well known too is that Americans put luggage into the trunk of their car, while Brits use the boot. But just how many word differences are there? Bryson’s (1990) estimate for common speech is 4,000. This sounds a lot, but, as Svartvik and Leech (2016:157) point out, the OED has over 600,000 word forms, so the number is really not 114

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that high. If you’d like to look at some more British/​American word differences, try Activity 7D (Petrol and gas). There are also two e-​resource activities: ER7.2 (Some American proverbs) looks at American proverbs, while ER7.3 (Have a blast, dude) explores slang expressions.

7.4.3  American and British grammar When we come to look at grammar, the message remains the same:  there are differences between American and British, but not many. Think of any which come immediately to mind. Then, before reading on, look at these four pairs of sentences. The first in each pair is what a speaker of GA might say; the second is BrE. Describe, if possible using linguistic terminology, what the difference is in each case: 1a Did you read the newspaper yet? b Have you read the newspaper yet? 2a Have a look out the window. b Have a look out of the window. 3a He swum five lengths of the pool. b He swam five lengths of the pool. 4a It’s a dangerous road. You need to drive slow. b It’s a dangerous road. You need to drive slowly. Think of some more examples to illustrate the differences shown in each of these pairs. According to Tottie (2002:177), ‘when the American blues song Did you ever kiss a woman? was taken up by the British singer Eric Clapton, he changed the title to Have you ever kissed a woman?’ This is perhaps the most striking of the grammatical differences. BrE uses the have+past participle construction (have kissed, have seen, have visited) when talking about actions that have taken place up to the present time. As it says in the Glossary, the construction is often called the present perfect tense. The adverbs ever, never, already, just, yet can accompany this use of the tense, as in I’ve never been to France, or She’s already had breakfast. GA prefers to use the simple past tense in these situations: I never went to France and She already had breakfast. The sentences in 1 show the difference. The pair in 2 show that sometimes there are differences in the prepositions used in GA and BrE. American tends to use out while British has out of. But the British will say He fell off the chair while an American might say off of the chair. On and in are also sometimes used in different ways. In GA you might live on Westwood Road, while in BrE it tends to be in Westwood Road. There are some differences between simple past and past participle forms for irregular verbs. In BrE the past tense of the verb swim is swam. Swum is the past participle form –​Brits say She swam twenty lengths and She has swum twenty 115

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lengths. Verbs like this which have irregular past tense and past participle forms are on our 4.4.2 list of ‘variation attractors’. Not surprising then that in GA swum comes to be used for both past tense and past participle. There is also, of course, a class of verbs in BrE that have the same past tense and past participle forms. Two examples are sell and spend, and you may like to think of some more. GA has simply made swim act like sell and spend. Incidentally, there are also verbs which (in both GA and BrE) have the same form not just in the past tense and past participle, but in the present tense too. Shut and set are two examples; think of some more. The verb dive is a grammatical example of the ‘Britain changed later’ syndrome, mentioned in 7.4.1. In BrE, the verb is now a regular one, with the past tense of dived. In GA the past is dove. This form was once British English too, and it comes from an OE irregular verb which had the past participle dufon. BrE made it a regular verb later, and in fact, the dove form is found in some British dialects. One example from the English Dialect Dictionary is the Worcestershire sentence He dove into the water. Another example of ‘Britain changed later’ is gotten, used as the past participle of the verb get. This usage is common in GA. But it was also once, too, in BrE. According to Butters (2001) in the eighteenth century, the form gotten was generally used; then in the nineteenth century, it started to disappear in Britain. There are some other past participle forms (in both GA and BrE) that end in -​en. Think of some examples. Like irregular verbs, ‘adjectives for adverbs’ is an item on our variation-​ attractor list. The sentences in 4 show this. It’s one of those areas where GA is today showing its dominance. If you say ‘How are you?’ to someone in Britain today, especially someone young, you might get the reply I’m good rather than I’m well.

7.5  Varieties of American English Like the eighteenth-​century British writers we met in Chapter 2, Webster wanted to establish a form of the language that could be used as a standard. To what extent was he successful? How varied are versions of American English today? How many American dialects are there? The answer to the last question is ‘not nearly so many as there are in Britain’. At first sight, this is curious:  the area of the United States is 9,834  million square kilometres, and its population is around 327.2  million. Britain covers just 242,495 square kilometres, with a population of 66.04  million. In 3.4.3 we touched on the reasons for Britain’s richness of dialects, to do with a large number of scattered communities having relatively little contact with each other. In America the amount of contact and intermingling between communities was much greater, a situation that fosters the development of mutually comprehensible language varieties. In fact, many studies identify just three major American varieties:  north-​eastern, southern, and General American. There are suggestions too that what dialectal differences 116

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exist are disappearing. As Baugh and Cable (2013: 348) say, ‘The distinctions in speech between New England and New York … or any other state, were far greater twenty years ago than they are now’. If you want to hear examples of American dialects, there are plenty of clips online.8 If you have access to any, listen and try to identify characteristics of the various dialects before reading on. Within the north-​eastern region, the Boston dialect is particularly distinctive. Like British English, but unlike GA, it is non-​rhotic. To non-​Bostonian Americans, the accent can sound very strange. An example sentence (used by Tottie, 2002 and others) is Park the car in Harvard Yard, which as the Bostonian says it sounds like ‘Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd’. A little like conservative RP, in fact. The accent in the southern states is one often heard in American films, and is frequently caricatured. It too is non-​rhotic, so that final ‘r’ on words like car and desire would not be pronounced:  the title of Tennessee Williams’ famous play –​ A Streetcar Named Desire –​would be pronounced with just the one /​r/​, in Street. Stressed vowels are often drawn out, which is one reason why people speak of the ‘southern drawl’. There are also distinctive uses of diphthongs and monophthongs. Thus, words like man and lid come to be pronounced with diphthongs as if written ‘ma-​en’ and ‘li-​ed’, while words like I and mine, which in GA have diphthongs, in the southern dialect can be pronounced with a monophthong, to sound like ‘ah’ and ‘mahn’. The amount of variety in American regional dialects may be relatively small, but what we have said above is a simplification. Remember the three caveats we mentioned in 5.1. You don’t have to be a dialectologist with recording equipment and phonetic transcripts to recognise that within both the north-​eastern and the southern regions, there are different ways of speaking from place to place. This is even more true of the rest of the country, where the language variety is just called ‘General American’. Millward (1989: 325) calls GA a ‘negative dialect’, ‘defined as much by the lack of striking features that characterise some of the regional dialects as by the presence of specific identifying features’. The regional forms are sufficiently similar for this general name to apply, but there are very many differences. In Chicago and the Midwest, ‘th’ can be pronounced as a ‘d’, so that guy sounds as if it is ‘dat guy’, and you may also hear the plural yous mentioned in 6.3, in phrases like yous guys (and this is also heard further east too, in New  York for example); in Minnesota and Dakota, a word like snag will be pronounced as if written ‘snaig’; and Californians are often known for their intonation that rises at the ends of sentences, as if they were always asking questions; (look back to 6.4 to remind yourself of the problem Shirley MacLaine had with this in Northern Ireland). This is sometimes called ‘upspeak’. Another characteristic (though not restricted to California) is so-​called ‘vocal fry’, where voices become low-​pitched and ‘creaky’.9 Like in Britain, American accents vary as much by social class as by region. The *sociolinguist William Labov, working at the University of Pennsylvania, undertook a celebrated study entitled The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1982). Among other features, he looked at our old friend rhoticity, in the 117

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language of New  Yorkers. Data was collected from three department stores, associated with different social classes –​high, middle, and lower. He found associations between r-​dropping and social class. The highest rates of dropping post-​ vocalic /​r/​were in the low-​class store, where sometimes words like bird and work were pronounced without an ‘r’ as if written ‘boid’ and ‘woik’. The upper-​ class store was the most rhotic. He also found differences according to formality of situation: people tended to be more rhotic in formal language use; and there were also age differences, with younger people being more rhotic than older folk. Perhaps you will once again be surprised that the way someone pronounces that one letter –​‘r’ –​can have such social importance. But we have seen similar things before in Cockney for example (discussed in 5.2.1), with characteristics like h-​ dropping and glottalisation having social significance. We have here concentrated largely on accent, but there are differences in the English varieties of America to do with words and grammar also. Box 7.1 explores a feature that seems to have started off as a dialectal one in California, but soon spread around the world. The example shows just how quickly modern media and communication methods are leading to globalisation in language as well as in other aspects of life.

Box 7.1  Like1 It seems to have started off in California, particularly among women: young people using a part of the verb be, plus like to mean ‘say’ or ‘think’. For example: She’s like, ‘Right, you know, we’re taking you out’. I was like, ‘Ah I don’t want to go out. Please no’. And they’re like, ‘Come on, go and get dressed’.2 Verbs which introduce direct speech like this are called ‘quotatives’. In the early days be like was particularly associated with what linguists engagingly call ‘non-​lexicalised sounds’, as in And it was like ‘Whoosh’. It was also, early on, used to report inner thoughts rather than actual words. The speaker who says: And I saw her coming, and I’m like, ‘Noooooooooo’, is probably reporting what they thought rather than said. This early use for thoughts rather than speech led to another initial restriction in the use of be like –​ that it was more common with the first person (I), than with other persons (he or she for example). This is just because it is more usual to report your own thoughts than those of another. The early restrictions soon disappeared. One study of US usage found more women than men using the form in 1990, but by 1992 this difference had gone. And by the mid 1990s (still talking about the US), the form was being used to express speech (not just thoughts or sounds), and in relation to all persons, including he and she.

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Until the early 1990s, the be like quotative was entirely confined to the US. But international communication, especially through social media and practices like blogging, led to its dramatic spread. In 1999 a study was done of the use of be like in Britain and Canada.3 Interestingly, the restrictions on the use of the form were partly as they had been in the early days in the US: women used it more than men in Britain, and it was associated with the first-​person ‘I’, for thoughts rather than speech. The researchers concluded that the spread of be like followed ‘remarkably similar pathways’ in these different parts of the world. That was 1999. By now, there is no doubt that both Britain and Canada have dropped the restrictions discussed above. The form has also, of course, spread to all English-​speaking communities around the world. With English, be like has truly gone global.   This box is taken from a podcast: Johnson (2019).   Examples from Tagliamonte and Hudson (1999), p. 147. 3  Two papers which report on, and contribute to, research into be like are Tagliamonte and D’Arch (2004), and Blyth et al. 1990. 1 2

7.6  Studying American dialects In 5.1, we saw that in Britain, dialects became of serious interest to linguists in the late nineteenth century  –​the English Dialect Society was founded in 1873. The American Dialect Society started soon after, in 1889. It has its own journal, called American Speech. The first edition was in 1925 and it is still going strong today. As in Britain, linguistic atlases have appeared. In 1928 a committee was formed to propose a linguistic atlas of the entire United States and Canada. The first stage was a three-​volume Linguistic Atlas of New England, produced under the direction of Hans Kurath, an immigrant from Austria who eventually worked at the University of Michigan. There have been dictionaries too, particularly the six-​volume Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). The first volume appeared in 1985, and Volume 6 in 2013.10 The Dictionary is still being updated today. There have been other major studies of language varieties, and it is partly through the work of William Labov, whose New York study was mentioned in 7.5, that the field of *‘variational sociolinguistics’ came into being; you might be able to guess what this field is concerned with, before looking it up in the Glossary.

7.7  Canada We have already mentioned, in 7.1, the early colonisation of Canada’s Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The French and the British vied for control 119

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of the new territories, until 1763, when the Seven Years War ended. It was a war that divided Europe, and led to more power for Britain, less for France. At the Peace of Paris, sovereignty of the Canadian territories was given to Britain. But the French influence has remained in the eastern part of Canada, which is French-​speaking. The 2016 population figures give Canada a population of almost thirty-​five million. Nineteen million have English as their mother tongue, and seven million French –​mostly living in the eastern provinces. Among the variety of other languages are many Asian ones: immigration from Asia to Canada was high in the twentieth century. One of the most striking characteristics of Canadian English is its homogeneity, and it is often difficult to pinpoint where an English-​speaker comes from in the country. The exception is Newfoundland, the large island off the east coast. That it developed its own distinctive dialect is partly explained by geography, with the dangerous waters of the strait separating it from the Canadian mainland frozen for a good part of the year. But Box 7.2 shows that though geographical separation has produced a distinctive dialect, it is one which preserves its European roots.

Box 7.2  Newfoundland’s dialect roots Newfoundland is just about the closest part of North America to Europe. Its relative proximity, plus a richness in fish, has attracted immigrants over the centuries from points east. One of these is the English West Country (particularly the counties of Dorset and Devon). In the eighteenth century, large numbers of people came from this area. So too did the Irish, particularly because Catholics were made welcome there. Today, over twenty percent of Newfoundlanders claim some Irish ancestry. Elements of both West Country and Irish English dialect can be found in the distinctive speech of Newfoundlanders: if you wish to hear just how distinctive it is, there are YouTube clips that will illustrate.1 A pronunciation example:  as we saw in 5.2.4, in West Country English, sometimes voiceless consonants like /​s/​and /​f/​are voiced; one of the examples given was venn for the word ‘fen’. Kirwin (2001), who gives a useful overview of Newfoundland English, notes the use of vish, vin, and ven, for ‘fish’, ‘fin’, and ‘fen’. As far as lexis is concerned, Kirwin gives examples of Irish (as well as West Country) words that have come into the Newfoundland dialect. Particularly interesting is the word angishore. It is from the Irish aindeiseoir meaning ‘a poor, unfortunate person’.2 But what the Newfoundlanders heard was the word ‘hangashore’, and they took this to refer to a person who is too lazy to

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go fishing, and ‘hangs ashore’. This became the meaning of the word, and its form too was often changed from angishore to hangashore.3 This is another example of ‘folk etymology’ and here, as often happens, the false etymology affects the form that the word has; we saw another example of the same thing in 7.2, with the word cockroach. Grammar too took on Irish influences. As we saw in 6.4, the Irish, like the Scots, had a plural you form  –​ youse. Kirwin finds a plural, yeers, in Newfoundland too. There’s also what we called in 6.4 the ‘after perfect’. The example we gave there was You’re after ruining me, meaning ‘you have just ruined me’. Kirwin says: ‘the idiom is copious in Newfoundland writing and speech’, and one of his examples is The provincial government is after setting up this offshore petroleum impact committee. You’ll recall that one of our grammatical variation attractors (4.4.2) related to the -​s suffix on the third person singular present tense verb. Newfoundland English is a good example of where it can be used for all persons: I knows, you knows, he knows, we/​you/​they knows. Incidentally, this chapter’s title: ‘Immigrants goes to America’ is another example.  One can be found at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=zqLuIXwsLDw&t=87s  From A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, accessed at www.dchp.ca/​dchp2/​pages/​welcome. 3  Information from www.irishtimes.com/​news/​the-​words-​we-​use-​1.241869. 1 2

Canadian English is quite similar to GA. They are both, for example, generally rhotic. There is one phonetic characteristic that people often quickly notice about Canadian speakers. It occurs when the RP diphthongs /​aɪ/​ and /​aʊ/​ come before a voiceless consonant, as they do in the RP pronunciation of right and house. Canadians pronounce the first part of the diphthong as /​ə/​(or /​ʌ/​). So right is pronounced /​rəɪt/​ and house is /​həʊs/​. This phenomenon is called ‘Canadian raising’. Why this name? Think about this before looking in the Answer Section. And why does this raising occur? Though we didn’t mention it in 6.3, a similar phenomenon is found in Scottish, Scotland being a country which gave Canada many immigrants. Another much-​noted characteristic of Canadian English is the use of eh (/​eɪ/​), particularly in tag questions. Avis (1972)11 identifies eight different uses of the word –​yes, it does count as a word, of the sort described as an ‘*interjection’. He calls one the ‘narrative eh?’, where it is put into a story just to keep the narrative going. His example is That was when we almost intercepted a pass, eh? and Stu Falkner bumped into him, eh? Some British speakers use right in exactly the same way. 121

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Canada provides some interesting examples of how a language can be influenced both by geographical location and history. It has a powerful neighbour to its south –​the United States –​which is why Canadian English is similar to GA. But Canada has historical roots to the east, across the Atlantic in Britain and France. These roots are not forgotten, and sometimes you find Canadian English looking both eastwards and southwards at the same time. This happens with sounds. So in Canada you might hear either American /​mɪsəl/​or British /​mɪsaɪl/​for the word missile, and route might be pronounced to rhyme with RP boot (as in BrE) or to rhyme with RP out (as in GA). In terms of vocabulary, you may find American sidewalk or British pavement, and British holiday alongside American vacation. It’s a true mixture: according to Brinton and Fee (2001: 431) ‘Canadians prefer American raise to British rise but reportedly use [British] lend more frequently than [American] loan’. One of the most interesting areas in which American and British English exist side by side is in Canadian spelling. For a long time, British spelling was used in more formal contexts and documents (like academic texts); so it was colour not color, programme not program. The American spellings were more usual in newspapers and informal writing. But recently, changes in the direction of that powerful southern neighbour have tended to shadow eastern roots  –​so color and program are replacing colour and programme. To some extent it depends on which part of Canada you are in. The closer to the east (and Europe), the more likely you may be to find British spelling, while in the western provinces, British is less likely to occur. If you want to hear what Canadian English sounds like, there are plenty of clips on the internet.12

7.8  Adaptation, acceptance, continuity The story of English in North America is one of adaptation and acceptance. We have seen how English adapted to its new environment, with words entering into the language from others it came into contact with. We have also seen how it moved from ‘substandard to standard’ –​from being regarded as an inferior variety, to being the accepted standard of English in its part of the world (and indeed over time in large swathes of the world). In future chapters we shall see both these themes played out in other parts of the world, all considerably more distant from English’s European roots. A third theme of this chapter is continuity. English, for all its development and variety, has continued to show its roots –​think for example of what was said in Box 7.2 about Irish and West Country influences on Newfoundland English. In North America, you can still see where English came from; the language clearly remains a variety of English. This too happens in other parts of the world, though, as we’ll see in Chapter 10, not always to the same extent. 122

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Activity section Activity 7A Dates and events (a) Here are some dates mentioned in the text. Associate them with the events that took place: 1492; 1497; 1583; 1585; 1605 (two events); 1607; 1620; 1682; 1775–​83; 1776; 1803; 1845–​9; 1861–​5; 1865–​1920; 1880–​1910. (b) Here are some events in American history which you might like to explore (most have been mentioned in the text): (1) Acadia. Where it was; British attempts to take it over; the Acadian diaspora to Louisiana. (2) The Pilgrim Fathers. Where they came from. How they raised money for their journey. Who was on the ship. The hardships they met on arrival in America. (3) The Boston Tea Party. What it was and when it happened. Its significance. (4) The Gettysburg Address: another famous speech to compare with Jefferson’s ‘Declaration of Independence’. Who made it, and when. What was said. (5) The Irish potato famine. What happened, and when. You may also like to explore another event, not mentioned in the text: the Scottish ‘Highland clearances’.

Activity 7B  Moccasins and cockroaches Here are twenty-​five words which came into GA (and sometimes also more international) use. They are taken from five languages or language groups (five words each): Native American, Spanish, French, Yiddish, and Dutch. Identify which language you think each word came from. It’s very unlikely you will be able to identify them all (unless you use an etymological dictionary, which is a good idea if you have one to hand). You may find the origins of some of these words a little unexpected. a) moccasin f) toboggan k) caucus p) nosh u) cookie

b) bronco g) boss l) cockroach q) dope v) pecan

c) dime h) prairie m) brave r) schmuck w) mosquito

d) mensch i) hammock n) mayday s) rodeo x) levee

e) snoop j) coleslaw o) wigwam t) schlep y) chutzpah

The words are discussed in the text.

Activity 7C  A question of honor Here are some spelling differences between British and American English. Often the British spellings are those used in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, published 123

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in 1755, just three years before Webster was born. Some of these spellings have since changed:  for example, musick and logick are no longer spelt with a ‘k’. A  number of the changes from British to American  –​though not all  –​were proposed by Webster. (a) Why do you think the changes were suggested? What were the reforms trying to do?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

British

American

musick, logick theatre, centre honour, colour cheque, masque defence, licence traveller, travelling catalogue, dialogue aesthetic, amoeba

music, logic theater, center honor, color check, mask defense, license traveler, traveling catalog, dialog esthetic, ameba

(b) Add a few more examples to as many of the categories as you can. (c) Now, for each category, describe the difference between BrE and GA. For example, for (1) you might say ‘British words ending in “-​ck” drop the final “k” in American’.

Activity 7D  Petrol and gas   AS On the left below are ten BrE words, 1–​10. On the right, in mixed order, are the GA equivalents, a-​j. Match the words. Another way of doing the activity would be to cover either the left-​hand or the right-​hand list, and to say what the equivalents in the other language are. BrE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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pram banknote tap zebra/​pedestrian crossing estate agent trousers nappy sweets bonnet wardrobe

GA

a b c d e f g h i j

crosswalk baby carriage hood pants realtor bill closet candy faucet diaper

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Answer section Activity 7D  Petrol and gas 1b, 2f, 3i, 4a, 5e, 6d, 7j, 8h, 9c, 10g.

7.7  Canadian raising As we saw in ER5.1, one way of classifying vowels is by the position of the highest part of the tongue in the mouth. In this classification, RP /​a/​is a ‘low’ vowel, because the tongue is low in the mouth. The vowel /​ə/​is higher:  so Canadians ‘raise’ the first vowel in these diphthongs.

Further reading Svartvik and Leech (2016) have two chapters on American English; Chapter 5 gives an accessible historical account, and Chapter 8 focuses on the differences between British and American English. Similarly, Melchers and Shaw (2011) have sections on English in the USA and Canada. For a full account of American dialects, take a look at Wolfram and Schilling (2015). William Labov, mentioned in 7.5, is often regarded as the founding father of sociolinguistics. His (1982) New York study is worth a look, as too is his study of black English vernacular (Labov, 1973). Orkin (1971) gives a detailed description of Canadian English. The author calls it ‘an informal account of the English language in Canada’.

Notes 1 The goes form in the plural could, of course, be the result of what a native speaker of English thinks a Puerto Rican might say, rather than it being an established characteristic of Puerto Rican English. 2 These figures are taken from Cooke (2004). 3 The commentator is H.L. Mencken, cited in Svartvik and Leech (2016), p. 81. 4 In an article by Norman in the Daily Mail Online. It can be found at www.dailymail. co.uk/​tvshowbiz/​article-​1279809/​BARRY-​NORMAN-​Why-​does-​Hollywood-​ALWAYS-​ cast-​English-​actors-​villains.html. 5 Cited in Fisher (2001), p. 59. 6 Cited in Baugh and Cable (2013), p. 354. 7 Robinson (2010). The paper discusses Webster’s etymologies at length.

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8 One –​ www.youtube.com/​watch?v=edVDxnzG47A –​gives examples of four (rather than three) dialects: southern, New England, New York City, and Midwestern. 9 You can find discussion and examples of vocal fry on the internet, for example at www. youtube.com/​watch?v=UuAQsnAVoMw. 10 The Dictionary website is https://​dare.wisc.edu. 11 Cited by Brinton and Fee (2001). 12 www.youtube.com/​watch?v=8YTGeIq4pSI, for example, gives good illustrations of Canadian raising as well as of the Newfoundland accent.

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8

A world apart?  Australia and New Zealand

8.1  ‘So many new names …’ In 5.1 we told the story of someone who took the train from Lancaster to Glasgow and found the speech of his Glasgow taxi driver ‘totally incomprehensible’. That was a distance of about a hundred and sixty miles. What about, you might then ask, if the distance were some ten thousand five hundred miles, which it is between London and Sydney, Australia? Or, eleven thousand six hundred miles, between London and New Zealand’s capital, Wellington? What happens to a language when you transport it to the other side of the world? Will the long distance make a difference to how much the language changes? What factors control degree of language change? In what ways is it likely to change? What stages does a language go through to become established in a new location? These questions will appear a number of times in this chapter. Before reading on, it’s worth giving time to thinking about how you would answer them. One thing that will not surprise you is that the transported language will find it lacks vocabulary to describe some of the new phenomena it encounters in its environment. One of Australia’s first lexicographers was Edward Morris (1843–​ 1902); in 1898 he produced a dictionary entitled Austral English: a Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages. He states the problem like this: ‘there never was an instance in history when so many new names were needed … for never did settlers come, nor can they ever again come, upon Flora and Fauna so completely different from anything seen by them before’. Here’s an example of the problem: soon after Europeans settled in Australia, they came across an animal that looked like something between a sloth, a bear, and a monkey. Its Aboriginal name was gulawan, or gula for short. The name means ‘no water’, and was applied to this animal because it seemed to need to drink very little. The initial ‘g’ in gula could be pronounced as a ‘k’, so the shortened name came to be written as ‘kooka’. The word came into English, and over time changed into ‘koala’. Though the koala isn’t really a bear at all, it made its way into children’s stories as a bear, and hence eventually became a cuddly toy for children. It is still very popular as a toy today, as you will discover if you look up ‘koala bear toy’ on an internet search site. The answer to the problem, then, was for English to take words from local languages, and according to one source, AusE (Australian English) has taken in 127

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at least four hundred Aboriginal words.1 The information about the koala is taken from Dixon et al. (1990), a book devoted to the study of Aboriginal words coming into English. Many of the words they note are related to flora, fauna, and everyday household activities. There’s quandong, a small tree with edible fruit; wobbegong, a type of shark; mia-​mia, a hut or shelter; and kylie a boomerang (possibly the girl’s name comes from this). All of these examples are listed in the OED, but many Aboriginal terms, like these, are confined in use to Australia. A few that have come into international usage are boomerang, kookaburra, and budgerigar (which we discussed in 3.5.1). Also, believe it or not, cooee. This was originally an Aboriginal call, but is now in international use, as a way of drawing someone’s attention. There’s even, in Australia, a phrase within cooee, meaning ‘within easy reach’. Dixon et al. also give examples of a process we saw in 7.2, where a foreign word is changed to look like a familiar one; our example there was cockroach. The Aboriginal word budinba is another example. It’s a type of fish, which at first got changed by English speakers into puddenba. This is still a foreign-​sounding word, so it eventually ended up as pudding-​ball, even though the word’s meaning has nothing to do with either puddings or balls –​a good example of ‘folk etymology’, something that was mentioned in Box 7.2.

8.2  Australia 8.2.1  Seeking the ‘balancing land’: history and immigration The Aborigines, who initially perhaps came from Africa, were the native people of Australia, and have lived there for at least 40,000 years. The word ‘Aborigine’ comes from the Latin aborigines meaning ‘from the origin (beginning)’. The first Europeans to arrive on the continent were the Dutch, in 1606. They found the land parched and infertile, so no real attempt was made at settlement. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who later discovered Tasmania, named the land New Holland. A linguistic reminder of Dutch presence in the area is that in some northern Aboriginal languages the word for ‘white man’ is balanda; it is thought to come from the word Hollander, meaning ‘Dutch’. Over a hundred years later, in 1768, the British explorer James Cook was sent to Tahiti to observe an astronomical event –​the transit of Venus across the sun. When, after the transit, he opened his secret orders, they were to go in search of what was known in Latin as the terra australis incognita  –​ the ‘unknown southern land’ which, it was believed, must have existed to balance the weight of land mass in the northern hemisphere; this curious idea of ‘balancing land’ has a long history, going back to the time of the Roman Empire. Cook went first to New Zealand, then travelled westwards towards home, having largely given up hope of finding the new continent. But in April 1770, one of Cook’s lieutenants, Zachary Hicks, let out a cry of ‘Land ho’. It was the custom to name a new place after the person who first sighted it (as well as rewarding them with a gallon 128

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of rum). Though it might not be the exact spot that Hicks sighted, there is a Point Hicks today, on the coast south of Sydney. The new continent had been discovered, and Cook claimed it for the British. He first named it ‘New Wales’, later changing this to ‘New South Wales’. In 1788, eleven boats, carrying mostly convicts (mainly from Ireland and southern England), landed at Botany Bay, very close to present-​day Sydney. In the following eighty years, around 160,000 convicts were sent from Britain; this unknown southern land was being used as a colony for convicts. Petty crimes –​like pickpocketing, and even stealing clothes from a washing line –​were enough to warrant transportation. The belief was that ‘by expelling all the wicked, England would become the model of virtue to all nations’.2 Other types of people  –​non-​convicts  –​arrived after 1851, when gold was discovered there, and by 1861 the population had increased to over a million, with free settlers outnumbering convicts. As one official argued, the wonderful climate of New South Wales was too good to be wasted on convicts! Immigrants were still largely from Britain and Ireland. Until 1901, Australia was made up of a number of autonomous states, which then came together to form the federation that is today’s Australia. During the Second World War, the country felt that it had narrowly escaped Japanese invasion, and the rallying cry became ‘populate or perish’. Immigration increased dramatically, with the majority of new arrivals continuing to come from Anglo-​Saxon countries; subsidies were offered to give financial incentives to would-​be immigrants. More recently, southern and eastern Europeans, and Asians, have come in large numbers. The 2011 Australian census recorded a population of twenty-​five million, with a quarter being of English descent, seven percent of Irish, and six percent of Scottish. At that point, the most common immigration sources were Britain, New Zealand, China, India, and Vietnam. About two million do not have English as a first language. Aboriginal languages suffered greatly after the arrival of English. There were originally over three hundred of these (all coming from the same language family, unrelated to any other language families). Ninety percent are now out of use. They have had little impact on English, beyond providing loan words of the sort mentioned in 8.1.

8.2.2  Establishing AusE One of the questions we asked at the beginning of this chapter was: what stages does a language go through to become established in a new location? In 7.3 we saw the process GA followed to become accepted. At Stage 1 was criticism and disdain –​the new variety was regarded as substandard, and inferior to the version of the language from whence it came. Then at Stage 2, attitudes slowly changed, and speakers would begin to regard their new variety as acceptable, on a par with the ‘parent’ variety. Stage 3 sees a process of standardisation, with works like dictionaries and usage manuals establishing norms. British English 129

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too followed much the same sequence of stages, starting with the period before this book begins, but with the eighteenth century showing clear signs of the Stage 3 processes, with language manuals and works like Johnson’s Dictionary, described in 2.4, helping to establish a standard form. The emergence of AusE was similar. In the beginning was criticism and disdain. Louisa Anne Meredith, an English writer who emigrated to Australia in 1839, said of the locals that ‘a very large proportion of both male and female snuffle dreadfully; just the same nasal twang as many Americans have’.3 Then there was the school inspector who, in 1855, talks about trying ‘to correct vicious pronunciation or improper modulations of voice’.4 Delbridge (2001: 310), who describes the process of AusE towards acceptance in some detail, says:  ‘throughout the 19th century’, much was written about the English used in Australia, none of it complimentary’. His example of the early criticism and disdain is from one William Churchill, a member of the American Philological Society, who visited Australia in 1911. He described AusE as ‘the most brutal maltreatment that has ever been inflicted on the mother-​tongue of the great English-​speaking nations’.5 Delbridge argues that it was not until the 1940s that the situation changed. Alexander George Mitchell was an Australian academic who went to study in London. There he came in contact with the issue of new language varieties, like American, seeking recognition. When he returned to Australia, he gave a series of lectures with provocative titles like ‘Does the Australian Accent Make You Shudder?’, and ‘There is nothing wrong with Australian speech’.6 His claim was that AusE was both distinctive and acceptable. He undertook a huge survey of the speech of secondary school pupils, initiated university research on the topic of AusE, and made the first attempt to analyse AusE phonology. His 1946 book was called The pronunciation of English in Australia. Mitchell did much to help establish AusE. Then came Stage 3: dictionaries and language manuals. Delbridge (2001) talks of two dictionaries which both use the word ‘national’ to describe themselves. One is The Macquarie Dictionary, published in 1891, described on its title page as ‘The National Dictionary’. The other is The Australian National Dictionary, published in 1988. As well as these, a number of style manuals have also been produced, including a *corpus-​based one, originally entitled The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide, now known as The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (Peters, 2007).

8.2.3  Australian varieties One of the earliest studies of Australian speech was done by Samuel McBurney, a Scottish educationalist who emigrated to Australia in about 1881. He travelled widely through the continent collecting information on how words were pronounced. He was particularly struck by the lack of regional variation. The same conclusion was reached by the British phonetician, John Wells (whose work was mentioned in 5.1). AusE, he observed, ‘is quite remarkably homogeneous … 130

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From Perth to Sydney is over 3000 kilometers, yet their accents are practically indistinguishable’.7 Although regional varieties are few, AusE is not without its social variation. In the early, convict, days the arrivals brought with them two linguistic phenomena. One was their ‘thieves’ talk’, known as a ‘flash language’ –​an obsolete meaning of the word flash is ‘to do with thieves’; criminals were called ‘flash people’. It was a secret language: in 3.4.4 the word ‘cant’ was used to describe such a language. Its purpose was for ‘asserting group solidarity, perhaps disguising intentions from a victim, or delight, or competitiveness in communal verbal art’.8 The vocabulary of New South Wales flash language was recorded by a convict, James Hardy Vaux, who was initially deported from England for pickpocketing a handkerchief (though this was perhaps the last straw, since he had a long list of earlier misdemeanours). He produced one of Australia’s earliest dictionaries, in 1819, called A New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language.9 One ‘flash language’ example is the phrase lag’d for his wind, meaning ‘transported for life’. Wind is ‘life’ (the time during which you breathe), and the verb lag meant ‘to transport’; we still use the phrase old lag meaning ‘someone with experience’ –​ it originally meant a hardened criminal. Sometimes it’s linguistically interesting to analyse how cant or slang varieties like flash derive their words and phrases. For example, the flash word for an easily-​led, compliant person is a go-​alonger. Flash has taken the rather informal verb (go along) which describes the person’s characteristic activity, and has turned it into a noun. This has been done by combining the two verb elements with a hyphen (go-​along), and adding the suffix -​er which means ‘a person who’. Activity 8A (Do you speak good flash?) gives you the chance to see some more flash expressions, and analyse how they are made up. The other linguistic phenomenon which the convicts brought was the Cockney accent, and some of the early criticism and disdain focuses on that (with h-​ dropping –​first described in Box 3.1 –​being a common target). It has often been remarked that Australian pronunciation is like Cockney. The novelist Anthony Burgess, for example, wrote that ‘Australian English may be thought of as a kind of fossilised Cockney of the Dickensian era’10; remember the Cockney speech of Dickens’ character, Sam Weller, which we looked at in 3.4.3? Given that a good proportion of the early convict population was from southern England, it is natural that there should be Cockney elements to Australian speech. But, as we shall see in a moment, it was no more than elements. Convicts were not the only incomers in the early days. There were also officials and administrators. They spoke and wrote a language close to StE. Thus there, with convicts and officials, we have from the start the makings of two socially distinct varieties. Indeed, early students of AusE talk about two varieties  –​popular and educated  –​though nowadays it is common to speak of three: cultivated, general, and broad. It was only a few decades ago, in 1987, that there was research to show that speakers of cultivated AusE were rated higher than broad AusE speakers in terms of intelligence, competence, reliability, 131

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honesty, and status. The research (Ball et al. 1989) also showed that broad AusE speakers were given high ratings for humorousness and talkativeness.

8.2.4  Australian pronunciation Cockney elements are found in the diphthongs. When we looked at Cockney, in 5.2.1, two of the diphthongs discussed were the RP/​eɪ/​(in words like face), which Cockneys pronounce as /​aɪ/​, and the RP /​aʊ/​which is pronounced /​æə/​, in words like pound, down, and how (the sound is discussed in 5.2.1). If you have access to the internet, you can find many examples of Australian accents. Listen for those two sounds, and you will find that they are pronounced rather as a Cockney would. Listen out too for another diphthong difference between RP and AusE, which is particularly salient. It’s the RP /​aɪ/​vowel in like, which is pronounced /​ɔɪ/​in AusE, as if it were written ‘loik’. ER8.1 (Describing pronunciation differences) explores other Australian sounds that differ from RP. It also asks you to identify descriptions of these differences stated in linguistic terms. If you want to try this activity, do so before reading on, where the points are discussed. Example 1 in the activity is the word father. The first vowel is pronounced /​ɑː/​ in RP, while in AusE it tends to be /​aː/​. Both the vowels are long (as the symbol [ː] tells you). But the RP vowel is a back one, and the AusE vowel is front. You’ll recall from ER5.1 that the positions front and back (as well as high and low) refer to the highest point of the tongue in the mouth. The Australian vowel is therefore a case of ‘fronting’, where, in the words of (b) in the activity, ‘a long back vowel is changed to a long front one’. ‘It would appear’, Melchers and Shaw (2011: 105) say, ‘that there is a general fronting tendency in AusE’. This is an example. In Example 2’s word, pen, the process is ‘vowel raising’, and RP /​e/​becomes AusE /​ɪ/​so that when an Australian says pen it sounds to an RP speaker like pin. In the word wanted (Example 3) exemplifies (a) –​a ‘difference in a vowel in an unstressed syllable’. The word’s second syllable is unstressed, and AusE tends to pronounce its vowel as /​ə/​. RP too makes much use of this vowel in unstressed syllables (it’s described in the Glossary under ‘schwa’), but here would have /​ɪ/​. Wells (1982: 601) tells the story of an Australian newsreader who worked for British television. He reported that the Queen had chattered to factory workers. He meant chatted, which in RP has the /​ɪ/​vowel, while chattered has /​ə/​. The Queen, some indignant listeners pointed out, may ‘chat’, but she never, ever ‘chatters’. Example 4 gives three pronunciations: RP, Cockney, and AusE. Concentrate on the letters ‘tt’, which come between two vowels in the word butter –​and are hence ‘intervocalic’. RP has /​t/​, which in Cockney is pronounced as a glottal, /​ ʔ/​. Though AusE may have Cockney elements, it does not use the glottal here.

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Instead, it voices the sound (ER5.2 will remind you about voicing). The voiced equivalent of /​t/​is /​d/​. It is an example of (d): ‘intervocalic voicing’. In Example 5, the point is one of intonation. The normal RP intonation for the sentence I’d like to live here has a fall at the end. Many Australians use what is sometimes called a ‘high-​rise terminal’ (HRT) intonation pattern, meaning that the voice rises at the end –​a pattern that in RP is usually associated with some sorts of questions. We have come across this high-​rise pattern before, in 7.5, when discussing Californian American. There we used the term ‘upspeak’ to refer to it. Writing in The Listener magazine in 1965,11 a reporter talks about ‘a new dialect or speech pattern called Strine’. Strine is simply ‘the way the word “Australian” sounds if you slur and twist it enough’. It refers to an amusing way of writing broad AusE which captures how it is pronounced, one feature being that it often runs words together, as in very rapid speech. The word was coined by a graphic artist and author, Alistair Ardoch Morrison, who wrote books on the subject under the pseudonym of Afferbeck Lauder –​probably a Strine pronunciation for ‘alphabetical order’. Some examples: emma chisit (‘how much is it?), ass prad (‘house proud’), and Gloria Soame (‘glorious home’).12 If you’d like to try interpreting some other Strine expressions, take a look at Activity 8B (Let Stalk Strine).

8.2.5  Australian words In 1.2, we looked at the Australian song, Waltzing Matilda. It shows that there are many more lexical than grammatical differences between AusE and other standard varieties, like GA or BrE. As we saw in 8.1, Australian borrowings from Aboriginal languages partly explain this. AusE also has some distinctive methods of word formation, and these are explored in Activity 8C (Barbies and smokos). Take a look at this before reading on. The activity looks at three methods of word formation. One of these involves shortening, or ‘clipping’ words. Examples from the activity are, beaut, awks, Straya, Oz, and uni. These last two are now in common use in many other varieties of English. The other two methods of word formation also involve clipping, in combination with the use of particular suffixes. One is the suffix -​o, and examples in the activity are smoko, arvo, sammo, commo, and journo. Though particularly common in AusE, the -​o suffix is used in similar ways in other versions of English, including BrE. You might like to think of some examples and, if you have access to a facility like the online OED, find out something of the origins and history of the suffix. The other suffix is -​ie. It is probably the best-​known of all Australian word-​ formation methods. Box 8.1 is about it.

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Box 8.1  Taking a selfie Everyone is nowadays familiar with the notion of ‘a selfie’, referring to a photograph you take of yourself, and the phrase ‘taking a selfie’ is now widely used in varieties of English worldwide. You can now buy ‘selfie-​sticks’ to enable selfies to be taken. Perhaps few people realise that the origin of the word is Australian. The suffixes -​y and its variant -​ie have been used to form familiar names of people for centuries: we have ‘Annie’, ‘Sally’, ‘Johnnie’, ‘Jamie’. Their use spread to birds: according to the OED, Charles Dickens has a character who refers to a parrot as ‘Pretty Polly’; that was in 1848. The OED also reports that the first known instance of -​y/​-​ie attached to a common noun was laddie, a use dated at 1546. The Scots were particularly fond of the suffix, and their national poet –​Robert Burns –​talks about birdies and mousies. In Scotland, -​ie sometimes describes an occupation: a leerie was a street lamp lighter, and a parkie a park keeper. In Shetland a word for ‘small’ is peerie. As some of the examples in Activity 8C suggest, Australia also took to the -​ie suffix. Often the spelling could be either -​y or -​ie, but sometimes the latter served to distinguish words from others carrying the more widespread -​y suffix. The activity, for example, has chalkie to refer to a job (a teacher); the -​ie is necessary to distinguish the word from the adjective chalky. Similarly, it is chewie (chewing gum) to distinguish from the more general word chewy. Notice also that, as we say in the text, the suffix is often combined with a clipping –​as in chewie and mushie.1 The -​y/​-​ie endings can be described as ‘familiarity markers’, meaning that they are used to indicate familiarity or intimacy … 1

Some of the examples in this box are taken from Peters (2007), an excellent source of information about AusE.

8.2.6  Australian informality … and many Australians give particular importance to informality. They have a liking for informality, and this reveals itself in all varieties, cultivated, general, and broad. One of the markers of informality in English is the use of contractions –​ don’t for do not, it’s for it is, and so on. Peters (2001) looks at three corpora –​of British, American, and Australian English –​covering a wide spectrum of texts. She finds that AusE uses by far the most contractions. Delbridge (2001:  313) argues that even quality Australian newspapers (as opposed to ‘tabloids’) have been known on occasions to use a very informal style. He gives three examples from the Sydney Morning Herald, the first two being headlines, and the third an advert. You are invited to identify what makes these examples informal: 134

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AUSSIE WAG DOES A BUNK FOR OVERSEAS ADVENTURE HOW THE BIKKIES FELL IN THE SOUP A STORY ABOUT A BANK, A BUSINESS, AND A LOT OF BULL

8.3  New Zealand Over a thousand miles east of Australia lies New Zealand. A  considerable distance, yet the two countries show a number of similarities in their history, immigration patterns, and the role of English. As you read on, note what these similarities are; they will not be drawn explicit attention to in the text. The Maoris, New Zealand’s early inhabitants, came originally from the Polynesian islands to the north-​east, and their language is part of the Polynesian family. They arrived in New Zealand over six hundred years before any Europeans. In 1642, Dutch sailor Abel Tasman (whom we met in 8.2.1) sighted and charted the New Zealand coast, though he did not land. In 1645, Dutch cartographers named the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland; the Maori name for the country is the much more poetic Aotearoa, sometimes translated as ‘the land of the long white cloud’. James Cook arrived in 1769, anglicised the name to New Zealand, and claimed the territory for the British Crown. Early settlers were from Australia, some of them being escaped convicts. In 1840 the British persuaded the Maoris to cede sovereignty, and New Zealand became part of the Empire; it did not gain full independence until 1947. After 1840, there was considerable immigration to New Zealand, largely from Britain, but also from other European countries like Germany. New Zealand’s gold rush came in the 1860s, and this led to a doubling of the population. To meet labour shortages after the Second World War, immigrants came from various European countries including the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. In the 1980s, New Zealand immigration policy allowed in more people with more diverse ethnic backgrounds. Figures for 2005 show that almost twenty percent of New Zealanders were born overseas –​a very high figure. A sign of increasing multiculturalism is that Maori was given the status of an official language in 1987. Unfortunately, its use is dying out: by the end of the 1970s, only about twenty percent of Maoris were fluent in it. Despite immigration from an increasing number of ethnic backgrounds, there is no language that poses any threat to the status of English in New Zealand. In the early days there was the perception of a Cockney influence, together with a full share of derogatory remarks. In a study of attitudes towards New Zealand speech, Gordon and Abell (1990) mention terms like ‘degraded’, ‘hideous’, ‘corrupt’, ‘lazy and slovenly’ (shades of our discussion in 4.1 here). More accepting attitudes followed, along with language manuals and a dictionary. In 1938 there was New Zealand English:  How it Should be Spoken, 135

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but it wasn’t until 1979 that the Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary appeared (Orsman, 1979). NZE (New Zealand English) has much in common with AusE. One distinctive characteristic involves diphthongs. The NZE diphthong in ear and beer is roughly as in RP. But NZE also uses a very similar diphthong in air and bear. This means that the following pairs are near-​homophones (which they are not in RP): air/​ear, bear/​beer, chair/​cheer, hair/​here, rarely/​really. You might like to flex your linguistic muscles by using the phonetic symbols for the two RP diphthongs, and stating as precisely as possible how the diphthong in air and similar words changed in NZE (AS). For some light relief, take a look at ER8.2 (Stone the crows), which contains an amusing (and inauthentic) passage written using Australian and New Zealand colloquialisms. Our brief tour of Australasia began with the Aboriginal name of an animal: the koala. To end this section, here’s a Maori name for another:  the kiwi. Its use shows English speakers taking a word from a local language to describe a phenomenon new to them. It also, as in the case of koala, shows how a word can change meaning over time. The Maori word kiwi describes a bird that cannot fly; the name is said to be imitative of the bird’s call. In the First World War, the word was often used to describe a New Zealander, particularly a member of the armed forces. Later in the twentieth century, the ‘bird that can’t fly’ theme was taken up again, particularly in American usage. Here is a definition cited in the OED for 1938: ‘a person with no practical flying experience; often used as a term of disparagement towards one who speaks with authority concerning flying but whose knowledge is entirely theoretical’. According to Svartvik and Leech (2016) the word can also be used to describe the New Zealand currency, and even the New Zealand brand of English. It has also come to apply to a fruit  –​the Chinese gooseberry. This is known as a kiwi fruit because New Zealand exported quantities of it, particularly to the United States. If you are interested in exploring word origins, here are some more New Zealand words and phrases you might look for; all of them are in the OED: kia ora, haka, tiki, wahine, mana, bach (batch), judder bar.

8.4  Does distance matter? At the beginning of this chapter, you were asked about the factors that govern what happens to a language when you transport it to the other side of the world. You probably concluded that distance in itself doesn’t matter. Among the factors that do matter is the degree of immigration from the ‘old’ country to the ‘new’. Britain (and later other Anglo-​Saxon countries) has been a major source of immigrants to both Australia and New Zealand, and this helped to foster standard forms of English which, while distinct, are relatively close to StE. A related factor has been the attitude of Australian and New Zealand people, 136

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who have their own clear identities, but include many who have a close affinity with their British ancestors. Does the ten thousand five hundred miles between London and Sydney –​and the eleven thousand six hundred miles between London and Wellington –​count for more than the hundred and sixty miles between Lancaster and Glasgow? It’s a moot point!

Activity section Activity 8A  Do you speak good flash? AS Like all cants, one of the purposes of flash language is that it should not be understood by the public at large; the meanings of words and phrases must not be too obvious. How obvious are the meanings of the ten flash words and phrases below? Like the activity’s title, all have been taken from Vaux’s Dictionary. (a) Take a short initial look at the expressions on the left, covering the definitions on the right. Try to guess their meanings. In many cases you won’t be able to do this, but it’s worth a short effort. (b) Now also look at the definitions on the right. Follow what was done in the text for the word go-​alonger, saying how the flash phrases on the left have come to mean what they do; (in the case of go-​alonger, it’s that an easily-​led, compliant person ‘goes along’ with what others suggest). A warning: number (9) is difficult, and number (10) almost impossible to work out! But perhaps worth a try. The Answer Section reveals all. (c) Again following what was done in the text for the word go-​alonger, say something about what linguistic strategy is used to form the flash expression; (in the case of go-​alonger it’s to form, from the verb, a compound noun with a hyphen, adding the suffix -​er). (d) Do the examples overall show any recurring strategies for forming flash words and phrases? What are they? (1) barking-​irons (2) bonnet (3) bowled out (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

death-​hunter flesh-​bag in town judge lush-​crib the Steel Manchester

pistols a cover (e.g. a legitimate job covering for criminal activities) caught (arrested) after a long criminal career without arrest undertaker shirt flush with money competent, careful person pub prison tongue 137

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Activity 8B  Let Stalk Strine   AS Let stalk Strine (‘Let’s talk Australian’) was the title of one of the books written by Afferbeck Lauder (mentioned in the text). Here are ten Strine sentences.13 What would they be in StE? (1) Y’godda hev awl in the ingine fya wannut ta run prop’ly. (2) Oy seen some smaat kids but thet kids jiss breeyant! (3) Weel you cudav nokme daahn wivva fevva! (4) I dunno watsa mare wimmie, I jess got no ebb-​tide these dice. (5) Oz airpsly fearious a bet the whole affair! (6) Chiggaowt oola joolry she’s got! (7) Aw fawnly goddut roight, aaftrawl this toime! (8) Ongana gessum beers. (9) Paps yikkud ’elp me. (10) Heng thet pitcher onna wool.

Activity 8C  Barbies and smokos  AS (a) Here are fifteen Australian words (many of which would come in the category of ‘broad Australian’). They illustrate three ways AusE uses to form words. Identify what these three ways are. The meanings of the words are given underneath them (just for information: you don’t need to know them for the activity –​though you might have a go at guessing the meanings before you look underneath). The word-​formation methods will be discussed in the text. barbie arvo awks

smoko chewie mushie

beaut commo journo

Aussie uni sammo

Straya chalkie Oz

break for a smoke chewing gum mushroom

beauty

Australian

Australia

communist journalist

university sandwich

teacher Australia

The meanings are: barbecue afternoon awkward

(b) If you enjoy exploring word meanings, and perhaps discovering something about their derivation, here are some Australian words to investigate. All but one of them are in the OED, from which you will discover that in some cases the origins are uncertain: drongo

yacker

hoon

bottlo

The meanings are given in the Answer Section. 138

sanger

dinkum

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Answer section Activity 8A  Do you speak good flash? (1) ‘Irons’ because the guns are made of iron. They make a barking noise when fired. Here a compound noun is formed, using a hyphen, meaning ‘irons which bark’. (2) The bonnet of a car ‘conceals’ the engine (its ‘workings’) underneath. The strategy is to describe a function by using a term which fulfils the same function, taken from a different sphere (cars). (3) Bowled out is a cricketing term, used when a batsman’s innings is terminated after a period of play at the wicket. The function being described (arrest after a successful period) is described in terms of an area related to popular culture (cricket in Australia). (4) What an undertaker does, you might say, is to ‘hunt death’. As in the text’s example (go-​alonger), a compound is made describing a person (using the -​er suffix) who follows a certain activity. There is a touch of humour in the notion that an undertaker ‘hunts’ death (i.e. actively seeks it out). (5) There’s a touch of humour here too, regarding an article of clothing that holds flesh. Both the words bag and flesh in this context are unusual, and rather comic. The structure of the compound here (where no hyphen is used) is ‘a bag for flesh’. (6) In standard varieties of English, the phrase ‘on the town’ is often used for someone who goes on a ‘spree’, to enjoy themselves and perhaps spend a lot of money. Here the idea is to come in from the country to the town, for that purpose. (7) There is possibly ironic humour in the idea that a judge (the criminal’s enemy) is a competent and careful person. He is certainly a person who inhabits the criminal’s world. So the phrase takes a figure from the criminal’s context and makes them stand for a particular type with specific characteristics. (8) In many standard varieties of English, the term ‘lush’ is used to describe a heavy drinker. The place where they are ‘brought up’ to drink heavily is compared to a baby’s crib. The compound is of the simple type ‘the crib of a lush’. (9) Steel is short for Bastille, an archetypal prison. The strategy is to use one example of something to refer to all in that class –​the Bastille stands for all prisons. (10) According to the OUP, which contains Manchester as an entry with this meaning, the English city is associated (particularly in the Industrial Revolution) with the manufacture of cloth. The dictionary speculates that the tongue is like a strip of cloth.

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A common linguistic strategy is to form compound nouns, often having a verbal element. As is common with English compounds, different relationships hold between the words involved: so a lush-​crib is the ‘crib of a lush’, while death-​ hunter is a ‘man who hunts death’. Activities are often described by making a parallel in some other area familiar to flash speakers. Flash expressions are often humorous.

Activity 8B  Let Stalk Strine (1) You’ve got to have oil in the engine if you want it to run properly. (2) I’ve seen some smart kids, but that kid is just brilliant. (3) Well you could have knocked me down with a feather! (4) I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I’ve just got no appetite these days. (5) I was absolutely furious about the whole affair! (6) Check out all the jewellery she’s got! (7) I finally got it right, after all this time! (8) I’m going to get some beers. (9) Perhaps you could help me. (10) Hang that picture on a wall.

Activity 8C  Barbies and smokos drongo, as a noun = a simpleton; as an adjective = silly yacker, chattering, a gossip hoon, a lout bottle, a shop selling alcohol sanger, sandwich dinkum, work

Section 8.3  NZE diphthongs The diphthong in RP ear is /​ɪə/​. In air it is /​eə/​. In NZE these are merged in the direction of /​ɪə/​; in air, the first element of the diphthong /​e/​is raised towards /​ɪ/​.

Further Reading Though written half a century ago, Turner (1966) offers a detailed study of English in both Australia and New Zealand. The same author has a chapter on AusE in Volume 5 of the Cambridge History of the English Language (Burchfield, 1994). This also contains a chapter on NZE, by Bauer (1994). 140

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Gramley and Pätzold (1992) has a chapter on English in Australia and New Zealand (as well as South Africa). Melchers and Shaw (2011) also has relevant sections. An edited collection, Blair and Collins (2001) is dedicated to AusE. One chapter, Delbridge (2001), focuses on national identity. Also dedicated to the subject is Leitner (2004). Peters (2007) offers an excellent reference guide to Australian usage. If you want to explore Strine, there are various books available to help you. One by Afferbeck Lauder is Let Stalk Strine (Lauder, 1977). There are a number of books dealing in detail with NZE. These include Hay et al. (2008), and –​with a historical perspective –​Gordon et al. (2004).

Notes 1 The source is Delbridge (2001), and he is describing the Australian National Dictionary. 2 Dunderdale (c.1870), cited by Turner (1994), p. 313. 3 Meredith (1844), cited in Collins and Blair (2001). 4 Cited in Lucas and Mulvey (2013). 5 Churchill (1911), p. 14. 6 Delbridge (2006). 7 Wells (1982), p. 593. 8 Turner (1994), p. 309. It is Turner who uses the phrase lag’d for his wind as a flash language example. 9 The book is available online, at http://​gutenberg.net.au/​ebooks06/​0600111.txt. 10 Burgess (1992). 11 Issue 340/​1, dated 2 September 1965. 12 These examples are taken from McArthur et al. (1992). 13 Taken from www.strine.org.uk.

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9.1  Diasporas and circles In 1901, at the height of the British Empire, the poet Arthur Benson wrote a poem entitled ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, and it was set to music by the composer Edward Elgar. It was a poem about the Empire, and the aspiration for its growth. ‘Wider still and wider’, one line reads, ‘shall thy bounds be set’. The growth of the British Empire was a great force in the spread of English throughout the world. When Benson wrote his poem, nearly a quarter of the world’s land surface was British, and more than a quarter of its population was under British control. If you are uncertain which areas of the world were part of the British Empire, why not use the internet to find a map. In earlier chapters of this book we have been watching English spread. In Chapter  6 the spread was from England through the British Isles. Then, in Chapters 7 and 8, it travelled to North America and Australasia. In these cases, the spread came through populations moving into new areas. The word often used to describe population movements like these is diaspora. It comes from the Ancient Greek, and is a combination of the prefix dia-​meaning ‘asunder’ or ‘apart’, and spora meaning ‘sowing’ or ‘seed’ (think of our modern word spore). The Greek verb associated with diaspora gives us our modern verb ‘disperse’. One of the OED’s definitions for it is: ‘any group of people who have spread or become dispersed beyond their traditional homeland or point of origin …’. The English, together with their language, have ‘dispersed’ in this sense, at many points in their history. Exactly how many large-​scale diasporas there are, and what movements are included, differs rather according to what expert you consult. The most influential expert in this area is probably the Indian linguist, Braj Kachru (1932–​2016). What Kachru (1992) and others call the ‘First Diaspora’ involves movement into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; then into North America and Australasia –​just what we covered in Chapters 6–​8. A characteristic of this diaspora is that it involved ‘a gradual and planned movement of English-​speaking populations’ (Kachru, 1997:  2). In First-​Diaspora countries, English has largely become the native language. After the First Diaspora, English continued to spread –​wider still and wider. There was a Second Diaspora. The Empire moved into many other countries,

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particularly in the nineteenth century. Large parts of Africa were brought under British control, including Sudan, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa. And in Asia:  India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, among others. Many other areas experienced British control, even though they were not colonies: Egypt, the Persian Gulf and even parts of mainland China. In the case of the Second Diaspora, large-​scale immigration from Britain did not take place. The British brought their language, and they gave it power –​not because it was learned by the local masses, but as the language of administration, education, the media. In these situations, English was not, for the local inhabitants, their first language. The term English as a Second Language is sometimes used in this context; as opposed to English as a First Language and English as a Foreign Language –​the word ‘second’ is used to capture the particular importance that the language held in these countries.1 Another way of conceptualising the spread of English is in terms of three concentric circles. Kachru’s (1985) ‘Concentric Circle Model’ is shown in Figure 9.1.

Inner circle e.g. UK, USA, Canada

Outer circle e.g. India, Singapore, Malaysia

Expanding circle e.g. China, Thailand, Israel

Figure 9.1  Kachru’s Concentric Circles.

The ‘Inner Circle’ is associated with the First Diaspora, and involves about 380  million speakers. The ‘Outer Circle’ has up to 300  million speakers. The ‘Expanding Circle’ is the largest, with up to a billion speakers (though it is difficult to estimate precisely). In these countries, English is generally taught as a foreign language, and used as a medium for international communication. This chapter and the next are about English in Outer Circle countries. Figure 9.1 shows that the list of Outer Circle countries is long, and we will concentrate on just two:  India, and Papua New Guinea, where the English-​based creole known as Tok Pisin is used. The book’s final chapters (11 and 12) will focus on the Expanding Circle. Since we are about to look at English’s Outer Circle, now would be a good time to ask yourself what characteristics you might associate with language use in Outer Circle countries, and what language issues you might expect to find. Also, ask yourself about what other languages in the world might have their own ‘Outer Circle’.

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9.2  India: Macaulay’s ‘Minute’, and some history Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–​1859) was a British historian and politician, perhaps best known for his History of England. He was a man of strong views, energetically supporting British culture and forthrightly denigrating the cultures of eastern countries. In the early nineteenth century, when Britain ruled India, there was a lively debate as to how the British should best develop, and finance, educational policy in India. A major issue related to language was: what should be the language of instruction in India’s schools and colleges? Should it be one of the traditional languages used in India –​Persian (what we now call Farsi), Sanskrit, and Arabic –​or should it be English? In 1835, Macaulay contributed to this debate in a decisive way. He wrote a Minute upon Indian Education, now commonly referred to as ‘Macaulay’s Minute’. His attack on the oriental languages was scathing, and his support for English firm. It was, he argued, ‘no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England.2 So Sanskrit was of low value. But English: ‘whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations’! With arguments like this, Macaulay put forward the use of English as the language of instruction in Indian education. Because the country’s population was so large, he recognised that initially it would be impossible to teach every child English. Instead, ‘we must … form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’. Eventually, he hoped, the use of English would ‘filter down’ from the selected few to the larger majority. Macaulay’s actions, and their results, are characteristic of how English became established in Outer Circle countries. It is not surprising that Macaulay’s views were controversial, both before and after his death. In Das Kapital, Karl Marx called him a ‘systematic falsifier of history’.3 But as regards the English language, Macaulay’s views held sway, and he did much to establish its widespread power as the language of communication. You might be surprised to see Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic mentioned as languages traditional in the Indian context. After all, two of them are, in origin, foreign to the country. Some history will explain. Sanskrit is a language some 3,500 years old. For much of this time it was thought to be a language entirely separate from European ones, but in the eighteenth century it came to be realised that it is related to Latin and Ancient Greek. It was the language of Hindu literature and religious writings. In the sixteenth century, the Moghuls spread from their Central Asian homes into India, and brought with them their religion, Islam, and their language, Persian. This remained the language of the court for 144

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centuries. Arabic too came into India, as the language associated with Islamic religious writings. In the sixteen hundreds, the British arrived in the form of a company of merchants, initially interested in trade rather than Empire-​building. The East India Company had been given a Royal Charter by Elizabeth I in 1600 and it spread vigorously in Asia, trading in various fabrics and spices, among numerous other things. The Company established itself in Kolkata (Calcutta) and gradually took power out of the hands of the Moghuls. In 1857, the India Mutiny took place, with the population revolting against British rule. The Company took much of the blame, and in the following year, the by-​now hugely powerful Company was nationalised by the British Crown. India officially became part of the British Empire; its rule in the country became widely known as the ‘British Raj’. The British stayed there until nationalist pressures brought their rule to an end in 1947, and the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan (East and West), with both countries achieving independence. The partition was made on religious grounds, and the result was a massive migration, as about 12 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims moved in each direction between India and Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1972.

9.3  Outer Circle India The language situation in India during the past hundred years illustrates just how complex questions of language can be in a multilingual society, especially one within the ‘Outer Circle’. As we have seen, Macaulay strongly supported the use of English as the language of instruction. Among the many that held opposing views was Mahatma Gandhi, the inspirational Indian leader who played a major part in the eventual independence of India. ‘Real education,’ he said, ‘is impossible through a foreign medium’.4 He also argued that the use of English was an instrument of repression: ‘to give millions a knowledge of English’, he lamented, ‘is to enslave them’.5 His objections are typical of those in any situation where a language from abroad comes to importance in a community. It is similar, for example, to the objections expressed in America’s early days, when there was resentment about speaking a language that originated in a different country –​ England –​over three thousand miles away. But India has a particular language problem, because of its huge population, and its dazzling array of languages spoken. There are over four hundred of them. Twenty-​ two are regarded as official ones, including Hindu, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese. How are Indians speaking different native languages to communicate with each other? Some kind of lingua franca is needed. The lingua franca concept is one which will become central in later chapters, particularly Chapter  11. There’s a Glossary entry on it, and some background information is given in ER11.1 (The Franks’ Language). Wherever the topic comes up, there is the issue of what 145

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language it should be. Before reading on, think what kinds of solutions are possible in this kind of situation, and what issues might be involved in the choice. Since the 1940s, India has been following a ‘three-​language formula’, and this became officially adopted in 1968. The formula lays down what languages should be taught in schools and colleges. One was to be a local native language. As for a lingua franca, many felt an Indian language should be used for this purpose within the country’s borders, where Indians are talking to Indians in India. Hindi was the preferred candidate. The language is a descendant of Sanskrit, and was primarily associated with northern India, including the country’s capital, Delhi. Thus Hindi is included in the three-​language formula. But precisely because Hindi is associated with a specific geographical area, it is a cause for conflict. Those living in areas where Hindi is not spoken, feel that the use of Hindi as a lingua franca gives a special advantage to its native speakers, disadvantaging those who do not speak it as a first language. Box 9.1 is about just such a situation.

Box 9.1  Coconuts The Indian state of Tamil Nadu is in south India. Its capital is Chennai, formerly called Madras. The main language of the state is Tamil –​a language with a long and illustrious cultural history. When India became a republic in 1950, both Hindi and English were designated as official languages. But during the 1960s there were moves to make Hindi the sole official language. The idea was unpopular with many: Hindi was not a native language of the area, and its increased status would give power to Hindi speakers, predominantly from northern India. In 1964, a 27-​year-​old man named Chinnasmay protested by setting fire to himself, crying as he burned, ‘Down with Hindi, long live Tamil’. He was the first of a number. Anti-​Hindi strikes and widespread protests followed, and these eventually turned violent. The Indian author S. Rangarajan (1935–​2008), who used the pen name of Sujatha, wrote a short story entitled Coconuts, which well captures the linguistic agitation of the times. It tells of a young man, Prem, returning home with his wife after a holiday. The story does not mention locations, but the assumption is that it takes place in Tamil Nadu, with Prem coming from a Hindi-​speaking region somewhere further north. Prem has been driving for a long time, and is thirsty. He sees an old man selling coconuts by the roadside, and decides to buy one. He goes up to the old man and asks kitna –​the Hindi word for ‘how much’. A group of local youths nearby hear what he says and attack him for using Hindi. Eventually he is shot: ‘At a distance, a dry, skinny cow that was freely roaming the highway, gave a start when it heard a gun go off’.1 The English translation is by V. Nagarajan, and it was posted by S. Pandian on the site:  https://​groups.google.com/​forum/​#!topic/​alt.culture.tamil/​ UWwni_​bqkCw

1

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The Tamils in Box 9.1 were anti-​Hindi, which made them by default supporters of the English language. At least English put everyone on an equal footing. This is one reason why English is the third language in the formula. It is also useful because, as well as providing a lingua franca within India, it also facilitates India’s communication with the rest of the world. English gives Indians, Svartvik and Leech (2016: 122) say, ‘a world audience’. As we saw in 7.3 for America, and in 8.2.2 for Australia, both these countries passed from an anti-​English stage into one where they accepted the language and made it their own. Similarly in India. Part of the Independence process was what came to be called the ‘Swadeshi Movement’ where imported articles, concepts, ideas were reshaped to fit the Indian context; swadeshi is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘of one’s own country’. Some (like Verma, 1982) use the term ‘Swadeshi English’ to describe the English that had become Indianised. Here is a quotation from Verma (1982:180) that puts forward an argument closely resembling the ones made in America and Australia in support of their own brands of English: ‘Indian English is a self-​contained system and follows its own set of rules…. Its Indianness lies in the fact that … it displays certain distinguishing phonological, lexico-​*semantic, and also syntactic features’. Let’s now look at some of these features. Before we do so, you might –​if you have had any contact with Indian English (IE) speakers –​like to give some initial ideas of what linguistic characteristics you associate with them.

9.4  What Indian English (IE) is like6 9.4.1  Pronunciation You can find examples of IE pronunciation on the internet.7 If you have access to any, spend some time listening to them and identifying the pronunciation characteristics which stand out. As we have seen, a feature of the Outer Circle is that normally English is not the first language of users. So it is in relation to the Outer Circle that the process of ‘first-​language interference’ comes to the fore. This is where aspects of a user’s first language make their way into (‘interfere with’) the English they use. What makes IE particularly complex from this point of view is the large number of native Indian languages, coming from various language families. This means that within India, you are likely to find many different accents of English, showing different forms of ‘interference’ depending on the user’s first language. For that reason, we must be careful to avoid generalisations about IE accents, which is why, below, we speak of ‘some Indian speakers’, and ‘some Indian speech’. Here is an interference example. In English, there are quite severe restrictions on what sequences of consonants can occur at the beginnings of words. Many sequences are not possible: pkt-​, for example, or dsn-​. Among the possible ‘initial consonant clusters’ are sk-​, sl-​, and st-​(incidentally, we take a longer look at initial 147

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consonant clusters in 12.1.2, and ER12.3 (Knees and knights) which contains an activity based on them). Some Indian speakers find the pronunciation of these clusters difficult, because they do not have them in their native language. In several northern languages, the sequences mentioned above do not occur initially, Speakers of these languages handle the problem by putting in an initial vowel; so school is pronounced as if written ‘ischool’, and station is ‘istation’. Kashmiri speakers, on the other hand, can split up the cluster by inserting a vowel; in this case, school is as if written ‘sechool’ and station is ‘setation’.8 Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of some Indian speech is its use of retroflex sounds. We came across the idea of retroflexion in 5.2.4 and ER4.2, in relation to that ever-​tricky consonant ‘r’. The word means ‘bent back’, and retroflex consonants are pronounced with the tongue curled (or ‘bent’) up, so the underside of the tongue is close to the *hard palate. Examples of where this would happen in IE are the words talk and done. In phonetics, a retroflex sound is marked by a little squiggle on the end of the symbol, so that /​t/​and /​d/​are written /​ʈ /​and /​ɖ/​. Another example of first-​language interference is to do with stress, both on individual words and in sentences. IE speakers often put word stress in a different place from RP, frequently opting for stress on the penultimate (second to final) syllable. So RP PROtestant becomes ProTESTant, and reFER is REfer. Wells (1982: 631) tells the story of how ‘as a listener I experienced first incomprehension and then annoyance when listening to a highly qualified Indian university lecturer who kept referring to Events, with the stress on the first syllable’. One study on the intelligibility of Indian English found that stress differences like these were the most common cause of unintelligibility in IE.9 Sentence stress is also an issue. British, American, and Australian English are all what are called ‘stress-​timed languages’, meaning that important words in sentences tend to be heavily stressed, with less important words carrying less stress and often having weaker versions of their vowels. In these varieties of English, a sentence like He very much wants to go to the theatre might have this stress pattern (with capitals showing stressed syllables):  He very much WANTS –​to GO –​to the THEatre. Indian languages are ‘syllable-​timed’ rather than ‘stress-​timed’, meaning that syllables have roughly the same prominence, with less difference made between strong and weak stresses. The tendency not to weaken unstressed syllables makes its way into many versions of IE. Our example sentence might then be pronounced with more even stress, with fewer peaks and troughs: He –​ very –​ much –​ wants –​ to –​ go –​ to –​ the –​ the –​ atre. We’ll return to the subject of syllable-​timed Asian languages in 11.2. If you would like to explore two other pronunciation differences between RP and IE, look at ER9.1 (Hot water).

9.4.2  Grammar To explore some differences between BrE and IE grammar, take a look at Activity 9A (Swadeshi English). Do this before reading on. 148

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The activity focuses on five characteristics. The first, ‘invariant tag forms’, is exemplified in sentence (5). It’s a topic we have already dwelt on:  ER6.3 (Tags) described how the rather complex BrE system works, and in 6.2 it was mentioned that many languages use a formulaic phrase for all tag questions. The phrase in Welsh, we saw, was isn’t it?, and the same formula is used by many speakers of IE. ‘The present perfect used with past adverbials’ is shown in sentence (2): They’ve done that three years ago. What is often called the ‘present perfect tense’ is formed using the present tense of have plus a past participle (done in sentence 2).10 As we mentioned in 7.4.3, one of its main uses is to describe ‘time up to now’; so Have you been to Scotland? is asking whether you’ve been there ‘at any time up till now’. In BrE, if there’s an adverbial which specifies a fixed point in past time (like three years ago), we would use the simple past tense and not the present perfect. So a British speaker would say They did that three years ago. Sentence (4) –​ We are living here since six years –​ shows since being used with a continuous *aspect form (using part of the verb be plus an -​ing form). This is a case of ‘time up to now’, so a British speaker would use the present perfect form (have lived), or possibly the present perfect continuous (have been living). The sentence also shows IE using since where BrE would have for. The BrE rule is that since is used together with a fixed point in time (like yesterday, or 1984), while for is used with a period of time (as in six years, or a month). So here BrE would have for six years. How many shapes our country has? is an example of a question formed without inversion. A BrE speaker would say How many shapes does our country have? Learners of English as a foreign language often have problems with question inversion, made worse by the fact that in *indirect questions there is no inversion; so it would be Tell me how many shapes our country has. A tricky little corner of English grammar. The verb know, in I was not knowing these facts is what is called a ‘stative’ verb. The relevant OED definition for ‘stative’ relates to a verb that ‘expresses a state or condition rather than an action’; the linguistic term for the opposite –​ an ‘action verb’ –​is ‘dynamic’. Examples of verbs that are normally stative in English are know, love, want. There is one grammatical feature that is particularly associated with the stative/​dynamic distinction. It is to do with continuous aspect, often used in English to describe an action that is, or was, going on at the time of speaking. Normally, in BrE, only dynamic verbs are used in a continuous aspect. So you can say I’m working hard at the moment, or She’s visiting her friend this morning. But you don’t normally say I’m knowing the answer, or John and Mary are loving each other. This is because knowing and loving are ‘states’: you either know or you don’t know, love or don’t love. You will have noticed the use of the word ‘normally’ in this description. This is because, particularly in recent years, traditionally stative verbs have come to be used in dynamic senses. So stative love can be used to describe a transitory 149

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feeling, something similar to ‘enjoy’. Hence you will now sometimes hear They are loving the party, or I am wanting to go. Sentence (1) shows that IE goes further, and does not recognise the stative/​dynamic distinction in this respect, even with a verb like know, which most BrE speakers –​even those who might say They are loving, or I am wanting –​would keep stative.

9.4.3  Words You might begin by thinking of any English words that come from an Indian language. Probably the word avatar will not be on your list. It is in common use in relation to computer games and social media. It can be used to describe a particular person (often yourself) in a particular manifestation –​playing a role, for example, in a computer game. The word became the title of a popular 2009 American science-​fiction film. You may be surprised to learn the word’s origin. It comes from the Sanskrit avatara, meaning ‘descent’. It is made up of ava-​(meaning ‘down’) and tara (cross). The word’s original use was in relation to Hinduism, where one of the principal deities is Vishnu, the ‘preserver’ or ‘protector’. Whenever evil predominates in the world, he takes on human form, and comes down to earth to restore good. As he says in the lines from the Hindi scripture Bhagavad Gita (4.7–​8): Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth. For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil... These transformations into human form are known as avatars. The OED definition is ‘the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form’. There are other English words that have interesting derivations from Indian languages (sometimes coming into India from Persian). We have already discussed the word thug in 3.5.1. Others are bungalow, juggernaut, shawl, shampoo, bangle, chutney, doolally, and loot. If you have access to a dictionary that gives etymologies, you may like to look up some of these and explore their original meanings. The words just listed show that Indian languages have contributed to English as used throughout the world. They are words in common usage worldwide. But IE is a variety with its own distinctive lexis, containing words coming from many languages, but not in use outside the subcontinent. A  valuable resource for finding out about these is one of the most important publications relating to Indian English. It is a dictionary, and it carries the subtitle A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-​Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. Published in 1886, it was written by two British writers who worked in India, Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell. The dictionary’s main title is an interesting one. It is Hobson-​Jobson. The phrase comes from a chant that Muslims use in religious processions:  Ya Hasan, Ya Hosain (referring to Muhammed’s grandsons, Hasan and Husain). The British 150

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soldiers anglicised this in various ways: Hosseen-​Gosseen, Hossy Gossy, Hossein Jossen, and eventually Hobson-​Jobson. The term came to be used in English to refer to any festal celebration. Its appeal to the dictionary authors was that it reflected the dictionary’s interest in the way words change as they pass from Indian languages into English. Hobson-​Jobson is a thorough piece of work. The entry for the fruit orange, for example, is over a thousand words long. There is plenty of etymological information given, and it shows just how diverse the sources of IE have been. For example: there is the word hazree, from Arabic, meaning ‘breakfast’. Then there is maskee, a pidgin word meaning ‘never mind’, the origin of which is probably the Portuguese mas que, meaning ‘in spite of’. As an example of French influence, there is mort-​de-​chien (literally ‘death-​of-​dog’ in French) –​the name given to cholera. From Hindustani comes mayla, meaning ‘a fair’, and Malay gives sampan, ‘a skiff’. As well as taking in words from oriental languages, IE has also adapted English words, sometimes changing their meanings:  part of the process of ‘making English Indian’. You can explore some examples by looking at Activity 9B (Only meanings). When many of the words we have so far looked at were used, they were regarded as ‘English words’, albeit perhaps confined to the IE variety. This is close to, but rather different from, another practice that is common when different languages are used in the same community. It is called ‘language-​mix’, or ‘code-​switching’, and we have already mentioned it  –​in 6.2 in relation to Welsh, and in 7.2 in relation to Hawaiian. Code-​switching is common in Indian discourse. Activity 9C (Meeting vishwasghaats) has some examples. They are English sentences containing words from Indian languages. You are invited to speculate what the words might mean. Notice that some of them have taken on certain English characteristics for the occasion: one has become an English verb, ending in -​ies, and there are some noun plurals ending in -​s. The words remain Indian, but they have been made to fit into the English grammatical system.

9.4.4  Babu style Some years ago, a colleague and I received a letter from an Indian gentleman, asking us if we would send him a copy of a book we had written.11 Here is the letter: Dear Sirs, I must invite your kind attention to the insatiable thirst for knowledge of an obscure bibliophile that compels him to be a suppliant for your munificence. To get down to brass tacks, I have a good mind to be enlightened by your book [title given], but my chronic financial stringency obfuscates the lofty idea. I am on my uppers. 151

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Might I therefore request you to furnish the poor student languishing in the icy quagmire of despondency with a copy of the splendid beacon [title given]? The beau gest would remain enshrined in the golden alcove of my memory for ever. Thanking you [Name] PS –​In my frowzy den, I can only sigh and weep for your latest work. With begging bowl, From soul to soul I run in mirth Love is my berth; Through commandments ten I serve men I am a palmer Sorrow is my runner. What is there to say about the style of this letter? Give examples to support the points you notice. The letter is, of course, written in a way that will amuse and attract the attention of the readers. But it is also characteristic of a style of Indian writing and speaking called ‘babu (or baboo) English’. The word babu  –​Hindi and Bengali in origin –​was initially a polite form of address (something like ‘sir’), and it came to be used of clerks writing in English, using a particularly elaborate style of English. Kachru (1994: 509) describes it as ‘marked by excessive stylistic ornamentation, politeness and indirectness’. Our letter is a good example of babu English. It also has a characteristic often associated with Indian style: mixing formal and elaborate writing with informal idiomatic phrases. If you have not done so already, identify some such phrases in the letter.

9.5  The ‘-​isation’ process In 9.3 we mentioned Gandhi’s anti-​English views. It is interesting to compare his attitude with that of the novelist Salman Rushdie. Gandhi was born in 1869 and he played a major part in the Independence movement. Rushdie was born seventy-​eight years later, in 1947 –​the actual year in which India gained its independence. Kachru (1983) shows how Rushdie has ‘made English his own’. He ‘stands up to English language as an equal’, Kachru says, ‘and relentlessly plays with its grammar, syntax and spellings until it becomes pliable enough faithfully to express the way an Indian thinks, feels, talks, laughs, jokes and relates to language’ (p. 49). Kachru’s book is entitled The Indianisation of English, and the title says it all. The language Rushdie uses is not the English of an ex-​colonial power. It is his own language, the means of expression of an Indian. Here’s yet 152

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another Indian expressing the same attitude: ‘we shall have the English language with us and amongst us, and not as a guest or friend, but as one of our own, of our caste, our creed, our sect and of our tradition’ (Rao 1978). Our focus in this chapter has been on India, but it needs to be said that similar ‘-​isation processes’ have taken place throughout the Outer Circle. English in Africa was ‘Africanised’; in Malaysia it was ‘Malaysianised’; and in Singapore, ‘Singaporeanised’. This ‘-​isation process’ says something about the ‘ownership’ of English: the more countries of the world make English their own, the less it remains the property of Britain, and indeed of the other Inner Circle countries.

Activity Section Activity 9A  Swadeshi English Verma (1982) talks about ‘Swadeshi English’, the language as it is ‘reshaped’ for the Indian context. (a) Here are five aspects of Swadeshi English, described using linguistic terminology: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

Invariant tag forms. The present perfect used with past adverbials. Since with present continuous. Wh-​questions formed without inversion. ‘Stative’ verbs used as if ‘dynamic’ verbs.

These sentences below exemplify the five aspects.12 Match the examples with the descriptions. If any of the linguistic terminology is unfamiliar to you, make guesses: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

I was not knowing these facts. They’ve done that three years ago. How many shapes our country has? We are living here since six years. You thought I’d be late, isn’t it?

(b) How do these sentences deviate from BrE? State what these examples suggest the IE grammatical rules are, and how they differ from the BrE rules. The sentences are discussed in the text.

Activity 9B  Only meanings AS (a) Here are some IE expressions. You are invited to guess what the first five might mean. The sixth (four-​twenty) is really unguessable; if you have access 153

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to the internet, try to find its origin and what it means. There are some hints given in brackets (though you may decide to guess without looking at them). (1) Eve teaser (2) mixy grinder (3) monkey cap (4) to prepone (5) mention not (6) four-​twenty

(a type of person) (a machine) (a garment)

(nothing to do with drugs)

(b) Visitors to India often notice the use of the word only, which is different from other varieties. Use these examples to hypothesise what only means:13 It’s an iPhone only. I’m going to eat now only. Immediately on arrival only he paid me. I cannot understand it only. I’ll get it washed tomorrow only. We are getting that only printed. Yes, I am doing that only. I’m at my house, only. He only told me.

Activity 9C  Meeting vishwasghaats  AS Here are some examples of code-​switching (or language-​mix), from Mehrotra (1982), all taken from Stardust, a popular Indian film magazine. The words in italics are Indian, and have been put into sentences which are otherwise normal English. (a) Try as far as possible to work out what part of speech the Indian words are in these examples. Nouns, adjectives, verbs or what? How do you know –​by context or by suffix? A hint regarding ­example 6: the word ekdum is not an adjective or a noun. (b) You will not be able to work out what every word means (you have not been given enough information). But what might they mean? Consider some hypotheses for each word. (c) The actual meanings are given underneath, in mixed order. Once you have made your hypotheses, match the meanings and the words. The correct matches are given in the Answer Section. The sentences: (1) Premnath is really ajeeb, he gave a fake thappad even without touching her. (2) Everyone is dismissing off my career saying ‘Oh, she chamchofies the big men’. (3) He spoke about how he had met many vishwasghaats in his personal life. (4) She created quite a few nakhras over this delay but Miss Pandit sat chup. 154

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(5) Now she can be of no more matlib to him. (6) She was looking absolutely bekar, ekdum ayah like. The meanings (in mixed order): suck up to useless, obsolete nursemaid quiet

tantrum suddenly betrayal

weird meaning, signification slap

Answer Section Activity 9B  Only meanings (a) (1) someone who harasses women; (2)  food blender; (3)  balaclava; (4)  to bring forward (like ‘postpone’, but earlier rather than later); (5)  don’t mention it. (6) is ‘a swindler’; 420 is the section in the Indian Penal Code that deals with swindling. (b) The word only is used for emphasis. Often it is the equivalent of ‘precisely’ or ‘absolutely’.

Activity 9C  Meeting vishwasghaats Ajeeb = weird; thappad = slap; chamchofy = suck up to; vishwasghaat = betrayal; nakhra = tantrum; chup = quiet; matlib = meaning, signification; bekar = useless, obsolete; ekdum = suddenly; ayah = nursemaid

Further reading For information about diasporas and the ‘concentric circles’ model, take a look at Kachru (1985). Kachru (1983) is about the Indianisation of English. Svartvik and Leech (2016), and Gramley and Pätzold (1992) both provide short descriptions of IE, while Kachru (1994) has slightly more. For full book-​length treatment, there is Pingali Sailaja (2009). It has sections on all linguistic areas, and deals with topics such as code-​switching. It also has a useful collection of sample texts. Though it’s not to do with language, E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India provides a vivid picture of the Raj during the 1920s, when Indian independence was in the air.

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Notes 1 The ‘second’/​’foreign’ distinction is in common use, though not everyone finds it useful, because in today’s complex linguistic world, the distinction is often hard to apply. 2 Macaulay (1835). 3 In Chapter  27 of Das Kapital, Marx says:  ‘I quote Macaulay, because as a systematic falsifier of history he minimises facts of this kind as much as possible’. 4 In Bose (1948), p. 283. 5 Gandhi (1958), p. 5. 6 The acronym ‘IE’ can mean ‘Indo-​European’. In this chapter it always means ‘Indian English’. 7 For example www.youtube.com/​watch?v=v9arM_​agKFA. 8 Kachru (1994), p. 515. 9 The study is (Bansal, 1969), and it is cited by Wells (1982), p. 631. 10 A grammarian would say that the present perfect tense is more accurately described as ‘the present tense with perfective aspect’. 11 The colleague was Keith Morrow, and the book was Morrow and Johnson (1979). 12 Sentences (2), (3) and (5) are from Sedlatschek (2009). Sentence (1) is from Hansen et al. (1996). Sentence (4) is from Verma (1982). 13 Many (but not all) of these examples come from the ‘English Language and Usage Stack Exchange’ website (https://​english.stackexchange.com/​questions/​107454/​indian-​english-​ use-​of-​only). A number were sent in by a contributor who signs himself ‘James’.

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10

Pidgins, Creoles, and Tok Pisin A ‘ghastly mutilated English’?

10.1  An extraordinary linguistic event Less than two hundred miles from the coast of the United States, something linguistically extraordinary happened. Languages, which in normal circumstances take hundreds of years to develop, were being created in very short spaces of time. How did this come about? The Caribbean Sea has land on three sides: the United States to the north, central America to the west, and South America to the south. There are over seven hundred islands in the area, which is known as the Caribbean. The largest are Cuba, and Hispaniola, made up of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The area’s name comes from the word Carib, taken from a Spanish word meaning ‘indigenous person’; some say it is the word from which Shakespeare took the name of his character Caliban in The Tempest. Christopher Columbus first reached the islands in the 1490s. Soon after, the Spanish and Portuguese colonised parts of the area, followed by the British, French, and Dutch. Gold was an initial commercial interest, but sugar plantations became increasingly important: the vast majority of Europe’s sugar came from the area. Around twelve million slaves were brought over from Africa to work, in appalling conditions, in the Caribbean and the United States, and when the slave trade ended in the nineteenth century, large numbers of Asians continued to go to the area to work. Given such diverse ethnic backgrounds, you will not be surprised that the linguistic situation in the Caribbean was complex. The largest islands –​Cuba and Hispaniola –​took on Spanish, while the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique used French. In other islands like Aruba and Curaçao it was Dutch, and in many more, English. There are areas of the Caribbean which can be regarded as Inner Circle, with something close to StE as their first language. Traders and their slave workers came from different linguistic backgrounds, and they needed a lingua franca for communication purposes. The answer lay in ‘pidgin’ languages, defined in Matthews (2014) as simplified forms of speech ‘developed as a medium of trade, or through other extended but limited contact, between groups of speakers who have no other language in common’. The word is said to come from the way that the Chinese pronounced ‘business’, which was the word’s original meaning. Pidgins are usually versions of some base language, so we can talk about French-​based, Portuguese-​based, English-​based pidgins, and so on. There are about thirty English-​based pidgins in the world. 157

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Pidgins are always second or foreign languages. They are extraordinary because of the speed with which they come into being, and as we shall see later in this chapter, the urgent need for communication leads to all kinds of linguistic ingenuity. When pidgin speakers marry and have children, pidgin becomes the children’s first language, and it is then called a creole. Because the situations in which the native-​speaker children will use the language are more diverse, creoles are required to cater for a wider range of needs, and are therefore more complex –​and less subject to variation from one speaker to another –​than pidgins. In this chapter, when we want an umbrella term to refer to pidgins and creoles together, we’ll use the term ‘pidgins’. A journey through the Caribbean would reveal that there are very many varieties of pidgins, differing as to how much they deviate from StE. These different varieties have different statuses, which relate rather closely to the social status of the speakers; it’s a little like the use of post-​vocalic /​r/​in New York English, which we discussed in 7.5. To capture this idea of different varieties, linguists have developed the notion of a ‘creole continuum’. At one end of the continuum are versions of the language which are close to StE, and these are called the ‘acrolect’. At the other end are varieties close to creole, known as the ‘basilect’. Between the two are ‘mesolects’. Why not explore the etymologies of these three words, which clearly reveals their base meanings. Activity 10A (I gave him) looks at an example taken from Guyanese Creole, Guyana being a country on the north coast of South America, between Venezuela and Suriname –​an area which is considered part of the Caribbean. Do the activity before reading on. Table 10.1  The Guyanese creole continuum from Macaulay (2006: 173). English         I gave him          Acrolect             a geev him             a geev im             a geev ii             a giv him             a giv im             a giv ii             a did giv hii             a did giv ii             a did gi ii             a di gii ii             a di gi ii             mi di gi hii             mi di gii ii             mi bin gi ii             mi bin gii ii             mi bin gii am Guyanese Creole     mi gii am           Basilect

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As you will have worked out, the different forms associated with each word are: I: a, mi gave: geev, giv, did giv, did gi, did gii, di gi, di gii, bin gi, bin gii, gii. him: im, ii, hii, am It’s clear that some of these forms are more distant from the acrolect than others. We can all probably agree that geev, for example, is more like give than gii is; also that im is closer to him than am is. But your own ordering of the mesolects may well not be as above. Your creole continuum may be different, and that’s to be expected. The important points are to understand the principles of ordering, and to see that there is indeed a continuum to be found here.

10.2  Some features of pidgins and creoles Because pidgins are used by speakers of different first languages, and for the limited amount of communication required in work situations, they tend to be simplified and restricted in comparison with standard forms of the language. Here are three examples of grammatical simplification, taken from different pidgins. There are questions for you to ask yourself under each example. In each case, say how the pidgin and creole sentences differ from the version of English you are familiar with:1 (1) Jamaican Creole  di daag kech di pus?  ‘did the dog catch the cat?’ How does the example suggest questions are formed? (2) Hawaiian Pidgin  ai no si dem buk  ‘I didn’t see those books’ How is the negative formed? (3) Ghanaian Pidgin  a go skuul everidey  ‘I go to school every day’ a go skuul las wik  ‘I went to school last week’. How is time/​tense expressed? Sentence (1) illustrates the simplified word order of pidgins and creoles. In StE, we often distinguish statements from questions by word order. In questions, the subject, and some part of the verb are inverted –​She liked it/​Did she like it? In pidgins statements and questions are often the same grammatically, with the difference being marked by intonation. Hence the sentence in (1) can be either a statement or a question. Another feature is the lack of ‘grammatical’ words. In StE we form some negatives by introducing a part of the verb do –​He saw it/​He didn’t see it. In Hawaiian pidgin (and many others), negation is indicated more simply, by using no, as shown in (2). Inflections are also often avoided. In StE the usual inflection for marking the past tense is by the suffix -​ed: in the sentence They visited Venice, it is the -​ed that tells you the time is past. Pidgins often rely either on context, or use of an 159

Pidgins, Creoles, and Tok Pisin

adverbial phrase to mark present and past tense. Hence the Ghanaian Pidgin examples in (3). We’ll see another example of this in 10.3.3, under the heading ‘Tense and aspect’.2 Simplification sometimes applies to pronunciation too, and some pidgins have simplified vowel systems, as well as a lack of diphthongs. But pidgins are perhaps most fascinating for the inventive ways they use to expand their vocabularies. Because of their restricted uses, they are often ‘underlexicalised’, meaning that they have small vocabularies. This particularly becomes a problem when a pidgin turns into a creole, where the situations in which they need to be used grow considerably. Box 10.1 illustrates three strategies for lexical development used in pidgins.

Box 10.1  Sranan word-​formation One common way for pidgins to expand their vocabulary is ‘reduplication’. This is where a word is repeated, to form a new lexical item with a slightly different meaning. The examples below are taken from ‘Sranan’, an English-​ based pidgin used in Suriname –​a South American country with the Atlantic to the north, French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, and Brazil to the south. Like many pidgins in the area, it was developed for communication between West African slaves and British colonists. A common use of reduplication is to mean ‘very’. So in Sranan, dotti means ‘dirty’, and dotti dotti is ‘very dirty’. Similarly, anene is ‘large’, and anene nene is ‘very large’. Then there’s the verb kotti (‘to cut’) and the noun kottikotti, which describes something cut into small pieces. But reduplication can be used for the very opposite purpose, to create a diminutive. So ferfi is ‘to paint’, and ferfiferfi is ‘to paint a bit’. ‘A little bit’, or ‘-​ish’ is another meaning: jongoe-​jongoe doesn’t mean ‘very young’, but ‘youngish’. Another major means of vocabulary expansion is by inventing compounds. So dray-​ay (literally ‘turn-​eye’) is ‘dizziness’; dungro-​oso (‘dark-​house) is ‘prison’; and agu-​meti (‘pig-​meat’) is ‘pork’. Paraphrase is often also used. What do you imagine these Sranan paraphrases and compounds mean: watra va hai (literally ‘water of eye’), kassi fo klossi (‘case for clothes’), biggi-​futtu (‘big foot’)?1 AS 1

  The examples in this box have been taken from Kouwenberg and LaCharité   (2011), Braun (2009), and Bell (2013; taken from Adamson and Smith, 1995).

The communicative situation in which pidgins are used is often ‘bosses to workers’. But any ‘ruler to ruled’ situation creates the right conditions, and there is an interesting suggestion that English itself had characteristics of a pidgin in its early days. From about 800 to 1066, the Vikings ruled parts of Britain. Their 160

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language was Old Norse –​similar to Old English, but with differences. The rulers and ruled had to develop a means of communication, and according to some linguists, English took on some features of pidgin for the purpose. ‘It cannot be doubted,’ Bailey and Marold (1977: 22) argue, ‘that [Middle English] is a mixed language or creole’. The theory is controversial, but it is interesting because it could account for the comparative grammatical simplicity of ME in relation to OE. Many OE complex noun, adjective, and verb forms dropped away in ME –​just the sorts of grammatical items that one would expect to disappear in a pidgin. If the theory is true, we have partially to thank the processes of pidginisation for the comparative simplicity of some areas of English grammar. The examples we have been looking at illustrate that pidgins come from various areas in the world. The Caribbean is a major one: Haitian Creole is the official language of Haiti; then there’s Jamaican Patois, Belizean Creole, Virgin Islands Creole, Bahamian Creole, and many more. The Hawaiian Islands have a pidgin which originated on sugarcane plantations for communication between local workers, English-​speaking residents, and foreign immigrants. Mention has also been made of Ghanaian Pidgin. Ghana is in West Africa, and this is another major area where pidgins have become common. They were originally developed in relation to the slave trade, but still flourish today. The term ‘West African Pidgin English’ (WAPE) is used for a number of pidgins in the region, and it is estimated that in 2017, some 75 million people used it, in Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, and Equatorial Guinea; in Nigeria alone, it has five million speakers. While West African countries were seeking independence from colonial rule, WAPE often came to be regarded as the language of liberty and anti-​colonialism. Another area where pidgins and creoles have flourished is the West Pacific. In Vanuatu, a group of islands a thousand miles east of Australia, the language known as Bislama is spoken. It is an English-​based creole, initially developed in the late nineteenth century when many thousands of Vanuatu inhabitants were sent to Queensland to work on plantations. When they returned home, they brought their pidgin language with them. Six hundred miles north-​west of Vanuatu is another group of islands –​the Solomon Islands. Their language, known as ‘Pijin’ or ‘Neo-​Solomonic’, has similar origins to Bislama. Then, a thousand miles west of the Solomon Islands lies the country to whose language we shall devote the rest of this chapter. A detailed look at it will give you a good sense of what an English-​based pidgin is like.

10.3  Tok Pisin 10.3.1  The language, and where it is spoken If ever a language had a bad press, it’s this one. Here are some things people have said about it: ‘a screamingly funny way of speaking’, ‘a wondrous mishmash’, an ‘ugly jargon’, ‘a dreadful parody of the Anglo-​Saxon language’, 161

Pidgins, Creoles, and Tok Pisin

‘ghastly mutilated English’, ‘of cannibalistic primitiveness’, ‘the most dreadful language of all’.3 The language is Tok Pisin. It is spoken in part of New Guinea, one of the world’s largest islands, situated just north of Australia (about a hundred miles away at its closest point). The island seems to have got its name from the fact that the inhabitants reminded the early explorers (Portuguese and Spanish venturers in the sixteenth century) of the people in the African state of Guinea. The western part of the island is now Indonesian. The eastern part is known as Papua New Guinea, and it is here that Tok Pisin is spoken. One theory about the origin of the word ‘Papua’ is that it derives from the Malay term orang papuwah, meaning ‘man curly-​haired’.4 PNG (as the country is often called) has a population of about eight million, and its capital is Port Moresby. In the late eighteenth century, the Germans settled in the north of the island, drawn by the presence of coconut oil. The British responded by creating a protectorate in the south, which they called British New Guinea. In the early twentieth century, PNG was administered by Australia but remained in the control of Britain, till it was given independence in 1975. Tok Pisin: TP for short. The word tok means ‘talk’, ‘word’, and Pisin: well, we’ve discussed that word enough already, in 10.1. You can see the usual pidgin → creole development in TP. It was first used as a lingua franca between workers and bosses on plantations in PNG and Queensland. But ‘Papua New Guinea is’, says Todd, 1984:158) ‘without doubt, one of the most multilingual countries on earth’, so soon the workers found it a useful way of communicating with each other. From the beginning of the twentieth century, it became a language of administration and power, and since the end of the Second World War it has become a creole for many speakers. Though TP has words coming from German, Portuguese, Malay, as well as some local languages, it is truly English-​based. You can find plenty of examples of TP online, and now might be the time to sample some.5

10.3.2  A Party Invitation In this section, we are going to look at an example of TP in considerable detail. It is taken from Mühlhäusler et al. (2003: 247), a book which provides a fascinating collection of TP texts.6 If your interest in pidgin versions of English is restricted, then you can just read through the text, look at the free translation of it in the Answer Section, and move on to 10.3.3. If you decide to look at the example following the procedure suggested below, it will give you a greater understanding of how pidgins work, and also the opportunity for close linguistic analysis of a text. The passage is an invitation card to a party. Details of the party are first given; the person holding the party can fill in the address, date and time, and why it is being held. Then it’s suggested that if you plan to come you should bring something with you. An amusing list of possible things to bring is given, and you are asked to put a tick in a box () beside what you choose. First read through the text quickly, trying to pick up its general gist: 162

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Mi Laik invaitim yu Long smatpela pati long _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​  adres. long _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​det na  taim. as bilong pati olsem _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​. Yu mas kisim dispela samtim I kam wantim yu:-​  wan

katon bia.

 tupela

katon bia.

 tenpela  wisiki

katon bia.

o bakadi, twentisikis sais.

 sikispela  tenpela  ol

yangpela meri.

hensan man.

kaset yu stilim long mi long bipo yet.

 b-​b-​q

stek na sosis.

 dispela

seksi gel i stap wantim yu long disco las wik.

 dispela

smatpela man i draivim yu long spots ka.

 ol

wantok bilong yu.

 ol

boys bilong Paga Panthers ragbilig tim.

 Ol

narapela samting mi raitim daunbilo.

It’s likely that you didn’t understand much of the text on first reading. Here is a procedure to help you understand more: (a) Read through the text again slowly, picking out words whose meaning you can guess. Remember that TP is English-​based, so though many of the words will have unfamiliar spellings, you may recognise them if you say them to yourself. There is room under the text for you to write words you think you understand. For example, if you think stek (six lines from the end) means ‘steak’, write ‘steak’ underneath it –​it does, by the way. (b) Here now are some pieces of information that will help you understand more. Read these points, then go through the passage again, filling in more words under the text: 163

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• The suffix -​pela (from English ‘fellow’) has several uses. It can simply mark an adjective, and it is also used on the end of numerals. It can also be a determiner, as in words like dispela, which means ‘this’. • Long is a preposition, used for many English prepositions, like at, in, to, from. The language’s other main preposition is bilong (from English ‘belong’). It is used as a *possessive; so haus bilong John means ‘John’s house’. • i is what is called a ‘predicate marker’, used to mark the beginning of a sentence’s *predicate, particularly when the subject is in the third person. So an English sentence like ‘This man likes tennis’, might contain the predicate marker i. A helpful way of thinking of this is that the i is ‘repeating’ the subject: something like ‘This man, he likes tennis’. • The suffix -​im is used to form transitive verbs. • Ol (from English ‘all’) means ‘they’. It is also used to mark a plural. And here are a couple of cultural points: • In some countries, alcoholic drinks used to be sold in fluid ounce measures, and a standard sized bottle was 26 fluid ounces. This is (very) roughly equivalent to 750 millilitres, which is a common way of measuring an alcohol bottle size today. • Paga Hill is a district in PNG’s capital, Port Moresby. Its rugby team, the ‘Paga Panthers’, is a celebrated one. The sport is very popular in PNG.  (c) Now look at the selective glossary below. It will give you a few more words to put under the text: bipo, before kisim, get, choose meri, woman (from English ‘Mary’) narapela, other (from English ‘another fellow’) olsem, thus stap, stay wantok, close friend, family (literally ‘one language’, indicating a close relationship) (d) Going through these procedures will not give you complete comprehension of the Party Invitation. Look now at the Answer Section, which gives a free translation of the text. Before leaving the Party Invitation, it is worth trying your hand at Activity 10B (What the Party Invitation shows). This invites you to analyse the text’s language in more detail.

10.3.3  Some more TP grammar Here are another two interesting grammatical aspects of TP: 164

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Inclusive and exclusive ‘we’ In standard English, the pronoun ‘we’ may or may not include the person you are speaking to (your ‘addressee’). If you are telling an acquaintance about your family, and you say Every year we like to spend Christmas at home, the we refers to you and your family, and does not include the addressee. This is the ‘exclusive we’. But if you say Shall we go to the cinema tomorrow? the we probably does include the addressee; it is the ‘inclusive we’. In StE we don’t signal this distinction in any linguistic way: our pronoun we is both exclusive and inclusive. But TP, together with some other Melanesian languages, does mark the difference. The exclusive ‘we’ is mipela (from English ‘me fellow’), and the inclusive form is yumi (‘you me’). You may ask yourself whether this is a useful distinction to make. As with most distinctions in language, you can think of situations where it matters, though they may not be that common. When my wife and I  took our young son to nursery for the first time, we stayed with him for half an hour, to make sure he settled down. He was enjoying himself, and when we said ‘we’re going now’, he thought we were using the inclusive rather than the exclusive we, and complained ‘but I’m enjoying myself. I want to stay’. He thought we were saying yumi when we meant mipela.

Tense and aspect Activity 10C (Some TP grammar) looks at four aspects of TP grammar: expressing past and future time, finished and continuous action. Take a look at the activity before reading on. We have already seen, in 10.2, that pidgin languages sometimes do not use a grammatical verb form to express past (as well as future) time. They can either put in adverbs to make it clear what time is being referred to, or just rely on context to make this clear. These methods are often very efficient. Imagine that we did not have different tense forms in standard English; for example, if the word work was used for past worked and future will work. Using adverbs would do the job: if we said I work yesterday and I work next week, it would be very clear what time is being talked about, without the need for different verb forms. Though TP often uses adverbs or context in this way, it does in fact have grammatical words that can be used to express time. As sentences (1) and (6) in the activity show, the word expressing past tense is bin, and you will have no trouble identifying its origin as StE ‘been’. So Mi bin lukim em means ‘I saw him’. For futurity the word is bai, illustrated in sentence (2). Bai paia i lait means ‘The fire will burn’. Notice that word i here, the ‘predicate marker’ discussed in 10.3.2: the sense is ‘the fire, it will burn’. Sentences (7), (9), and (10) also use the bai-​future. The origin of the word is not so obvious as for bin; it’s from the StE phrase ‘by and by’. Sentences (3) and (5) show that finished action is signalled in a delightfully direct way by the word pinis. Its StE origin is ‘finish’. Incidentally, TP speakers find English /​f/​hard to pronounce, and often change it into /​p/​, Find the other example in the activity’s sentences where changing a TP /​p/​into /​f/​makes the association with a StE word clear. 165

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Continuous action is expressed by the word stap (often preceded by the i word). Sentences 4 and 8 show stap in action. As you have probably worked out, the word comes from ‘stop’, but you may well be wondering how ‘stopping’ relates to the concept of ‘continuing’. The idea of an action ‘staying’ or ‘remaining’ in progress is the answer.7

10.3.4 TP words As you would expect, TP takes words from the various languages it has been in contact with. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, part of PNG was German, and a number of German words remain in the language. German Kartoffeln (‘potatoes’) became TP kartopel; Käse (‘cheese’) became kese; and German raus (‘get out’) kept the same form in TP. There are Portuguese borrowings too: TP pikinini (for ‘child’) came from Portuguese pequanino. Variations of this word are found in other pidgin languages, as are versions of Portuguese saber (‘know’), which is save in TP; another pidgin version is savvy, a word which exists in StE as a noun meaning ‘shrewd knowledge’. These Portuguese borrowings can be explained by the fact that, as we saw in 10.3.1, the Portuguese were early explorers. But Portuguese seems to have a special relationship with pidgins, and you can read about this in ER10.1 (Portuguese and pidgins). TP has words from more regional languages too, like Malay, and Kuanua (a language spoken by the Tolai people of PNG). Being English-​based, the vast majority of TP words have English origins. Here’s a short collection.8 Before looking underneath the list at what the words mean, you may like to try and guess –​easy in some cases, less so in others: (1) (3) (5) (7) (9)

bagarap brumim sop rot susok

(2) (4) (6) (8) (10)

belhat hap tasol nostrong aislip

The meanings: (1) ‘Broken’, from ‘buggered up’. (2) ‘Angry’, from ‘belly hot’. (3) ‘To sweep’. Brum is ‘broom’, with the verb suffix -​im. (4) ‘Piece’, from ‘half’; ‘purple’ is hap red. (5) ‘Soap’. (6) ‘Only’, from ‘that’s all’. (7) ‘Road’. (8) ‘Weak’ (‘no strong’). (9) ‘Footwear’, from ‘shoes and socks’. (10) ‘Drowsy’, from ‘eye sleepy’. 166

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Some of these examples, like the final aislip, show that like other pidgins (take a look back at Box 10.1), TP uses compounds to enrich its vocabulary. Paraphrase too:  in British Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee year, 2012, her oldest son Prince Charles visited PNG and  –​many British newspapers reported  –​called himself nambawan pikinini bilong misis kwin. You can doubtless work out what this paraphrase means. Activity 10D (Haus, gras and more) gives fifteen more examples for you to work out.

10.4  ‘Ghastly mutilated English’? Some issues to think about at the end of this chapter: 10.3.1 opened with some damning comments about TP. Do you, in the light of what you now know, agree with them? Our discussion in the opening sections of Chapter 4, especially 4.3, is relevant here. You may like to go over these sections again. One point illustrated in 4.2 is that non-​standard language varieties may be enriched by distinctions that are not made in standard English. Find an example that we have discussed in relation to TP. Another point from 4.2 is that non-​standard varieties are not random (or ‘slovenly’): they do in fact have rules, though these may be different from rules in standard varieties. Consider some rules that we have discussed in relation to TP. In what other ways might TP be regarded as ‘inferior’ to standard English? Consider some reasons, and discuss (in groups, or ‘with yourself’) their validity. Pidgins show what ‘happens’ to a language when it comes to be used in a specific set of circumstances. Given what you have read, say what these circumstances are; and how you would characterise what ‘happens’: the linguistic changes that result from the specific circumstances. And a final question: are pidgins really English? They may be ‘English-​based’, but is it really appropriate to have a chapter on them in a book about the history of English? TP seems to be very distant from the standard versions of English found in Inner Circle countries (and indeed in most Outer Circle countries too). But is degree of difference relevant? After all, OE is also very different from today’s standard varieties, and no-​one would argue that OE is not part of the history of English. What do you think? Would you include pidgins in your history of English?

Activity section Activity 10A  I gave him Macaulay (2006) illustrates the creole continuum in relation to Guyanese Creole. The form he looks at is the StE I gave him. This is the acrolect form. He lists seventeen other versions, varying in a continuum from the acrolect down to the basilect  –​the form most distant from StE, and deemed the most ‘creole’. The versions are given below, in random order. 167

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(a) consider the various dimensions in which they differ:  for example, how many different ways of saying ‘I’ are there? And ‘gave’, and ‘him’? (b) Put these versions into a continuum according to how like or unlike they are to the StE form. Which is closest to StE, which least, and how would you grade the forms in between? a giv ii mi bin gi ii a did giv hii mi di gii ii

a did giv ii mi bin gii am mi bin gii ii a geev ii

a geev him a geev im mi gii am

mi di gi hii a did gi ii a giv im

a di gii ii a giv him a di gi ii

Macaulay’s continuum is given in the text.

Activity 10B  What the Party Invitation shows   AS Here are five questions about the language of the Party Invitation. (1) What is the TP for ‘and’? (2) Find examples of pela used to form an adjective, as part of a numeral, as a determiner. (3) What different English prepositions does long stand for in the Party Invitation? (4) How is plurality marked in TP nouns? Give some examples. (5) TP sometimes tries to avoid double consonants, by inserting a vowel. So ‘smell’ is simel. Find two examples in the Party Invitation where English words are changed in this way. Incidentally, this process of inserting a vowel has been discussed elsewhere in this book; where?

Activity 10C  Some TP grammar Here are some sentences illustrating four aspects of TP grammar: the past tense; the future tense; expressing finished action (expressed by a present or *past perfect tense in English); continuous aspect. (a) Work out how the sentences suggest each of these aspects is expressed in TP. (b) The TP words used in these grammatical constructions all come from StE. What are their StE origins? The constructions are discussed in the text. (1) (2) (3) (4)

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Mi bin lukim em Bai paia i lait Em i kaikai pinis Em i stap kaikai

I saw him The fire will burn He has eaten He is eating

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(5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Em i lusim bot pinis Na praim minister i bin tok olsem Bai em i no lukim mi Em i sipm i stap Em bai ol i go long rum Em bai wokim

He had got out of the boat And the prime minister spoke thus He won’t see me He/​she is sleeping They will go to their rooms now He will work

Activity 10D  Haus, gras and more  AS Here are some compounds and paraphrases used in TP.9 What might they mean? A selective glossary is given below. (1) (3) (5) (7) (9) (11) (13) (15)

haus kaikai haus sik haus dring kaikai bilong nait sop bilong gras gras bilong het bel bilong me kaskas gat tupela bel

(2) (4) (6) (8) (10) (12) (14)

haus moni haus dok sik kaikai bilong moningtaim sop bilong tit skru bilong han ai bilong me pas lait bilong klaut

Selective glossary Ai, eye Bel, stomach (belly) Dok, dog Dring, drink Gras, grass (hair) Han, hand, arm Kaikai, food Kaskas, annoyed Klaut, cloud Pas, blocked Tit, teeth

Answer section Box 10.1  Sranan word-​formation watra va hai are ‘tears’, kassi fo klossi is ‘wardrobe’, and biggi-​futtu is ‘thigh’.

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Section 10.2  The Party Invitation A colloquial translation: You are invited to a cool party at _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ on _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​, at _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​. Please bring something with you: a carton of beer, two cartons of beer, ten cartons of beer, a full bottle of whisky or Bacardi, six young women, ten handsome men, the cassettes you stole from me earlier, B-​B-​Q steaks and sausages, the sexy girl with you at the disco last week, the cool man who drove you in his sports car, some of your close friends, the Paga Panther’s rugby team, other things written below.

Activity 10B  What the Party Invitation shows (1) na. (2) As an adjective: smatpela, yangpela, narapela; in a numeral: tupela, tenpela, sikispela; as a determiner: dispela. (3) at, on, from, in. (4) Often the plural form is the same as the singular. For example: katon, meri, man, kaset, stek, sosis, wantok. Sometimes the word ol shows that a noun is plural: ol kaste, ol wantok, ol boys, ol narapela. Occasionally TP uses the English -​s plural suffix: boys. (5) wisiki, tweltisikis, and sikispela. Vowel insertion of this sort was discussed in 9.4.1 in relation to Indian English.

Activity 10D  Haus, gras, and more (1) restaurant (‘food house’) (2) bank (‘money house’) (3) hospital (‘sick house’) (4) animal hospital (‘sick-​dog house’) (5) hotel (‘drink house’) (6) breakfast (‘morning’s food’) (7) dinner (‘night’s food’) (8) toothpaste (‘teeth’s soap’) (9) shampoo (‘hair’s soap’) (10) elbow (‘arm’s screw’) (11) hair (‘head’s grass’) (12) blind (‘my eye is blocked’) (13) annoyed (‘my stomach has the itch’) (14) lightning (‘cloud’s light’) (15) be in doubt (‘got two bellies’)

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Further reading There are numerous books devoted to pidgins and creoles. Arends et al. (1995) has a section entitled ‘Sketches of individual languages’, and this includes short descriptions of Eskimo pidgin, Haitian, and Sranan, among others. There is also a section dealing with ‘theories of genesis’, including the monogenesis theory. Scholars have long been interested in similarities between pidgin languages and the language of those acquiring a first or second language. Romaine’s (1988) wide-​ranging study includes a chapter on this topic. It is a topic central to Bickerton’s (1981) classic study of creoles and how they reveal important aspects of the development of language. Todd’s (1990) book is a clearly-​written introduction to the field. Like Arends et al. (1995) it contains (very brief) sketches on a number of languages, but has a more lengthy description of TP. Equally approachable is Holm’s (2000) introduction to the field. Mühlhäusler et  al. (2003) was mentioned in 10.3.2. It contains a fascinating collection of TP texts.

Notes 1 Sentence (1) was taken from Thomas-​Forbes (2017), and the sentences in (3) from Amoako (1992). 2 Many more grammatical features of pidgins have been noted. Romaine (1988: 47) discusses twelve found in the literature. 3 The quotes are from Mühlhäusler et.al. (2003: 1); they all are found in the German literature on Tok Pisin. 4 This derivation is suggested by Todd (1984: 209). 5 On YouTube, for example: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=qn6h7A_​ddHc and www.youtube. com/​watch?v=raX_​B10ytWI. 6 The card was originally produced by the Grassroots Comic Company. 7 In Activity 10C, sentences (1), (2), (3), (4), and (7)  are from Todd (1984). Sentences (5)  and (9)  are from Mühlhäusler (1991), and sentences (6)  and (8)  from Romaine (1991). 8 Some of these examples are from Mühlhäusler et al. (2003). 9 The examples are taken from Mühlhäusler et  al. (2003), Todd (1984), and Wikipedia (https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Tok_​Pisin).

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11.1  English seepage In Iceland, Finland, Latvia, Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Korea, China, Indonesia, Morocco, Ethiopia, Mali, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina. For science, technology, medicine, computers, business, trade, shipping, aviation, diplomacy, international organisations, mass media, entertainment, journalism, youth culture, education, sports. English is everywhere, being used to talk about everything.1 In this chapter we will see how English has spread way beyond the contexts we have so far been considering. We are now well and truly in the ‘Expanding Circle’ (go back to 9.1 if you want to be reminded about this term). We will explore how English has adapted, during the past century, to fit in with its new global roles; and we’ll begin with a quick look at how it has made its way (‘seeped’, you might say) into other languages. Languages worldwide have imported English words. This is done with varying degrees of governmental support. The Malaysian Ministry of Education, for example, have accepted systematic adaptations of English words into their language, Bahasa Malaysia. McArthur (1998) gives some examples; they include inci for ‘inch’, kafling for ‘cuff-​link’, mekap for ‘make-​up’, and derebar for ‘driver’. If you’d like to see how some English words and expressions have made their way into another language –​Japanese –​take a look at Activity 11A (Aisukurimu for anyone?). In Europe  –​a continent full of fiercely proud language communities  –​ borrowed English words have sometimes been less welcome. The French still have their Academy (we first mentioned it in 1.3) which stands as an official authority on the French language, and there have been various Commissions in the twentieth century to enrich and take care of that language –​which can involve attempts to keep out borrowings from English. The Wikipedia entry for ‘Académie française’ gives as examples the Academy’s suggestions to avoid the terms walkman, computer, software, and e-​mail, using French equivalents instead: baladeur, ordinateur, logiciel, and courriel. But the English impetus is very strong, and little can be done to stop the influx. Sometimes European borrowings lead to rather strange changes of meaning. Hence the word handy has made its way into German to mean ‘mobile phone’ –​ perhaps because mobile phones are, well, handy. The word is now in such 172

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common use in German-​speaking countries that even British people living there use it: ‘Can I borrow your handy?’ someone might say. This is one small example. Görlach (2001a) lists over 4,000 in his Dictionary of European anglicisms. He has also edited a collection entitled English in Europe (2004), which looks at the influence of English on sixteen European languages. Some of the ways in which European languages adapt English words are indeed fascinating. Take the issue of gender, for example. In many European languages –​ like French, German, and Italian –​all nouns have a gender. Sometimes the choice is between three, sometimes two. In German, for example, a noun can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. The gender sometimes affects the noun suffixes used, and very often the form of the determiner. For instance, ‘the man’ is der Mann (masculine), ‘the woman’ is die Frau (feminine), and ‘the girl’ is das Fräulein (neuter). These examples show that gender is sometimes decided by ‘natural meaning’ –​men are masculine and women are feminine. But the girl example shows that this is not always the case:  real-​life girls are not neuter. Often, of course, ‘natural meaning’ does not come into it:  a German chair happens to be masculine (der Stuhl), while a door is feminine (die Tür). Notice that the determiners in English do not show gender –​it’s the same word the in all cases. Also, though there are some noun endings that suggest a gender (feminine -​ess is a good example), English nouns do not mark gender. So what happens to an English noun when it goes into German, French, or Italian, where it needs to be ‘assigned’ a gender? Before reading on, think about this issue, and how European languages might solve it. ‘Natural meaning’ can play a part. So the French la first lady has the feminine determiner la because the first lady is feminine. Sometimes how a word is written suggests a gender. In the French of France, many nouns ending in a consonant are masculine, so we have le job (le is the masculine definite article). But in Quebec French, you find la job (feminine).2 In other cases, translation may play a part. Thus we have la day-​school (feminine) because the French l’école (‘school’) is feminine. It is worth adding that in French, masculine is the most common gender, so a good number of English words going into French end up as masculine.3 Görlach’s edited collection is full of examples showing how versatile people are at word creation in language. The chapter on Croatian, for example, looks at the suffix -​gate. It started life, of course, in the word ‘Watergate’, from the name of the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The word came to relate to the political scandal involving President Nixon and the Watergate Building break-​in. The -​gate suffix then came to be used in relation to any major scandal. So when the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River was intentionally closed, allegedly for political reasons, the associated political scandal was called ‘Bridgegate’. The -​gate suffix then made its way into other languages. There was a vajijagate scandal (‘suitcase scandal’) in Venezuela, and Filipović (2004) gives several examples from Croatian:  agrogejt, Šajbergate, Fadilgate,

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and ideogate. Notice how three of these keep the English spelling -​gate, while the other ‘Croatianises’ it into gejt.

11.2  ELF Three questions to think about: (1) What percentage of English spoken around the world is between native speakers? (2) What percentage is between native speakers and non-​native speakers? (3) What percentage is between non-​native speakers? The statistics Graddol (2007) gives are:  four percent for (1), twenty-​two percent for (2), and seventy-​four percent for (3). The figures clearly show who now ‘owns’ the language. And here’s another statistic which may surprise you: that around a billion people speak English as a foreign language. As we saw in the list at the beginning of this chapter, they live in countries all over the globe. How come so many people are speaking English, in so many places? The world is getting smaller by the day. We now live, as Crystal (2003) puts it, in a global village (a term coined by the Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan). This is partly because systems of transport and communication have developed so dramatically. We can now travel to any part of the globe in not much more than a day (assuming easily accessible airports). And we can exchange messages across the world by email faster than we can type them. This means that people with different first languages find themselves increasingly wanting to communicate with each other. A global lingua franca is needed. We have come across the lingua franca idea twice before. In 9.3 we met it in relation to the Indian subcontinent, and the need for a common language across communities speaking different languages. We came across it again in 10.1 in the PNG context; initially, Tok Pisin served the purpose to allow bosses and workers to communicate, but the usage spread to inter-​worker communication. Lingua francas will also reappear in Chapter 12. Take a look at ER11.1 (The Franks’ language) for some brief general background to the idea. When we speak of a global lingua franca we are talking about inter-​national rather than intra-​ national communication. This role of English as an international lingua franca has interested linguists much recently. Books about ‘World Englishes’ (Melchers and Shaw, 2011, and Kachru et al., 2006, for example) discuss the matter, and there is now a separate area of study, with its own acronym –​ ELF, for ‘English as a Lingua Franca’; Jenkins et al., 2017, and Seidlhofer (2011) are key texts. ELF discussion often focuses on a specific part of the world. Kirkpatrick (2008 and 2011), for example, concentrate on English as an Asian lingua franca. An ‘Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) was formed in 1967 and now has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the 174

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Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its aim is ‘to strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community of Southeast Asian nations’. The Association’s Charter states that ‘the working language of ASEAN shall be English’. English is there, right in the Charter, and its importance has led some of the member states to use English as the medium of instruction in education. ‘ASEAN ELF’, Kirkpatrick says (2008: 28), ‘is not a single variety’, and there are naturally differences between the use of English in the member states. Indeed, some of the member countries, like Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, count as ‘Outer Circle’ countries, and have a strong colonial history. Other ASEAN countries, like Indonesia and Thailand are quite different, and English standards in those countries can be quite low. There are also, of course, differences in English usage as the various different native languages make their way into the version of English used. But there are still characteristics shared by English language usage across these countries, and Kirkpatrick lists some of them. You will probably not be surprised at his list, because you have already seen many of its contents appearing in discussion of other English varieties mentioned in this book. On the pronunciation level, for example, we find the StE sounds /​ð/​and /​θ/​ –​which many non-​native speakers find difficult to pronounce –​replaced by /​t/​and /​d/​. Another characteristic relates to syllable-​and stress-​timing, which we talked about in 9.4.1 in relation to Indian English. Speakers of all Asian syllable-​timed languages tend to have problems with English ‘weak’ forms, for example, where a vowel becomes /​ə/​in an unstressed syllable. One of Kirkpatrick’s examples is When I first came TO Singapore; an RP speaker might weaken the vowel in ‘to’, making it /​ə/​, while an Asian ELF speaker might maintain the ‘strong’ vowel, /​uː/​. As far as grammar is concerned, Kirkpatrick notes the loss of that final -​s on third person present tense verbs, one of the ‘variation attractors’ that we discussed in 4.4.2. There is also a tendency to use present tense forms for past time reference –​one of Kirkpatrick’s examples is I couldn’t see; that why I just sit and take a rest (where the meaning is ‘sat’ and ‘took’). Another geographical area where linguistic attention has been given to ELF is Europe, and it is common today to hear people speak of Euro-​English. But does Euro-​English really exist? English is certainly used as a lingua franca within the European Union (though that may change now that the United Kingdom is no longer a member), and indeed throughout the continent. According to a 2005 European Survey, thirteen percent of EU citizens spoke English as their native language (in Britain and Ireland, largely), while another thirty-​eight percent of EU citizens claimed to have sufficient skills in English to hold a conversation.4 But is the English spoken sufficiently similar to count as a special variety, with its own name: Euro-​English. Or are we just talking about various versions according to nationality: Swenglish for English with a Swedish touch, Spanglish with a Spanish one, and some even talk about Porglish (Portuguese English). Incidentally, there’s a long list of worldwide ‘-​lishes’ in Lambert (2018). Certainly, English speakers from different nationalities bring different characteristics to their version of English. Take tag questions, for example, which 175

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we talked about several times, particularly in ER6.3. Because they are quite complex to form in English, they can cause foreign learners a lot of trouble. A French speaker might produce a tag question in English using isn’t it? (He likes chocolate, isn’t it?) because that reflects a French way of forming tags using n’est-​ce pas. Spanglish is more likely to have He likes chocolate, no? because Spanish tag questions often use a similar construction with no. Perhaps the degree of uniformity in Euro-​English is not as great as it is in Asian Englishes, but there are still sufficient similarities between various European versions of ELF to make it possible to speak at least of an emerging entity called Euro-​English. What are the linguistic characteristics of Euro-​ English? Jenkins (2003) discusses accent, and it is not surprising that the /​ð/​and /​θ/​sounds mentioned earlier appear again here, with many European English speakers replacing them with /​t/​and /​d/​. Seidlhofer –​for example in her 2001 paper –​talks about grammatical features. Before reading on, look at Activity 11B (Euro-​English grammar?) which asks you to characterise some of these; the question mark at the end of the activity’s title recognises the fact that a standard Euro-​English variety is in the process of emerging, rather than being fully established. Some of the examples in the activity show characteristics you have met before in this book. Sentence (1) for example (he look very sad) shows the omission of the third person singular present tense -​s suffix, just mentioned in relation to Asian ELF. Sentence (5) shows a characteristic which Seidlhofer (2004: 220) describes as ‘overusing certain verbs of high semantic generality, such as so, have, make, put, take’. In this case, arguably, define has been replaced by ‘make a definition’. Think why it should be that non-​native speakers of English should rely on verbs like these so much. Sentence (7) shows the use of an infinitive rather than the StE -​ing form. Choosing whether to use an infinitive or an -​ing form is a complex issue in English grammar, and it’s worth consulting a book like Swan (2016) to understand what’s involved. In (7)  the speaker has probably been seduced by the fact that to can be an infinitive marker, as in I want to go, and this has led them to say to see. But in fact here the word to is a preposition, part of the phrase look forward to, and this phrase is followed by the -​ing form in StE. Another construction with a preposition to that needs -​ing in StE is used to. It is he’s not used to walking rather than he’s not used to walk. Like the ‘infinitive versus -​ing’ issue, English also has an ‘infinitive versus that clause’ one. Some verbs, like hope, can be followed by a that clause (I hope that you’ll come, for example), while others cannot. Sentence (8)’s want needs an infinitive with to: as in I want us to discuss my work. The first example in (9) relates to the fact that some nouns that are *uncountable in StE, are *countable in many European languages; StE does not use information and advice in the plural. The second example in (9) shows a speaker seduced by the final ‘s’ on news into thinking that the word is plural –​hence the verb form come rather than comes. The examples we have been considering have been to do with grammar, and it’s worth noting in passing (as a number of writers on this topic have), that grammatical deviations from StE often do not cause problems of comprehension. 176

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The person who says he look very sad instead of he looks very sad is likely to be understood. We discussed a similar case in 10.3.3, where we argued that a lack of the proper tense forms did not necessarily impair communication. Other areas of language use have been discussed in relation to ELF. Box 11.1 looks at a particularly interesting one.

Box 11.1  Frogs and grandmothers Kirkpatrick (2008) discusses ELF in the ASEAN context. As well as looking at pronunciation and grammar, he also considers ‘communication strategies’ –​ the strategies people use when communicating in a lingua franca situation, particularly with other English speakers whose native language is different from their own. A number of these strategies are to do with handling incomprehension: what to do when someone does not understand what is being said. ‘Saying something again, in a different, simpler, way’ (paraphrasing) is a common strategy. Kirkpatrick also talks of a ‘let it pass’ strategy, where you simply allow something not understood to slip by; if it becomes clear that what you have not understood is important, then you can ask for an explanation. Perhaps you have found in your own experience that it is possible not to understand chunks of what someone is saying, and yet still catch their main gist, allowing the conversation to continue. There are some linguistic habits which you will probably avoid when speaking in an ELF situation to someone with a different native language. Code-​switching (discussed in 6.2, 7.2, and 9.4.3) is, naturally, one to avoid in conversation with someone who doesn’t speak one of the languages you are code-​switching to and from! It is also a good idea to avoid ‘local’ idioms –​ones that occur in your own language but which may not be comprehensible to native speakers of another language. Some writers call this ‘unilateral idiomaticity’. Prodromou (2007) has some interesting examples. One is the phrase a different kettle of fish, used in English to mean ‘something quite different’; (if you are interested in such things, you might like to search the internet to find out something about this phrase’s origin  –​which is far from certain). Prodromou gives a fascinating list of other rather opaque idioms, including the Serbian one should not mix frogs and grandmothers. This apparently means ‘don’t compare incomparable things’. It seems sensible to suggest that ELF speakers should avoid mentioning kettles of fish, as well as frogs and grandmothers. Incidentally, there is quite a large literature on communication strategies, particularly in the language learning and teaching fields, a major title being Bialystok (1990).

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As the use of ELF spreads, so it becomes of growing interest to linguists as a topic of study, and resources for studying it are becoming increasingly available. Between 2005 and 2013, the ‘Vienna-​Oxford International Corpus of English’ (VOICE for short) was produced. This is a collection of ‘transcripts of naturally occurring, non-​scripted face-​to-​face interactions in English as a lingua franca (ELF)’.5 Initially the emphasis was on European ELF, but it now covers spoken ELF throughout the world. Its size is about a million words. Work is also in progress on an Asian ELF corpus (ACE).

11.3  Netspeak: ‘like a jungle river’ ‘The impact of technology has been evident at every stage in English linguistic history’, says Crystal (2006:  401). Think about some technological advances through history and their impact on language use; what about the invention of printing, and also more recently of the arrival of telegrams, of the phone, of television? Finally, consider the impact of that comparatively recent arrival –​the internet –​and all that it entails: email, chatgroups, instant messaging, blogging, and virtual worlds (or MUDs, for Multi-​User Domains).6 There are some very distinctive language practices associated with what has come to be called ‘Netspeak’. Elements have made their way into normal English usage. Think, for example, of the prefix e-​. In the word email, it stands of course for ‘electronic’. Crystal (2006a) traces how the prefix has spread. In 1998, the American Dialect Society named it ‘Word of the Year’, and we now have e-​text, e-​ money, e-​tailing (retailing on the internet), e-​cards and very many others. Crystal also tells of a bookmaker who, when he started to deal through the internet, called his firm e-​we go. Take a look at Activity 11C (Downloading and offline) to see some more Netspeak expressions that have made their way into normal English. You may be able to think of others. What are the characteristics of Netspeak? Take a look at these sentences, all based on material found on the internet. Before you read what is said about them below, spend some time identifying the Netspeak characteristics of each: (1) ALRIGHT we just spoke with all the other narwhals and they would like to send ALL THEIR LOVE to this special specimen because he is PERFECT in *EVERY WAY*. (2) HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (3) wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhy was someone shooting it with a Kalashnikov. (4) Yyyyeah I’m gonna hafta put in my 2 weeks notice:( (5) Come on John. Imho you should Just.Do.It. (6) See U 2morrow jenny I hope. (7) Turmoil, tears and adventures. Everyone moving this week:  Mike to Birmingham for his new job, Andrew and Lizzie to their new home, and I’m buried under all their packing boxes. #notcrying #whatamess #exciting. 178

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Sentences (1) and (2) use capital letters. I once had several colleagues who, when they replied to an email I  had sent, wrote their reply under each point, using capital letters. There are certainly some advantages to answering points in turn, and capitals make it easy to distinguish the replies from the original message; in this case, capitals are a distinguishing marker. On one occasion I remember that a misunderstanding arose, and a colleague who had replied in capitals thought I was upset with what he had said. He wrote to explain: WHEN I WRITE IN CAPITALS, IT DOESN’T MEAN I’M SHOUTING. The association between capitals and shouting is a common one, and it is easy to see how it came about. Capitals can be used for emphasis, but also for expressing strong emotion. Gretchen McCulloch has written a fascinating book about Netspeak, called Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language (2019). She points out that some, but not all, strong emotions can be expressed by capitals; surprise comes across well in capitals, but not sadness. Her sadness example is the sentence I miss u. McCulloch thinks this might look inappropriate written in capitals: or perhaps capitals would change the feel of what was being expressed? Sentence (1) also illustrates another way of emphasis, by putting asterisks around a word. Netspeak is very often ‘speech written down’, and when we speak, we have various ways of conveying attitudes and feelings. These often involve what Crystal calls ‘prosody and paralanguage’  –​features like ‘vocal variations in pitch (intonation), loudness (stress), speed, rhythm, pause, and tone of voice’ (2006a: 37). None of these features is available to the writer, so we have to find other linguistic ways to express attitudes and feelings. Netspeak has developed various written alternatives to prosody and paralanguage. Capitals and asterisks are two: they are writing’s way of expressing emphasis and strong emotion. McCulloch also discusses repeating letters for emphasis. Sentences (3)  and (4) are examples. In both sentences, the repeated element is the first letter, but often it is the final letter, as in yayyy and nooo. Spellings like these can capture the exaggerated pronunciation that a person would use in speech to give emphasis, often by suggesting that the vowel might be prolonged, like dreaaam or dreeammm for example. But, McCulloch points out, this is not always the case. In omgggg, (‘oh my god’) for example, there is no vowel to prolong! She also has examples of where a letter that is actually silent in speech is repeated, as in dumbbb, and sameee. Or it can be a punctuation mark that is repeated –​particularly question or exclamation marks, as in sentence (2). In (4)  you also have some phonetic spelling, common in Netspeak, and another way written language finds to represent speech. Going to have to can be pronounced as if written gonna hafta. Or is it, you may ask, that the writer here just can’t spell properly? There are certainly cases in Netspeak –​as in other varieties of writing –​where you feel a deviant spelling may be produced because the person just doesn’t know the correct spelling. But in the case of (4), the spelling could well be revealing a deliberate attempt to copy speech, rather than ignorance of rules. 179

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Sentence (4) contains a ‘homemade emoticon’. These are usually facial figures representing different types of feeling –​happiness, surprise, sadness, and so on. ‘Homemade’ ones can be created by using typewriter symbols. As well as :(, there are :) for happy, and ;-​) for a wink. But, of course, internet sites supply plenty of ready-​made ones. Figure 11.1 shows some examples, and you might like to amuse yourself by saying what emotion each shows.

Figure 11.1  Some emoticons, taken from OpenMoji: https://​openmoji.org.

Another interesting way to emphasise involves putting full stops (and/​or sometimes extra spaces) between words, as in Sentence (5)’s Just.Do.It. Again, this is an attempt to replicate a spoken feature in writing. A speaker who wishes to emphasise a certain point might put strong stress on each word, with a ‘verbal full stop’ after it. Sentence (5)  also illustrates Netspeak’s predilection for abbreviations. Lol is perhaps the most common one; its literal meaning is ‘laugh out loud’, though it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint exactly when it is used. If you’re familiar with its use, you’re invited to try. Sentence (5) has imho for ‘in my humble opinion’. Look at Activity 11D (Lolspeaking) if you want to explore some more. Though Netspeak sometimes uses capitals liberally, you can often also find a dearth of capitals and punctuation, as sentence (6)  illustrates. In an article entitled ‘How to speak internet’, Richard Godwin cites a post from the internet blog site Tumblr. It says: when did tumblr collectively decide not to use punctuation like when did this happen why is this a thing … it just looks so smooth I mean look at this sentence flow like a jungle river In Chapter 2, we saw that eighteenth-​century writers, like Swift, were quick to condemn fashionable, modern usages coming into English, thereby ‘corrupting the language’. Criticisms like this have appeared at various times in history, and Netspeak is almost bound to attract them. Refreshing perhaps then to hear Godwin’s blogger being so positive: the sentence ‘flows like a jungle river’, the 180

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blogger says, because of its lack of punctuation. Godwin himself is equally positive:  ‘any concerns about what the internet is doing to our collective mental health’, he says, ‘must be set against the poetry that it has simultaneously unleashed’. Do you find poetry, or corruption, in a lack of punctuation? Sentence (7) illustrates the use of the ‘hashtag’ (#) by a Netspeaker. Its original usage was on social media sites like Twitter as a way of highlighting a particular topic so that users could easily find related material. Its usage is now more general, to draw attention to an important characteristic associated with something. The writer of (7) is summing up three characteristics of the situation she finds herself in: that she is coping (and ‘not crying’), that everything around her house is messy, and that what is happening is all very exciting. You may like to dig up some more examples of hashtag use from your own experience. Another interesting characteristic use of Netspeak is how it has developed ways of ‘not drawing attention to something’. They are particularly used by advertisers who want to try to stop their messages from being automatically put into an email spam folder, and hence being ignored. Box 11.2 looks at these.

Box 11.2  Avoiding spam triggers Anyone who uses email knows that it generates a large number of unwanted messages, often advertisements. These are called ‘spam’, a word originally describing a type of tinned meat consisting chiefly of ham, and often used as a cheaper substitute for that meat. The British TV series Monty Python’s Flying Circus made a celebrated comedy sketch about spam, and this is often thought to be the origin of the use of the word in Netspeak.1 Most email providers have a folder for spam (or what is usually referred to as ‘junk’). Messages which the providers think are spam, get put directly into this folder, so that they do not waste the user’s time. But how do providers recognise spam messages? They do it by identifying specific words which suggest spam content. Many of these ‘spam trigger words’ are associated with advertising promotions and ‘free offers’, and they include phrases like great offer, click here, and special promotion. But words like Viagra, suggesting sexual content, are also on the list.2 Spam message writers do not, of course, want their messages to go directly into spam folders, because that means the recipient will probably never look at what they have written. They therefore take steps to avoid using spam trigger words. Crystal (2011) looks at the following text from this point of view:3 supr vi-​agra online now znwygghsxp VI @ GRA 75% off regular xxp wybzz lusfg fully stocked online pharmac^y Great deals, prescription d[rugs

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This intriguing piece of text shows how trigger words like Viagra, drugs, and pharmacy are avoided. Notice too the strings of random letters which will not be spotted by a spam filter. Incidentally, as Crystal notes, in the early days of spam filtering, the attempt to filter out strings like S-​E-​X led to some unfortunate results, with words like ‘Sussex’ and ‘Essex’ being shut out!  You can find a part of the sketch, plus a description of its computer use at www.youtube.com/​watch?v=zLih-​WQwBSc. 2   There’s a list at https://​blog.hubspot.com/​blog/​tabid/​6307/​bid/​30684/​the-​ ultimate-​list-​of-​email-​spam-​trigger-​words.aspx. 3  The text is also discussed in an article that appeared on the internet, entitled ‘The Internet:  changing the language’, (www.bbvaopenmind.com/​en/​articles/​the-​internet-​changing-​the-​language/​. 1

11.4  ESP, worldwide Take a look at this passage. Where do you think it might come from? What (in very, very general terms!) is it about? 15 g of Al(NO3)3 ⋅ 9H2O was dissolved in 25 mL ultrapure water, and 28% ammonia aqueous solution was diluted into 10% solution. At room temperature, 10% ammonia solution was added dropwise into Al(NO3)3 solution at a constant rate of 5 mL/​min while stirring vigorously. Ammonia was ceased to be added when the pH value of the reaction mixture reached 5. The reaction mixture was stirred constantly in air at room temperature for 1 hour. The obtained white gel was filtered to obtain the wet gel-​cake, which was then transferred into a glass beaker (25 mL). Before transferring the beaker with wet gel-​cake into a Teflon vessel (125 mL), 2 mL ultrapure water was added into the bottom of the vessel. The Teflon vessel was sealed and heated at 170℃ for 2  days. The resulting white material was washed with ultrapure water, centrifuged and dried at 35℃ for 2 days.

As you may have guessed, the passage is taken from a scientific paper in an academic journal. The topic (in very, very general terms) is Inorganic Chemistry, and the journal is entitled the International Journal of Inorganic Chemistry. The paper’s two authors work at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. There are eight articles in this 2008 edition of the journal, most of which have more than one author. In fact, the writers come from quite an international set of universities: three writers work in India, eleven in China, and one each in Argentina, Egypt, Fiji, and Saudi Arabia. But all the papers are written in English, and this is by no means an exceptional state of affairs. English 182

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is the international language of Inorganic Chemistry. Of Organic Chemistry too, of Technology, Physics, Medicine … … and Maritime Studies also. In 1983, Strevens and Johnson wrote a paper about what they called SEASPEAK, their name for ‘International Maritime English, a restricted, regularised sublanguage for use in ship-​to-​ship and ship-​to-​ shore communication’ (1983: 123). Strevens indeed wrote textbooks intended to teach foreign learners the ‘English of Seafaring’; one is Strevens (1972). The Strevens and Johnson paper appeared in The ESP Journal. ESP is not ‘Extra Sensory Perception’, but ‘English for Specific Purposes’. Starting from about the mid sixties, a large number of textbooks for teaching occupation-​specific genres of English appeared under the name of ESP. Along with that acronym came EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and EST (English for Science and Technology), among others. Specialised courses were written to teach Medical English, the English of Tourism, Business English, English for Aviation. Interest in ‘special Englishes’ continues today. For example, Bolton (2010) writes about ‘call-​centre workers in the Philippines’, who have their own special language habits. However, ‘special language habits’ do not make for a fully-​fledged ‘variety of English’, and sometimes the characteristics of a specific use of English may not be much more than a question of specialised vocabulary. But sometimes the differences are more substantial. Read through the ‘English for Inorganic Chemistry’ passage again, this time looking for characteristics that you associate with the genre of ‘scientific written discourse’. Do this before reading on. Possibly the characteristic that struck you first is the frequent use of the passive. Every sentence has at least one passive, often two. It is natural that the passive should occur in a text (like this one) describing an experimental procedure, but it is a noticeable characteristic in scientific and academic writing in general. Gramley & Pätzold (1992:  247) give some statistics taken from a number of studies.7 These show that between about 28  percent and 46  percent of the verbs in EST (‘English for Science and Technology’, recall) writing are passives, while the figures for literary texts are under 10  percent. But are these statistics accurate? Take a look at ER11.2 (Astrophysical passives) which describes a detailed study (Tarone et al. 1981) of the use of passives in two astrophysics papers. The statistics there are slightly different. But whatever the actual figures, ask yourself what the attraction of the passive is to the EST writer. You may also have noticed that the style of the passage is sometimes rather telegraphic –​a common feature of EST writing. It often shows itself in a lack of determiners and prepositions. In the passage’s first sentence, for example, you might have expected ‘25 mL of ultrapure water, and a 28% ammonia aqueous solution was diluted into a 10% solution’. The phrase ammonia aqueous solution exemplifies another EST characteristic:  what linguists call ‘nominalisation’, where a complex noun phrase is used where StE might prefer a clause. An example Gramley and Pätzold give is ‘momentum transfer experiments’ for ‘experiments of transfer of momentum’.8 Another example in our passage is ‘the reaction mixture’; perhaps in StE this might be ‘the mixture resulting from the 183

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reaction’. Once again, take a moment to think why telegraphic expression and nominalisation should be favoured by EST writers. Specialised vocabulary is a common feature of EST writing, but you might be surprised at just how many scientific terms there are in the language today. The Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors (Martin, 2009) has no fewer than 9,700 entries. Our passage contains a few, and also has examples of the types of affixes you might expect in scientific writing. There is a rather odd word beginning with ultra-​and one ending in -​eous. What do these affixes mean? Think of others –​both prefixes and suffixes –​that you might find in scientific writing, and consider their meanings. The field of medicine is particularly rich in this area. Then give a thought to Ammonia was ceased to be added …. How would this be written in StE? Why did the authors decide on this rather curious way of expressing their procedure? Finally, think about the way that scientific and academic papers are structured. If you were to write a paper describing an experiment, what kind of structure might your paper have? What would you be expected to describe, and in what order? You might think that these questions are nothing to do with English –​after all, this order is surely a universal one, dictated by a kind of human ‘rhetorical logic’. But this is not really true. Different cultures have different conventions regarding structure and rhetorical expression. ‘Contrastive rhetoric’ –​the field that studies these different cultural conventions –​is looked at in Kaplan (1966). It is much discussed:  I looked up ‘contrastive rhetoric’ on an internet search engine, and got over 22,000 hits.

11.5  A language for the future, with a past We started this chapter by looking at the huge geographical spread of English through the world. Add this to the areas we have considered in earlier c­ hapters –​ Britain, North America, Australia, India and so on –​and we really are talking about a world language. Is English the world’s language? Will it be so in a hundred years’ time? In our final chapter, we will ask questions about the future of English. But we shall also take a last look back into its past –​at where it has come from, as well as where it is going.

Activity section Activity 11A  Aisukurimu for anyone?   AS Here are ten words and phrases, used by the Japanese, which come from English.9 (a) Match them with the English equivalents underneath. 184

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(b) Can you see any pronunciation processes at work in the examples? Are there any regularities you can see in what Japanese does to English words to turn them into Japanese? (1)  aisukurimu (2)  appuru pai (3)  erebata (5)  ridashippu (6)  sukotchi uisukii (7)  foku (9)  nokku auto (10)  hitto endo ran (a) fork (e) leadership (i) skirt

(b)  knock-​out (f)  hit and run (j)  apple pie

(4)  kurisumasu (8)  sukato

(c)  ice cream (d) elevator (g)  Scotch whisky (h) Christmas

Activity 11B  Euro-​English grammar? 

AS

Here are phrases and sentences exemplifying some characteristics of Euro-​ English grammar; sometimes more than one example is given for a characteristic. Some of the phrases and sentences are taken from Seidlhofer (2001), some from other sources including VOICE, and some are invented. Using linguistic terminology, say how the phrases and sentences deviate from StE. Sometimes this is easy, but sometimes more than one answer may occur to you –​in which case, say what the various possible answers are. The ‘answers’ are given in the Answer Section, and some are discussed in the text. (1) He look very sad. (2) The picture who; A person which. (3) Our countries have signed agreement. (4) We have to study about. Physicist and chemist discuss about another type of project. (5) We [can] make a definition by dividing it into stages. (6) A black colour. How long time? (7) I look forward to see you tomorrow. (8) I want that we discuss my work. (9) Thank you very much for your presentation and informations. So we gave some advices. All the news come directly to me.

Activity 11C  Downloading and offline   AS Words and phrases associated with internet use are constantly making their way into normal English usage. Here are six examples, taken from Crystal 185

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(2006: 21). What do they mean? Crystal’s ‘translations’ are given in the Answer Section. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

It’s my turn to download now. Let’s go offline for a few minutes. He’s 404. He started flaming at me for no reason at all. That’s an alt.dot way of looking at things. Are you wired?

Activity 11D  Lolspeaking  AS Using abbreviations like lol and imho is a common feature of Netspeak which, in fact, some people call ‘Lolspeak’. Here are fifteen more examples for you to decipher. The last one –​143 –​is particularly tricky to work out. How do you think it comes about? b4 fwiw oic

brb gmta otoh

btw gtg plos

cul8r hand rbtl

f2f iso 143

Answer section Activity 11A  Aisukurimu for anyone? (a) (1) (c); (2) (j); (3) (d); (4) (h); (5) (e); (6) (g); (7) (a); (8) (i); (9) (b); (10) (f). (b) The Japanese changes are: (i) to put a vowel at the end of each word (the only exception is the word ran); (ii) ‘l’ is changed to ‘r’ (the reason being that in Japanese, the difference between /​l/​and /​r/​is not *phonemic); (iii) some English consonant clusters are split up by insertion of a vowel (we discussed this in 9.4.1 for Indian speakers, and in Activity 10B in relation to TP).

Activity 11B  Euro-​English grammar? (1) Dropping the third person present tense ending. (2) Not distinguishing relative pronouns. (3) Omitting definite or indefinite articles. (4) Inserting a redundant preposition. (5) Overusing certain verbs of high semantic generality, such as do, have, make, put, take. (6) Overdoing explicitness by adding redundant words. 186

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(7) Using an infinitive instead of an -​ing form. (8) Using a that-​clause instead of an infinitive construction. (9) Making uncountable nouns plural.

Activity 11C  Downloading and offline Crystal’s ‘translations’: (1) I’ve heard all your gossip, now hear mine. (2) Let’s talk in private. (3) He’s not around. A 404 error, Crystal explains, is when ‘a page or site is no longer in service’. (4) Shouting at me. A flame is an aggressive message. (5) A cool way. (6) Ready to handle this.

Activity 11D (Lolspeaking) b4: before brb: be right back btw: by the way cul8r: see you later f2f: face to face fwiw: for what it’s worth gmta: great minds think alike gtg: got to go hand: have a nice day iso: in search of oic: oh I see otoh: on the other hand plos: parents looking over shoulder rbtl: read between the lines 143: I love you. This comes about because of the number of letters in the words ‘I love you’ –​1, 4, and 3.

Further reading Jenkins et al. (2017) and Seidlhofer (2011) were mentioned in 11.2 as important books to do with ELF. The former is an edited collection of papers, dealing (among other things) with the development of ELT in specific countries. The latter offers a clear and comprehensive guide to the area.

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Görlach (2004) looks at the effect of English on a large number of European languages, and includes consideration of how English words and pronunciations become adapted in the various languages. Kirkpatrick has written widely on ELF in Asia. His 2011 paper is a short and accessible account of the topic, which includes consideration of implications for the teaching of English. Crystal (2006a) is the book to read on Netspeak. It is a clear, authoritative, and lively account. Hyland and Wong (2019) is an edited collection of papers dealing with ‘Specialised English’. It looks at recent research, as well as theoretical and practical perspectives associated with ESP. This area was an important concern for language teaching, particularly during the 1980s, when ESP-​based courses were being widely developed. Robinson (1991) is a useful guide to teaching issues in the area.

Notes 1 The list of topic areas is taken from Phillipson (1992: 6). 2 Another example of the same gender change is that in the French of France it is le gang, while in Quebec French it is la gang. The reasons for such changes in grammatical gender are unknown. 3 The examples are from Humbley (2004). 4 The report is Europeans and their Languages, European Commission, Special Eurobarometer Report, 243. 5 The corpus can be accessed free-​of-​charge for research purposes, and its website is www. univie.ac.at/​voice/​page/​index.php. The quotation in the text is taken from this website. 6 The list is from Crystal (2006a). 7 This section is based around the characteristics discussed in Gramley and Pätzold (1992). 8 Gramley and Pätzold (1992) take their example from Trimble (1985). 9 The words are taken from McArthur (1998), pp. 27, and 17. Some are acknowledged by him to be from Kay (1986).

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English A language with a past … and a future?

12.1  English shows its past Scratch the surface of any modern language, and you’ll reveal its history. In this chapter we’ll look at how English today (PDE)  –​a global language with an apparently bright future –​still carries its past around with it. Then, finally, we’ll speculate about the future. Will English remain a global language? Is its future actually so bright?

12.1.1  English and its Germanic roots My (2016) History of early English ends its first chapter like this: ‘It is always more than a little dangerous to attempt short characterisations of a language. But here is one for English. It is basically a Germanic language, with characteristics of Germanic languages … But it also has a huge overlay of other influences … ’1 What Germanic characteristics has English shown in its history? Are they still there in English today, and if so, to what extent? Remind yourself, first of all, of what Germanic languages are –​where they come from, and what sub-​families they divide themselves into. Take a look in Johnson (2016, Chapter 2), or some other source, for this; if you want a more extended look, König and van der Auwera (2002) –​entitled The Germanic Languages –​is a good book to consult. Then, before reading on, give a thought to any linguistic characteristics you associate with Germanic languages. What features make them Germanic? Here are just a few features, shared to a greater or lesser extent by all Germanic languages. ‘To a greater or lesser extent’ is important: in all cases we are talking about tendencies rather than hard-​and-​fast rules. If any of these points are unclear to you, look at ER12.1 (Germanic German) which gives examples from modern German of all these characteristics: (a) Strong stress of the first syllable of words. (b) Verb second; the verb is often placed second in a sentence.2 (c) Strong verbs, which show sequences of vowels in their different tenses and forms. (d) Inflections as a common way of indicating grammatical functions. (e) Using affixes as a common way of creating new words. 189

English: with a past … and a future?

(f) Using ‘compounding’ (making compounds) to create new vocabulary items. (g) The vocabulary has a predominance of words with Germanic origins. Now, before reading on, consider each of these points. If you know something about the early history of English, ask yourself how each of these features has revealed itself in the past. Then focus on PDE. To what extent does English maintain these Germanic characteristics? To look at each in turn: (a) The Germanic strong first stress was certainly there at the beginning, in OE. It is revealed in Anglo-​Saxon poetry’s preference for alliteration (a kind of ‘front rhyme’) where it is the (stressed) beginnings of words that ‘rhyme’. This is as opposed to the type of rhyme we are familiar with today: ‘back rhyme’, where it is the ends of words that are important. ‘Front rhyme’ became less natural to English as more words were borrowed from languages like French, where word stress often came elsewhere than on the first syllable. As we have seen throughout this book, in its history English has borrowed words from many languages, often bringing their stress pattern with them. As a result of this history, English today contains many words showing the Germanic first-​ syllable stress pattern: evening, brother, heaven, and sorrowful are examples. But there are also very many words which do not: invite, transparent, irresistible, doctrinaire. If you have an etymological dictionary to hand, look up some of the words in these two lists, and find out their origins. Think too of more examples in each category, and if possible, find their origins also. All in all, we can conclude that word stress is an area where Germanic roots can be found, but are no longer particularly dominant. (b) The most common word order in English still has the verb in second place. It is SVO (Subject, Verb, Object). But what about when there is an adverb in the sentence? In Sometimes he ate chocolate, the order is AdvSVO, where the verb is relegated to third place. But there are a few adverbs which maintain the ‘verb second’ order when they are put at the beginning of the sentence. Seldom is one. We say Seldom did he eat chocolate, and we cannot say Seldom he ate chocolate. The same is true with the adverb hardly, and there are a few other occasions when the verb comes second following an initial adverb (as in Down went the flag and There goes the train). But these are very much the exception rather than the rule; English has not maintained the ‘verb second’ order nearly as much as some other Germanic languages. (c) Of course, English still has some strong verbs, following various patterns. We looked at these in 7.4.3. To remind you:  there are verbs like to take where the present tense form (take) is different from the past (took), which is again different from the past participle form (taken). Other verbs have the same past tense and past participle forms, different from the present (bind, bound, bound, for example). And there are a few others where all three forms are the same (like put).

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But strong verbs are now far less common than they were in OE. According to one estimate, nearly a third of the OE strong verbs died out in the Middle English period.3 Some of the verbs that were once strong and are now weak include ache, bow, brew, burn, glide, mourn, row, step, and weep. So once again, we see the Germanic nature of English, but it is no longer predominant. (d) English has changed particularly dramatically when it comes to inflections. OE, like some other Germanic languages (including modern German), was rich in inflections. Take the OE word dæg, meaning ‘day’, for example. Its form changed according to grammatical context. Apart from the base form dæg, there are five other forms:  dæges, dæge, dagas, dagena, and dægum. The factors that control the word’s form are grammatical function and *number. Nouns also had *grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), with different associated sets of inflections –​so the dæg pattern is just one of several. Adjectives are even worse. For example, the word glæd, meaning ‘glad’, ‘cheerful’ had no fewer than ten forms in OE: glæd, glædne, glades, gladum, glade, glædra, gladum, glaedu, glædre, glæda. And we won’t even talk about verbs. If you’d like to explore the different forms of dæg in OE, take a look at ER12.2 (Dæg time), which includes a short activity. PDE is very much simpler. We do have some inflections, but very few. Take a moment (that’s all you will need, because there are so few) to list the inflections for nouns, then adjectives, then verbs (think about past as well as present tense here). Today’s learners of English as a foreign language, worldwide, are relieved to find that inflections –​a characteristic of Germanic languages –​have largely disappeared in English. Take a look back in 10.2 to find a possible reason for this. (e) But when it comes to word formation, it is an entirely different picture, with prefixes and suffixes remaining popular in PDE. They were popular in OE too. Table 12.1 has some OE examples.4 There are some OE words on the left, with their PDE equivalents in brackets. On the right are related OE words with an added affix. Identify the affix in each case; for example, in (1) it is -​dom. Table 12.1  Suffixes in OE and PDE. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

biscop (bishop) wīse (wise) cild (child) munuc (monk) æfterfolgian (succeed, follow after) wrītan (engrave, write) ceorl (peasant, ‘churl’) cild (child) gedeorf (trouble) wyn (delight) blind (blind) sōð (true)

biscopdom wisdom cildhad munuchad æfterfolgere writere ceorlisc cildisc gedeorfsum wynsum blindlic soðlic

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What are the PDE equivalents of these suffixes? What are the PDE equivalents of the words on the right (mostly they are easy to identify). Think of some more PDE words which use these affixes.

Table 12.1’s examples show that there are affixes occurring in OE which have made their way into PDE. There are many, many newer ones also. Consider for example the prefix cyber-​. Think of some examples of English words formed with this prefix. We looked at the suffix -​ize in 3.5.2; another productive one is -​ify. What does it mean? If you are in a creative mood, you can explore English’s willingness to use suffixes by inventing some (as yet not existing) words of your own, using the suffixes -​ize and -​ify. In PDE, affixation certainly is alive and kicking. (f) Another strategy of word formation, common in Germanic languages, remains popular today. It is compounding, particularly useful in relation to new areas of knowledge or technology, when we are looking for ways of expressing new ideas. Here are some internet-​related examples: keystroke, homepage, logon, dotcom, Netspeak, mousepad, bluetooth, broadband, upload. Then there is fleshmeet, used when you meet someone ‘in the flesh’, when you have previously met only online (another new compound).   It is interesting to compare PDE with other languages that do not use compounding so regularly. I  looked up the internet-​related words above in an English–​French dictionary. Sometimes the French word is borrowed from English: so the French for bluetooth is … bluetooth. But some French equivalents use a phrase rather than a compound. So homepage is page d’accueil (literally page of home), and mousepad is tapis de souris (carpet of mouse). (g) When it comes to lexis in general, it is estimated that about a quarter of PDE words are Germanic in origin. So the Germanic base is still there. But throughout much of its history, English has borrowed shamelessly from other languages. The twentieth-​century Canadian science-​fiction enthusiast James D. Nicoll has a rather lurid way of putting it: ‘English is about as pure as a … whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary’. The result is that if an impartial observer were to look at PDE English vocabulary, they would not necessarily conclude that it was a Germanic language at all. Looking at these Germanic characteristics in turn shows two things. One is that English in its history certainly has displayed its Germanic roots. The other is that these roots are still present in PDE, though often less salient; you sometimes have to dig to find them.

12.1.2  History in spelling Spelling is an area where English reveals its past particularly well. There are things in spelling which, you may think, shouldn’t be there at all. Modern English spelling often contains letters for sounds which were once pronounced 192

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but are no longer. The ‘k’ in knee, is an example. In Chaucer’s time the word was pronounced /​kneː/​, and it was –​naturally enough –​spelt with a ‘k’: the usual spelling was kne. By Shakespeare’s time the vowel had changed (to /​iː/​) but the ‘k’ was still there, in both pronunciation and writing –​Sit on my Knee, Dol, says Falstaff to Doll Tearsheet in Henry IV, Part 2.5 Today, the pronunciation of ‘k’ has gone (it disappeared in the seventeenth century), but the letter has remained in the spelling. As you may recall from 9.4.1, there are quite severe restrictions as to what word-​initial consonant clusters are allowed in English, and /​kn/​is not one of them. To learn more, look at ER12.3 (Knees and knights), quite a lengthy activity. There is also a special group of ‘silent letters’ which are not caused by changes in pronunciation, but which reveal other points about the history of English. The ‘b’ in debt for example. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath talks about a man’s dette. There were other spellings at the time, but none of them contained a ‘b’. Where does the letter come from then? The answer is from the Latin word debitum. In Renaissance times, it was thought that the ‘b’ should be written in English to show the word’s origins. Some pedants even thought that the ‘b’ should be introduced into the pronunciation. One of these was Holofernes, the schoolmaster in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. He condemns those ignoramuses who ‘speak “dout” sine [without] “b” when he should say “doubt”, “det” when he should pronounce “debt” –​d, e, b, t, not d, e, t’.6 Other examples of ‘Renaissance etymologising’ are the ‘b’ in subtle (Latin subtilis), and the ‘p’ in receipt (Latin recepta). Another piece of ‘history in spelling’ involves pairs of words like sea/​see. In Chaucer’s time sea and see were spelt the same  –​usually ‘see’. But they were pronounced differently:  sea with an /​ɛː/​sound (a little like the sound in the French word même), and see with an /​iː/​. One spelling, two sounds. Today, the opposite is true:  it is one sound, with two spellings  –​the words are both pronounced with the vowel /​iː/​, but the spelling difference remains. This came about because scribes in Elizabethan times felt the need to distinguish words like these that had a different pronunciation. They decided on the ‘ea’ spelling for /​ ɛː/​sounds, ‘ee’ for /​iː/​sounds. Also for the meat/​meet pair. The same reasoning applies to our PDE words peace and piece, but with an added complication. For a while piece was peece, so there were the spellings peace and peece just like sea and see. But eventually an ‘ie’ spelling was preferred to ‘ee’, so peece changed to piece. You can see the transition from ‘ee’ to ‘ie’ happening live in Shakespeare. He uses peece six times, and piece nine.7 What a mess it all is. But it is the mess of history. There are many other spelling/​ pronunciation mismatches which reveal interesting aspects of the history of English. Why is there a silent ‘t’ in often? Why is the ‘h’ in hour, and honest silent, but pronounced in humble and hotel? And why are words like author and cough written as if diphthongs (‘au’ and ‘ou’) when they are pronounced as monothongs? If you are interested in such things, you might like to explore the reasons.8 193

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12.2  English, a language with a future? 12.2.1  Ozymandias and the desert In the early years of the nineteenth century, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a sonnet called Ozymandias; it became one of his most famous works. Ozymandias was the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great, a powerful leader in his time. The poem tells of a traveller who came across the remains of a statue of the pharaoh in the desert. The inscription on its pedestal proclaimed the mightiness of the man. It read: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/​Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Ozymandias may have been ‘king of kings’ over three thousand years ago. But now –​the traveller notes –​ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/​Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/​The Lone and level sands stretch far away. Fame and power, the moral is, pass away; the passage of time destroys what was once mighty. All that is left is desert. Does such a fate await the English language? At the moment it is the closest thing there is to a global language –​a ‘king of kings’ among languages, some might say. But in fifty, a hundred, or five hundred years’ time, will it still be a global language? Or just a ‘colossal wreck’, its place taken by some other powerful language? What does the future hold for English? As a starting point for our global thoughts, here is a series of issues to think about. Begin by taking time to consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of the world having a global language. Is it necessarily a good thing? Then look at ER12.4 (Global languages and murder) which discusses the issue. ER12.5 (Historical global languages) lists some languages that in the past might have been considered as global. Before looking at it, make your own list. Then ask yourself what qualities these past global languages possessed. Why did they become global? Finally, there are two questions which will lead us into the next section. What makes any language a candidate for the title of global language? And does English have the right qualifications?

12.2.2  English as a global language? Here are some features relevant to those two final questions:

High user numbers For a language to be regarded as ‘global’, it must be used a lot throughout the world. For figures of world usage, we can turn to Ethnologue, an American organisation which annually provides statistics for living languages. Table 12.2 shows what their user figures for 2019 have as the top five languages.9 194

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Table 12.2  Ethnologue’s top five languages in terms of users. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

English Mandarin Chinese Hindi Spanish French

1.132 billion 1.116 billion 615.4 million 534.3 million 279.8 million

These figures include L2 as well as L1 users. Interestingly, if you count just L1 users, English goes down to third, after Mandarin Chinese (known as Putonghua, meaning ‘common language’) and Spanish. But as the overall figures stand, English has the user numbers to qualify as a global language.

Power and popularity High user numbers rely on economic, political, and social power, as well as on the desire and enthusiasm of people to learn the language. A good example of power factors at play relates to the use of Russian as a lingua franca. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian was widespread, not just in neighbouring ‘satellites’, but also in countries sympathetic to communism worldwide. Because of the Soviet Union’s power, people understood the value of learning its language. But with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the situation changed quickly. Russian lost its *prestige. There have been attempts to find ways of measuring political and social factors related to language use. In 1995, the ‘English Company (UK) Ltd’, developed a model that ‘weights languages not only by the number and wealth of their speakers, but also by the likelihood that these speakers will enter social networks which extend beyond their locality’. It measures, they claim, ‘global influence’. In 1995, their ‘engco model’ showed that ‘English is … a long way ahead of all other languages’, and their predictions for future years have English continuing in that position.10 Many people really do want English, and this popularity is vital for the language’s future. Knowing English is often useful for your job prospects, it helps you keep afloat in an increasingly technological world, and is almost indispensable for foreign travel. People proudly drop English words into their conversations, and even walk around with (sometimes apparently meaningless) messages printed on their T-​shirts. There are some examples in Box 12.1. All in all, it’s no wonder so many people want to start learning English as soon as possible, and indeed it is increasingly being taught at earlier ages throughout the world. It is easy to find examples in history of how people, not government edicts, determine how much a language is used. Thus, in recent decades, there have been several official measures aimed at increasing the use of Welsh in Wales. There was a 1993 Welsh Language Act, and a 2011 Welsh Language Measure. But the 195

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Box 12.1  T-​shirt language T-​shirts throughout the world often carry messages written in English. You have doubtless seen examples, and have perhaps wondered why someone should be wearing an article of clothing carrying a particular message. Sometimes it’s an advertisement, or it could be a direct or indirect reference to a cult film or television programme. Examples are: Stranger Things Scoops Ahoy Ice Cream for Life Harley Quinn: Good to be Bad

Hawkins Police Department Bill and Ted: The Adventure Begins Believe in Steve

Other messages are intended to be funny: I’M NOT SARCASTIC, I’m just intelligent beyond your understanding AND YET, DESPITE THE LOOK ON MY FACE, you’re still talking? EVERYONE TELLS ME TO FOLLOW MY DREAMS, so I’m going back to bed CONSERVE WATER, drink beer I ONLY DRINK BEER ON DAYS THAT END IN ‘Y’

United Kingdom censuses between 2001 and 2011, show that the number of Welsh speakers dropped.11 The truth is that if people do not want to learn and speak a language, Acts and Measures will not make them change their minds. If the evidence of T-​shirts (and what they show us) is anything to judge by, English remains a strong candidate to retain its position as a global language.

Language simplicity? Notice the question mark in this section’s title. The notion of language simplicity raises many questions, some of which we have asked in earlier chapters. Robert Lowth, you may recall from 2.3, wrote a highly successful grammar, which appeared in 1762. In its Preface, he praises English for its simplicity as a language, and argues that this makes it particularly suitable for international use. Many in later times have also argued that a global language must be a ‘simple’ one, easy to learn. Before reading on, here are some questions to ask 196

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yourself. What makes one language ‘simpler’ than another? What makes one language easier to learn than another? And does a language have to be ‘simple’ to be suitable as a lingua franca? To start with the last of these questions:  if we consider widespread lingua francas both past and present, they are often not simple at all. Take Latin for example. It has a highly complex system of noun suffixes, ruled by gender, number, and grammatical function. But this does not seem to have prevented its status as a global language. Russian too, with its similarly complex grammatical systems. The importance of Russian may be waning today, but for a long time it was widely used as a powerful lingua franca. Yes, but English, you might say (especially if you are a native speaker!), doesn’t have Latin or Russian’s complex endings, and really is  –​as Lowth claims  –​ a simple language. Jenkins (2003) is among those who show that this is not entirely true. First, Jenkins argues, there is the crazy spelling system: look back to 7.3 and find mention of the ‘ghoti’ spelling of ‘fish’, together with discussion about the relationship between spelling and pronunciation. As for pronunciation itself, English (Jenkins points out) has more vowel phonemes than many languages (twenty compared to five in Italian and Spanish), and there are more diphthongs too. Then there is the issue of stress and the way it affects pronunciation. So for the word was we have –​when the word is stressed –​/​wɒz/​, while in unstressed positions it becomes /​wəz/​. English grammar, though relatively simple in terms of endings, is not without its complexities. We came across one particularly complex area in ER6.3: the formation of tag questions. Also, there are a large number of tenses, with both continuous, perfect, and simple aspects –​the present, the past, the perfect, the past perfect, plus future forms. The rules for when each is used are often complex. Sometimes, too, apparently simple forms, like the definite article the, have equally complex rules for use. Activity 12A (What does the mean?) challenges you to try and explain the meaning of the –​ no simple matter. Phrasal verbs are another feature which causes problems to many learners of English. So we have put up, put up with, put down, put into, put out, put by, put to, and many, many more associated just with the one base verb put: indeed, the OED lists around a hundred uses. If you accept that English is the global language of today, these points suggest that it is not because of its linguistic simplicity. Then there’s the question of how linguistic simplicity is defined. In 4.3, when we were looking at the Berkshire dialect, we found that it was simpler than StE in some ways, but not in others. The same can be said about lingua francas. So if we were to compare Latin, Russian, and English, we would find that each is simple in some respects but complex in others; so English may have ‘simple’ noun forms, but a ‘complex’ stress system, for example. As for simplicity for learning, a crucial factor is how similar the language you are learning is to your first language. The complexities of Russian may be difficult for an English-​speaker to learn, but will be ‘simpler’ for a speaker of another Slavic language, which has a grammar similar to Russian’s. 197

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A standard form So language simplicity is not really an issue for any candidate global language. But what is doubtless very important is that the language should have a sufficiently standardised form to allow users around the world, with different native languages, to understand each other. For a lingua franca, mutual intelligibility is an absolute must. But look back through this book, and in particular at Chapter 11, and you find that there are very many versions of English today  –​indeed, in 11.2 we used the term ‘world Englishes’, and that plural -​es (which made its way into the book’s title), really is important. This really is an issue for English as a potential global language, and it suggests conflicts –​between, on the one hand: unification, standardisation and convergence, and on the other: diversification, fragmentation, and divergence. On one side of the conflict, there are differences between world Englishes which are likely to grow more numerous with time. The more each English becomes a part of its context and the local speakers come to ‘own’ it, the more distinctive it will become from other Englishes. This does not happen by chance: people want it to happen, so that their version of English will stand as a mark of their distinctive social identity. The result is that plural -​es: Englishes. The danger is that as each of the Englishes becomes more distinct, mutual unintelligibility –​a lingua franca’s arch-​enemy –​will occur. Because of these divergences, one possible scenario for the future is for the variety of world Englishes slowly to morph into separate languages. Trudgill (1998: 29) calls this the ‘disintegration catastrophe’. The scenario would indeed endanger English’s chances of remaining a global language. But will it happen? Predictions of catastrophic fragmentation have been there through history. The American lexicographer, Webster, whose work we discussed in 7.3, believed for a while that British and American English would diverge to the point of becoming separate languages, while the British linguist Henry Sweet had this to say: ‘England, America, and Australia will be speaking mutually unintelligible languages because of their independent changes of pronunciation’.12 Incidentally, some think that Sweet was the model for the character of Henry Higgins in Shaw’s play Pygmalion, discussed in Box 5.1. Shaw denied this, while admitting that ‘there are touches of Sweet in the play’. Trudgill (1998) looks at the issue in rather different terms. He argues that some linguistic areas will show convergence, and others fragmentation. Lexis is most likely to be convergent, and is indeed already becoming so, as American English words become increasingly popular worldwide. He shows examples of cases where American forms have taken over from British ones:  radio has supplanted wireless, British chaps and blokes have become American guys, and lorries are turning into trucks. But in phonology, he argues, ‘the trend is clearly to divergence’. For example (as we saw in 5.2.1), in some versions of English, the sounds /​θ/​and /​ð/​are pronounced further towards the front of the mouth, as /​f/​and /​v/​ –​a process known as ‘th-​fronting’. Hence think and brother are 198

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pronounced as if fink and brovver. But th-​fronting is not universal; it is found in Britain and New Zealand, but not in America. Another example relates to our old friend ‘rhotacism’. Some rhotic parts of England and New Zealand are moving towards ‘non-​rhotacism’, so that the ‘r’ in far and part is disappearing. But in North America, the opposite is sometimes happening, with non-​rhotic areas becoming rhotic. As it happens, the dire predictions of Webster and Sweet have so far turned out to be wrong. There have been degrees of divergence, but by and large, the different national varieties of English have  –​to a surprising extent perhaps  –​ remained mutually comprehensible. But would divergence really destroy the chances of English remaining a global language? Perhaps divergence and standardisation can co-​exist. Crystal (2003) believes so. In this scenario, some varieties –​the world Englishes we met in the last ­chapter –​will continue to carry their speakers’ identities. But alongside these, Crystal thinks, there might be another variety –​‘a global English’ able to be used internationally as a world lingua franca.

12.2.3  A global English? Which variety? On which variety of English might the future global language be based? What are the candidate versions? Think about these issues before you read on. In the past (and the present too) both British and American English have been used as models. Because America is a superpower, its version has the upper hand, though there remain some countries in the world which –​sometimes desiring to escape from American cultural influence –​stay with some other variety, such as British or Australian English. But we must not forget what was said in 9.5: that English is no longer the property of native speakers. A far greater number of speakers are non-​native: the figures from Ethnologue (the organisation mentioned in 12.2.2) have 379 million native speakers of English, and 753 million non-​native users, almost twice the number. For this reason, it is likely that a future norm will be a version of English not tied closely to any existing first-​language model. Here is how one Japanese non-​native speaker expresses his feelings):13 I have to live with this unfortunate fate:  My native tongue is remote from European languages. Yet I believe I have the right to request that my Anglo-​ American friends who are involved in international activities not abuse their privilege, even though they do not do so intentionally. First of all, I  would like them to know that the English they speak at home is not always an internationally acceptable English … I sincerely believe there exists a cosmopolitan English –​a lingua franca, written or spoken –​that is clearly different from what native speakers use unconsciously in their daily life … We non-​natives are desperately learning English; each word pronounced by us represents our blood, sweat and tears. Our English proficiency is tangible evidence of our 199

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achievements of will, not an accident of birth. Dear Anglo-​Americans, please show us you are also taking pains to make yourselves understood in an international setting. Some have proposed that the best way to cater for a global audience would be to ‘concoct’ a version of the language which includes deliberate modifications to everyday English. Concoctions would be based on the existing language, but made ‘decidedly easier and faster to learn than any variety of natural, “full” English’.14 One proposal was made by the British linguist and philosopher, Charles Ogden. His book Basic English:  A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930) introduces the concept of a simplified language, having a core of just 850 words and a set of simplified grammar rules. All plural nouns, for example, would end in -​s –​so it would be two mouses, three criterions, and four mans. ‘Basic English’ attracted the attention of the novelist H.G. Wells, and in his futuristic novel The Shape of Things to Come it is presented as the future global lingua franca, spoken by everyone. Basic English also influenced the United States broadcasting service ‘Voice of America’, which broadcast around the world in its own simplified version of English, known as ‘Special English’ or ‘Learning English’.15 Another ‘concocted model’ was proposed by the British linguist Randolph Quirk, whose ‘Nuclear English’ is discussed in some detail in Quirk (1982).16 Among the simplifications Quirk recommends are modifications to our old friend the tag question (mentioned in 12.2.2 and discussed at length in ER6.3). He proposes using isn’t that right? and is that so? to do away with the complexities of the tags we use in ‘normal’ English. A good way of coming to grips with what is involved in simplifying language is to try it for yourself on a short text. Activity 12B (Gulliver simplified) gives you the chance to try this. Quirk, along with others who propose ‘concocted models’, realised that they must ‘remain firmly in the grammar of ordinary English’. Their likelihood of success is restricted by the sort of problems we discussed in 7.3 in relation to spelling reforms. We saw there that any reform attempts which introduce many new features, and hence involve users in a lot of new learning, are doomed from the start. So too for versions of English that diverge to any extent from versions already in everyday use. We might conclude that a future model for global English needs to be based on the language used by all English users, not just native speakers. It should also be one that emerges naturally, as opposed to being ‘concocted’. Crystal (2003) talks of a model which meets these conditions. He calls it ‘World Standard Spoken English’ (WSSE). The variety, he admits, is in its infancy; indeed, ‘it has hardly yet been born’. But some characteristics are clear. They include the one mentioned in Box 11.1 (about ‘frogs and grandmothers’, you may recall), where idioms and expressions ‘local’ to a particular culture are avoided. Other characteristics mentioned in Chapter  11, in association with the major ELF

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versions (Euro-​English and ASEAN ELF, for example) are also likely to occur in WSSE. Only time will tell which.

12.2.4  Displacing English There are those who think that English is already so globally entrenched that nothing can oust it. ‘It would’, as Crystal (2003: 28) argues, ‘take a revolution of world-​shattering proportions to replace English’. But we can’t be sure that won’t happen. After all, Latin must at some stages have looked similarly unassailable, and doubtless Russian did too. But the sun has a habit of setting on places where man proclaims that it will never set. We need then to consider the possibility that English will lose its position of power. Indeed, to some extent this may already be happening. Crystal (2003: 118) looks at internet use. In the internet’s early days a high proportion of use was in English. But other languages are now increasing their percentage, and we are still today in a time when some areas of the world (parts of Africa and Latin America for example) are not yet online in a major way. Which language could topple English? What are your thoughts? According to the ‘engco’ model (mentioned in 12.2.2), the five major languages for 1995, measured in terms of ‘global influence’ were: English, German, French, Japanese, and Spanish. The model’s predictions for 2050 have Spanish moving up the scale, though not replacing English –​but the very movement from fifth up to a possible second, in fifty-​five years, does show how quickly a language’s fortunes can change. It’s likely that when you were thinking about this issue, Mandarin Chinese came to your mind, and it is indeed a likely replacement: the 2019 Ethnologue figures (in 12.2.2) show Mandarin Chinese users close in number to English users, while the number of Mandarin Chinese native speakers far exceeds native English users (917 million to 379 million). But is the English sun likely to set entirely? It wasn’t like that for Latin. It continued for a long time as the language of religion and scholarship. And though it may have almost no role today, it is still very much there in its morphed forms: Romance languages, spoken by a good proportion of the world’s population. Perhaps a similar fate awaits English.

12.3  The future, always unclear The future is indeed unclear, just as it was in those early days when the Germanic tribes came across to Britain, bringing with them the languages that became English. Whoever would have guessed then, one thousand five hundred years ago, what historical developments awaited their developing tongue, and what status it would have today? Whoever can guess now what another one thousand

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five hundred years will bring? Is it Shelley’s ‘lone and level sands’ for English in the future? It seems unlikely. But your guess, probably, is as good as anyone’s.

12.4  And finally At the end of the book, it may be worth spending some time reminding yourself of its main themes. Here are some questions and points to guide your final thoughts. Many of the questions have already been asked; they’re being asked again for you to review your answers within a broader perspective. Some of the issues relate to specific chapters, but for most you need to think in terms of the book as a whole. 1. Find examples of complaints about the state of English in specific contexts. 2. Review what steps have been taken, in various contexts, to establish a standardised variety of English. 3. Give some examples of publications aimed at instructing people how to use the language ‘properly’. 4. Think of five publications or projects that have played a major role in the history of English during the period covered by the book. 5. What conditions lead to a particularly rapid growth in a language’s lexical resources? 6. Review the processes and methods that are often used to create lexical growth. 7. Give examples of where a population’s native language has influenced the lexis and grammar of the English variety used. What about the influence of other languages that English has been in contact with? 8. Language variety is a major theme of the book. Mention some attitudes –​ bad and good –​that people have shown towards varieties. 9. One type of variety we have considered in this book is dialect. Mention some other types. 10. Remind yourself of our ‘variation attractors’. Now you have finished reading, are there any other candidates for this list? 11. Dialects are discussed at many points in the book. Review some of the major dialect studies mentioned. 12. What stages does a language variety pass through before it becomes accepted? What indications are there to show that a variety has become well and truly accepted? 13. What are the communicative conditions that create pidgins and creoles? What are the main characteristics of pidgins and creoles? 14. Something you have been thinking about in this chapter: what characteristics are required for a language to become ‘global’? And … 15. … will English remain a global language? What conditions might cause it to be usurped? 202

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Activity section Activity 12A  What does the mean?  AS In terms of its form, the English definite article, the, is very simple. It doesn’t, for example, vary according to the gender of the noun, or its grammatical function; the form is always the. But in terms of usage, the is highly complex, and causes great problems to learners of English whose first language does not have a comparable form. Here are some questions which will, at the very least, make you realise just how complicated the is. The answers to the questions are given in the Answer Section, but it would also be useful to look at how a grammar book like Swan (2016) deals with these points. (1) What is the difference between I saw a man and I saw the man? (2) What is the function of the in the sentence The lion is a dangerous animal. (3) Why do we say Love is blind and not The love is blind? (4) When ordering food in a restaurant, you might say I’ll have the fish please. Why not some fish? (5) What does the mean in the sentence I didn’t have the strength? (6) Why is the used in the sentence: I can’t see the sun today.

Activity 12B  Gulliver simplified Here is a short passage taken from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726. Imagine that you are preparing the text for an intermediate learner of English as a foreign language. Rewrite the passage using simpler language. Feel free to simplify the content as well as the language. When you have finished, say what principles and processes you followed to make the text simpler. I had not been at home above ten days, when Captain William Robinson, a Cornish man, commander of the Hopewell, a stout ship of three hundred tons, came to my house. I had formerly been surgeon of another ship where he was master, and a fourth part owner, in a voyage to the Levant. He had always treated me more like a brother, than an inferior officer; and, hearing of my arrival, made me a visit, as I apprehended only out of friendship, for nothing passed more than what is usual after long absences. But repeating his visits often, expressing his joy to find me in good health, asking, ‘whether I were now settled for life?’ adding, ‘that he intended a voyage to the East Indies in two months,’ at last he plainly invited me, though with some apologies, to be surgeon of the ship; ‘that I should have another surgeon under me, beside our two mates; that my salary should be double to the usual pay; and that having experienced my knowledge in sea-​affairs to be at least equal to his, he would 203

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enter into any engagement to follow my advice, as much as if I had shared in the command.’

Answer section Activity 12A  What does the mean? These explanations are only partial. Swan (2016) gives the full story. (1) The here refers to a specific man, perhaps one who has already been mentioned. (2) One use of the is to mean ‘in general’. In the sentence, lions in general are being described. (3) What is said in (2) above does not apply to abstract nouns. ‘Love in general’ is what is meant here, but there is not the because love is abstract. (4) The is used here because a specific reference is being made, to ‘the fish on the menu’. (5) You might say that the reference here is again specific: it means ‘the strength to do the job’ (or whatever it is). Swan (2016) says that here the means ‘enough’. (6) The can refer to something unique, of which there is only one.

Further reading Crystal’s (2003) English as a Global Language is a thorough and highly readable discussion of the topic and the issues associated with it. It includes a chapter on ‘the future of global English’. Galloway and Rose (2015) discuss the future too. They also include a chapter on issues associated with the teaching of English as a global language. Graddol is an author who has written widely on the topic of English as a global language. His 2003 chapter (reprinted from Graddol, 1997) is based around a number of key questions related to the topic. Nunan’s article (2001) is similarly based around key questions. They are practical ones, and he does not, in this very brief article, attempt answers.

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Notes 1 Johnson, 2016), p. 9. 2 We are talking about grammatical phrases here, not individual words. So in a sentence like The big brown dog with a long tail returned the ball to its owner, the entire subject noun phrase (The big brown dog with a long tail) counts as a single item, so the verb returned is in second position. 3 Baugh and Cable (2013), p. 158. 4 These are taken from Johnson (2016), p. 52. 5 Henry IV, Part 2, 2.4.223. 6 Love’s Labour’s Lost, 5.1.20. 7 This is according to Crystal (2016). 8 Many of these examples are taken from Barber et al. (2009), p. 213. 9 The figures are taken from https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​List_​of_​languages_​by_​total_​ number_​of_​speakers. 10 Graddol (2003), p. 209. 11 According to some, this situation has since changed. 12 Sweet (1877), p. 196. 13 The quotation is taken from Svartvik and Leech (2016), p. 252. 14 Quirk (1982), p. 43. 15 The Basic English Institute’s website is at www.basic-​english.org. 16 In the chapter entitled ‘International communication and the concept of nuclear English’.

205

Glossary

Asterisks here indicate that an item has a separate entry in this Glossary. adverb, a *part of speech. A  word which ‘modifies’ a verb (or some other element). Quickly, yesterday, abroad are adverbs; in a hurry, two days ago, in Germany are adverbial phrases. affix, an element that is attached to the beginning (‘prefix’) or end (‘suffix’) of a word: un-​is a prefix, -​ness is a suffix. Some languages also have ‘infixes’ that go inside the word. article, a type of *determiner. We distinguish between the ‘definite article’ the, and the ‘indefinite article’ a/​an. aspect, verbal forms which express the time frame of an action. They include the *continuous (or ‘progressive’), the *perfect, and the simple. aspirate, a consonant sound which is made with a forceful puff of air. The sounds /​h/​, /​p/​, and /​t/​in English are aspirates. If you hold your hand close to your mouth, you can feel the puff of air as you pronounce an aspirate. clause, a part of a sentence that in itself has the main elements of a sentence (subject and verb). In When I  saw him, he was working there are two clauses: when I saw him, and he was working. comparative, the form of an adjective in which two items are compared. Many adjectives make the comparative by adding -​er (light → lighter; warm → warmer). See superlative. compound, a word made by combining two or more words. The result may be a single unit (e.g. blackbird), joined by a hyphen (long-​term), or separate words (seat belt). concord, when the elements of a structure are ‘compatible’; they ‘agree’ with each other. This and books do not ‘agree’ in this books, while there is concord in these books. conjunction, a word which joins sentences or words together. The words but, and, or are conjunctions. continuous aspect, one use of this aspect is to express an action in progress. In English it is associated with a part of the verb be, followed by -​ing, as in He is writing. The word continuous (or ‘progressive’) is often used to describe a tense, and people speak of the ‘present continuous tense’. But in strict grammatical terms continuous is an aspect rather than a tense. 206

Glossary

contraction, where words are shortened, with missing letters replaced by an apostrophe. In I’m, ’m is a contracted form of am, and in John’s coming, ’s stands for is. The word not is also commonly contracted to n’t  –​ can’t, won’t, isn’t. corpus-​based, a corpus (plural corpora) is a large database of pieces of language, often consisting of many millions of words. It is used to provide data for linguistic analysis. A corpus-​based study is one which uses a corpus in this way. countable noun, a noun referring to something that can, in a particular language, be counted, and therefore has a plural form. Man, picture and idea are all countable in English, and hence have plurals (men, pictures, ideas). See uncountable noun. demonstrative, the words this, that, these, those are demonstratives. They indicate where someone or something is situated (in relation to the speaker, for example). They can be adjectives (as in This book is green) or pronouns (This is a green book). determiner, a class of words which come before a noun and specify (‘determine’) what is being spoken about. Determiners in English include *articles (a, the), *demonstratives (this, that), and words like each and any. fricative, a consonant produced by air pushed through two speech organs that are held close together, causing a vibration of air. In English the sounds /​f/​, /​v/​, and /​s/​ are fricatives. grammatical gender, in many languages, all nouns have a grammatical gender –​ masculine, feminine, or in some languages neuter too –​which may determine (among other things) what *inflections they take. These grammatical genders mostly have nothing to do with natural gender. For example, ‘the young lady’ is grammatically neuter in German (das Fräulein), while in French ‘the door’ is feminine (la porte). Gender is discussed in 11.1. hard palate, the hard bony area in the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth. See soft palate. homophones, two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, and often different spellings. Examples are lie (an untruth, and also an action, as in ‘to lie down’), and flower/​flour. indirect question, Is she going? is a ‘direct question’. He asked if she was going is an indirect question. If and whether are common ways of introducing indirect questions. The word order in these questions is as for statements, without *inversion. infinitive, the base form of a verb, sometimes accompanied by the word to. In I want to go, to go is the infinitive. In I can go, it is go. inflection, a suffix or ending having a grammatical function. The -​s on books is an inflection, indicating plurality. interjection, words or phrases used to express an exclamation. Examples in English are hurrah, wow, good heavens. intransitive, a verb that cannot be followed by a direct object is called an ‘intransitive verb’. Examples in English are sit (you cannot say he sat the 207

Glossary

chair) and look. There are many verbs that are not in themselves intransitive, but can be used in an intransitive way. For example, you can say she went home and read, though you can also say she went home and read a book. See transitive. inversion, where the normal order of words is ‘inverted’. In English, inversion is often used in question forms. For example, to form a question from I can swim, the *subject and verb are inverted:  Can I  swim? Similarly, Am I swimming? has inversion of subject and auxiliary verb. lexical, to do with words and vocabulary. lingua franca, a language used for communication between people who do not share the same first language. See ER11.1. modal, a group of verbs including can, must, should. They express attitudes (or ‘modalities’) like certainty, possibility, necessity. Modal verbs act differently from regular verbs; for example, questions are formed without using do –​ we say can you come? rather than do you can come? noun phrase, a noun is usually one word. A noun phrase is a collection of words which act syntactically as a noun. For example, one noun (e.g. Mary) can be the subject of a sentence. So too can the noun phrase: John’s friend Mary who lives in Paris. number, a grammatical term referring to whether a noun is singular (one) or plural (more than one). The noun hat is singular, hats plural. object, the part of a sentence which states the person or thing on which the action of the verb takes place. In the sentence I like milk, milk is the object. In She opened the door, it is the door. part of speech, a category which groups words together that have common attributes. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, adverbs are names of different parts of speech. The term ‘word class’ is also used. passive, a construction in which the person or thing an action is done to becomes the *subject. The door was broken by the man is a passive sentence. Sometimes the agent doing the action is not mentioned, as in The door was broken. past participle, the part of the verb used in constructions like the *present perfect tense. It usually ends in -​ed, as in I have visited, where visited is the past participle. Some verbs have irregular past participle forms, like gone for the verb go, and bought for the verb buy. See present perfect tense. past perfect tense, formed by using the past tense of have together with a *past participle. ‘Perfect’ is in fact a term describing *aspect rather than tense, but it is common to hear the past perfect described as a tense. See present perfect tense. perfect infinitive, a combination of an *infinitive, using the word to, and a *perfect form, using the verb have. Examples are to have seen, and to have visited. person, used in grammar as a way of classifying pronouns (among other things) in terms of who is being referred to. These classifications are used to describe 208

Glossary

verb forms. In the singular, the ‘first person’ is I, the ‘second person’ you, and the ‘third person’ he, she, and it. In the plural, the first, second, and third person forms are we, you, and they. phonemic, a phoneme is a sound that distinguishes one word from another. For example, the words cat and bat are distinguished by the sounds /​k/​and /​b/​, which are thus phonemes in English, and we can say that the sounds are phonemic. On the other hand, though they are different sounds, the so-​called ‘dark /​l/​’ (in hill) and the ‘light /​l/​’ (in language) are not phonemic in English, because there are no two words distinguished by just these two sounds. phonology, a branch of linguistics dedicated to the study of the sounds and the sound systems of a language. possessive, a construction which suggests possession, in some general sense. In English it is sometimes expressed by a noun ending in -​’s or -​s’, as in John’s book. Pronoun forms like my, his, are called ‘possessive pronouns’. predicate, sentences can be divided into a *subject –​about which something is said, and a predicate –​what is said about the subject. So in the sentence John ate the burger quickly, the subject is John, and the predicate is ate the burger quickly. preposition, a part of speech for a word which comes before (is ‘pre-​positioned’ before) a *noun phrase. The class includes words like in, for, and under. present perfect tense, two uses of this tense are to refer to an action that occurred at some unspecified time in the past, or one that is continuing into the present. It is formed by the use of the verb have in the present tense, plus a *past participle, as in I have worked. ‘Perfect’ really refers to *aspect rather than tense, but people commonly speak of it as a tense. prestige, the word used by sociolinguists to describe the level of regard given to a  language variety; some varieties may be ‘high prestige’, others ‘low prestige’. quotative, a phrase introducing what someone is saying or has said. Box 7.1 discusses the use of be like as a quotative, as in She’s like ‘how are you’, where the quotative is she’s like. reduced, used of a vowel when it is shortened or otherwise changes its form, in a context where it is unstressed. See schwa. reflexive, the reflexive pronouns end in the suffix -​self:  myself, yourself, etc. Reflexive verbs are ones which use these pronouns; for example, to wash oneself, to help oneself. register, a variety of language, with its own vocabulary and style, associated with a particular activity or group of people. Scientific English is a register, and so is informal speech. relative, a ‘relative clause’ is one which provides additional information about someone or something. It is usually introduced by a word like who, which, or that, called ‘relative pronouns’. In The boy who lives next door is clever, who lives next door is a relative clause. In Who owns the dog that’s outside? it is that’s outside. 209

Glossary

schwa, the sound /​ ə/​ , only used in unstressed syllables, replacing various other vowels occurring in stressed syllables. For example, in I have seen it somewhere, unstressed have may be pronounced /​həv/​, with schwa replacing the vowel /​æ/​which would be used when the word is emphasised. semantic, semantics is the branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning. sociolect, the variety used by a particular social class. sociolinguist, a linguist who studies language within its social context. soft palate, the soft area of the roof of the mouth, just behind the *hard palate. strong verb, regular verbs use suffixes like -​ed to distinguish their various forms. Most strong verbs distinguish their forms by a change in vowel. Sing, with its forms sang and sung is a strong verb. Some strong verbs keep the same vowel; an example is bid, where the past tense and past participle forms are also bid. subject, the part of a sentence which states the person or thing about which the statement is being made. In Mary lives in France, the subject is Mary. In The dog bit the man, the subject is the dog. See predicate. substitute verb, commonly the verb do, or a *modal, used to substitute for another verb to avoid repeating it. For example, in Mary lives in Madrid, and so does John, does is a substitute for lives. superlative, the form of an adjective construction in which more than two items are compared. Many adjectives form the superlative by adding -​est (light → lightest; warm → warmest). See comparative. synthetic language, one which tends to use affixes in its grammar, and compounding as a method of word formation. This is in contrast to an analytic language, which tends to use word order and phrases. ER12.1 shows ways in which Germanic languages are synthetic. tag question, a question formed by a statement to which is added a ‘tag’ phrase, turning it into a question; for example, It’s hot today, isn’t it? English tag questions are discussed at length in ER6.3. transitive, a verb that takes a direct object. Examples in English are take (you cannot say he took, without following it with an object) and make. See intransitive, which shows that many verbs can be used both transitively or intransitively. uncountable noun, a noun referring to something that is, in a particular language, not usually counted. Rice, advice, and music are uncountable in English; to make them plural we have to use a phrase, like types of rice, pieces of advice, genres of music. See countable noun. variational sociolinguistics, the study of variations in use between different societies or groups of people.

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220

Index

Note: Page numbers in italic denote figures and in bold denote tables. abbreviations 12, 13, 43, 180 Abell, M. 135 Aboriginal languages 50, 127–​8, 129 Academy: French 7, 19, 172; English/​ British 11, 13–​14, 18, 112 ‘adder’ words 72–​3, 72 adjectives: adverbs used as 37; demonstrative 5, 66, 76; used as adverbs 66, 80, 116 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 4, 5 adverbs: adjectives used as 66, 80, 116; ‘often’ 68, 69; split infinitives and 36–​7; used as adjectives 37 affixes 7, 51–​2, 133–​4, 191–​2, 191 African languages 50 ‘after perfect’ 99, 121 Alford, Henry 60, 109 Alfred the Great 80 alveolar substitution 64–​5, 76, 81 American Dialect Society 119, 178 American Dictionary of the English Language, A (Webster) 112–​13 American English see General American (GA) American Spelling Book, The (Webster) 110, 112 American War of Independence 106 Arabic language 145, 151 Armstrong, John 24 aspirates 38–​9 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 174–​5, 177 Austen, Jane 42, 43

Australia: Aboriginal languages 50, 127–​8, 129; history and immigration 128–​9 Australian English 129–​35; Aboriginal words 50, 127–​8; activity section 137–​40; Cockney elements 131, 132; flash language 131, 137, 139–​40; informality 134–​5; intonation 133; pronunciation 68, 131, 132–​3, 138; rhotacism 68; Strine expressions 133, 138, 140; suffixes 133–​4; vocabulary 3, 4–​5, 127–​8, 131, 133–​4, 137–​40; word borrowing 50, 127–​8; word formation 133–​4; word stress 132 auxiliary verbs 60–​1, 62 Avis, W. S. 121 babu English 151–​2 Bailey, C-​J. N. 161 Baker, Robert 17–​18 Barnes, William 46, 54, 70 Basic English 200 Baugh, A. C. 46, 117 BBC Voices project 71–​2 ‘be like’ quotative 118–​19 Beal, J. 84 Benson, Arthur 142 Berkshire dialect 60–​2, 66 Blair, Tony 79 Bolton, K. 183 borrowed words see word borrowing Boston dialect 117 Boswell, James 20 Bradford, William 105–​6

221

Index

British dialects 45–​6, 70–​85, 74; activity sections 85–​8, 100–​2; alveolar substitution 64–​5, 76, 81; Berkshire dialect 60–​2, 66; diphthongs 63–​4, 76, 81, 82, 97, 99; Dorset dialect 46, 54–​5, 56–​7; Estuary English 74, 79–​80; glottal stop 64, 75, 78, 79, 97; grammatical variation attractors 65–​6; ‘h-​dropping’ and ‘h-​insertion’ 38–​9; Irish English 74, 98–​100, 101, 102, 120–​1; long vowels 63–​4, 82; l-​vocalisation 79; Multicultural London English 74, 77–​9; nineteenth century 45–​6; northern England 74, 81–​5; Orkney dialect 94; rhotacism 63, 81, 97, 198; slang 47, 55–​6; t-​glottalisation 64, 75, 78, 79, 97; ‘th’ sounds 75; traditional and mainstream 67–​8; Welsh English 74, 91–​3; West Country dialect 74, 80–​1, 87, 120; words for ‘adder’ 72–​3, 72; words for ‘flea’ 85–​7, 86; words for ‘left-​handed’ 67; yod coalescence 79; see also Cockney dialect; Scots/​Scottish English British Empire 33, 49–​50, 52, 142–​3, 145 Bryson, B. 16, 114 Burgess, Anthony 14–​15, 131 Burnell, Arthur 150–​1 Burns, Robert 4, 5, 96, 134 Butters, R. R. 116 Cable, T. 46, 117 Cabot, John 104 Canadian English 119–​22, 125; Newfoundland dialect 120–​1 cants 47 capitalisation 22–​3 Caribbean 157 Cavelier, René-​Robert 105 Celts 90 Chambers, J. K. 62 Chaucer, Geoffrey 193 Churchill, William 130 cleft sentences 99, 102 Cobbett, William 36, 37 Cockney dialect 17, 45–​6, 74, 75–​7; Australian English and 131, 132;

222

consonant sounds 38, 45, 64, 65, 75–​6, 88; grammar 45–​6, 76; rhyming slang 47, 55–​6; vowel sounds 76, 77 Coconuts (Rangarajan) 146 code-​switching 91, 109, 151, 154–​5, 177 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 24 Columbus, Christopher 104, 157 compounding 7, 51, 160, 169, 170–​1, 192 concord 37 consonant sounds: alveolar substitution 64–​5, 76, 81; American English 63, 64, 65, 73, 114, 117, 198; aspirates 38–​ 9; Australian English 68, 132–​3; ‘ch’ sound 97–​8; Cockney dialect 38, 45, 64, 65, 75–​6, 88; consonant clusters 147–​8; dentals 88; Estuary English 79; fricatives 92; glottal stop 64, 75, 78, 79, 97; ‘h-​dropping’ and ‘h-​insertion’ 38–​9; Indian English 147–​8; Irish English 99; ‘ll’ sound 92; l-​vocalisation 79; plosives 64; ‘r’ sounds 63, 68, 73, 81, 97, 113, 117, 118, 198; retroflexion 148; Scottish English 63, 65, 97–​8; t-​glottalisation 64, 75, 78, 79, 97; ‘th’ sounds 75, 117, 198; voiced and unvoiced 73, 75, 80–​1, 99; Welsh English 92; West Country dialect 80–​1; ‘wh’ sounds 97, 114; yod coalescence 79 continuous aspect 23–​4, 149 contractions 12, 13, 134 Cook, James 128–​9, 135 creoles see pidgins and creoles Croatian language 173–​4 Cromwell, Oliver 98 Crystal, B. 93 Crystal, D. 20, 21, 64, 80, 93, 174, 178, 181–​2, 186, 187, 198, 200, 201 Culpeper, J. 73 Cymraeg 91, 92, 93 Darwin, Charles 42–​3 Dee, John 33 Defoe, Daniel 22, 24 Delbridge, A. 130, 134–​5 demonstrative determiners 5, 66, 76 dentals 88

Index

dialects 59; American English 4, 5, 116–​19; Newfoundland dialect 120–​1; traditional and mainstream 67–​8; see also British dialects Diana, Princess of Wales 79 diasporas 142–​3, 143 Dickens, Charles 34, 45–​6 Dictionary of the English Language (Johnson) 13, 18–​21, 28–​30, 39, 112, 123–​4 diphthongs 63–​4, 76, 81, 82, 97, 99, 113, 121, 132, 135, 140 dislocations 83–​4 Dixon, R. M. W. 128 Dizzee Rascal 78 Dorset dialect 46, 54–​5, 56–​7 double negatives 5, 66 Durham, M. 84 Dutch language 50, 109, 123 Dyche, Thomas 22, 23 dynamic verbs 149–​50 Early Modern English (EModE) 6, 7, 22, 49, 83 Eccles, Ellen 39 eighteenth century 1–​2, 11–​25; activity section 26–​31; Baker’s Reflections 17–​18; capitalisation 22–​3; description 25; grammar 23–​4; grammars and usage guides 15–​18, 26–​7, 35; graphology 21–​3, 30; Johnson’s Dictionary 13, 18–​21, 28–​30, 39, 112, 123–​4; long letter ‘s’ 2, 21–​2; Lowth’s Grammar 15–​16, 26–​7, 196; new words 12, 24–​5; prescription and proscription 14–​17, 25, 26–​7; pronunciation guides 16–​17; punctuation 23; Swift’s Proposal 1–​2, 11–​13, 21–​3; vocabulary 12, 24–​5 ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) 174–​8 Ellis, A.J. 41, 46 emoticons 180 English as a global language 194–​202; activity section 203–​4; displacing English 201; language simplicity 196–​7, 200, 203–​4; numbers of users 194–​5, 195; power and popularity 195–​6;

standard form 198–​9; which variety? 199–​201 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) 174–​8 English Dialect Dictionary (Wright) 46, 70, 116 English Dialect Society 46, 70 English for Science and Technology (EST) 183–​4 English for Specific Purposes (ESP) 182–​4 ESP (English for Specific Purposes) 182–​4 EST (English for Science and Technology) 183–​4 Estuary English 74, 79–​80 Euro-​English 175–​6, 185, 186–​7 Fanning, Daniel 22 field linguistics 71 Filppula, Markku 99, 100, 101 flash language 131, 137, 139–​40 ‘flea’ words 85–​7, 86 focus fronting 93 Fowler, Henry 16 French language 108, 123, 151, 172, 173, 192, 195, 201 fricatives 92 functional shifts 51 Gaelic, Scottish 71, 94, 95 Gandhi, Mahatma 145, 152 gender of nouns 173, 191 General American (GA) 107–​19; activity section 123–​5; ‘be like’ quotative 118–​19; consonant sounds 63, 64, 65, 73, 114, 117, 198; dialects 4, 5, 116–​19; Dutch words 109, 123; French words 108, 123; grammar 66, 115–​16, 118–​19; Native American words 50, 108, 109, 112, 123; pronunciation 63, 64, 65, 73, 113–​14, 117, 198; rhotacism 63, 73, 113, 117, 118, 198; social class and 117–​18; Spanish words 50, 108, 123; spelling reform 110–​13, 123–​4; vocabulary 114–​15, 124; vowel sounds 73, 113–​14; word borrowing 50, 107–​9, 123; word stress 114; Yiddish words 108–​9, 123

223

Index

General northern English (GNE) accent 85 German language 50, 68, 69, 166, 172–​3, 189, 201 Germanic origins of English 189–​92, 191 Ghanaian Pidgin 159, 160, 161 Gilbert, Humphrey 104–​5 glottal stop 64, 75, 78, 79, 97 Godwin, Richard 180–​1 Gordon, E. 135 Görlach, M. 51, 52, 173 Graddol, D. 174 Graham, George Frederick 47 Gramley, S. 183–​4 grammars and usage guides: eighteenth century 15–​18, 26–​7, 35; nineteenth century 35–​7, 43, 53–​4 grammatical differences 5; American English 66, 115–​16, 118–​19; Asian ELF 175; Berkshire dialect 60–​2, 66; Cockney dialect 45–​6, 76; eighteenth century 23–​4; Estuary English 80; Euro-​English 175–​6, 185, 186–​7; Indian English 148–​50, 153; Irish English 99–​100, 101, 102; Multicultural London English 79; Newfoundland dialect 121; northern English dialects 82–​3; pidgins and creoles 159–​60, 164–​6, 168–​9, 170; Scottish English 98; social class and 43; variation attractors 65–​6; Welsh English 92–​3 Great Vowel Shift 7 grime music 78 Guyanese Creole 158–​9, 158, 167–​8 Harley, Robert 1, 22 Hart, John 111 hashtags 181 Hawaiian language 109 Hawaiian Pidgin 159, 161 ‘h-​dropping’ and ‘h-​insertion’ 38–​9 Hindi language 50, 146, 195 historical present 45–​6 Hobbes, Thomas 20 Hobson-​Jobson (Yule and Burnell) 150–​1 Hodgson, William 36–​7, 38, 53–​4 Homer 1

224

Hon. Henry H 35, 37, 38–​9 Horace 1 Indian English 147–​53; activity section 153–​5; babu style 151–​2; code-​ switching 151, 154–​5; grammar 148–​50, 153; ‘-​isation’ process 152–​3; pronunciation 147–​8; vocabulary 150–​1, 153–​5; word stress 148 Indian languages 50, 144–​7, 150–​1 indirect questions 149 Industrial Revolution 33–​4 inflections 7, 60, 159–​60, 191 interjections 98, 121 intonation: American dialects 117; Australian English 133; Irish English 99; Welsh English 92 Irish English 74, 98–​100, 101, 102, 120–​1 Irish language 99, 100 irregular verbs 66, 115–​16 Italian language 50, 173 Jakobsen, Jakob 95 Jamaican Creole 159, 161 Japanese language 50, 184–​5, 186, 201 Jefferson, Thomas 106 Jenkins, J. 176, 197 Johnson, E. 183 Johnson, Samuel 13, 18–​21, 24, 28–​30, 39, 112, 123–​4 Jones, John 16 Kachru, Braj 142–​3, 143, 152 Kerswill, P 78 Killick, J. 94 Kipling, Rudyard 113 Kirkpatrick, A. 174–​5, 177 Kirwin, W. J. 120–​1 Kortmann, B. 62 Kurath, Hans 119 Labov, William 117–​18, 119 language death 94 Late Modern English (LModE) 6 Leach, Alfred 39 Leech, G. 70, 114–​15, 136, 147 ‘left-​handed’ words 67

Index

Lewis, Saunders 91 lexis see vocabulary lingua franca concept 145–​7, 157, 162, 174–​8 Linguistic Survey of Scotland 71 literacy rates 35 ‘Lolspeak’ 186, 187 long letter ‘s’ 2, 21–​2 long vowels 63–​4, 82 Lowth, Robert 15–​16, 26–​7, 196 l-​vocalisation 79 McArthur, T. 172 Macaulay, R. 158, 167–​8 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 144 McBurney, Samuel 130 McCloskey, D. 33 McCulloch, Gretchen 179 Malay language 151, 162, 166 Mandarin Chinese 195, 195, 201 Maori language 135, 136 Marold, K. 161 Marx, Karl 144 Matthews, P. H. 157 meal names 44 Melchers, G. 132 Meredith, Louisa Anne 130 Middle English (ME) 6, 7, 161, 191 Millward, C. M. 46, 117 Minor, W.C. 40 Mitchell, Alexander George 130 Moore, Francis 109 morality 19–​20, 37–​8 Morris, Edward 127 Morrison, Alistair Ardoch 133 Mudie, G. 36 Mugglestone, L. 35, 38, 42, 46 Mühlhäusler, P. 162 Mulcaster, Richard 70 Multicultural London English 74, 77–​9 Murray, James 40, 52 Murray, Lindley 16, 35 My Fair Lady (film) 38, 41, 77 Native American languages 50, 107, 108, 109, 112, 123 Netspeak 178–​82, 186, 187

New Zealand English 135–​7, 140, 198 Newfoundland dialect 120–​1 Nicoll, James D. 192 nineteenth century 32–​52; activity section 53–​7; British Empire 33, 49–​50, 52, 142–​3, 145; creation of Oxford English Dictionary 39–​41; development of standard English 41–​2; dialects 45–​6; grammars and usage guides 35–​7, 43, 53–​4; ‘ignorant tradesmen’ petition 32–​3; Industrial Revolution 33–​4; meal names 44; new words 47–​8, 48, 49–​52; pronunciation guides 38–​9; science and technology 34, 51–​2; shibboleths 36–​9; slang 47, 55–​6; ‘slipper English’ 42–​3; social class 43–​4; social reform 34–​5; vocabulary 47–​8, 48, 49–​52; word borrowing 49–​50; word creation 49, 51–​2 Norn 94–​5 North America: activity section 123–​5; Canadian English 119–​22; history of colonisation and immigration 33, 104–​7, 119–​20, 123; Native American languages 50, 107, 108, 109, 112, 123; Newfoundland dialect 120–​1 northern English dialects 74, 81–​5 Ogden, Charles 200 Old English (OE) 6, 7, 97, 116, 161, 190–​2, 191 Old Norse 73, 87, 94, 96–​7, 100–​1, 102, 160–​1 Oldmixon, John 13 Oliphant, Kington 43 Onions, Charles Talbot 39 Orkney dialect 94 Orton, Harold 70 Osselton, N. E. 16 Oxford English Dictionary 12, 19, 24, 33, 39–​41, 47–​8, 48, 51–​2, 63, 67, 98, 114, 142, 149, 150 Ozymandias (Shelley) 194 Papua New Guinea 162 paraphrases 160, 166–​7, 169, 170–​1 passive 24

225

Index

passive-​continuous 24 past participles 7, 66, 115–​16 past tense 7, 43, 66, 115–​16 Paterson, Banjo 4 Pätzold, K.-​M. 183–​4 Pearce, M. 84–​5 Penhallurick, R. 91, 92–​3 perfect infinitive 43 Persian language 144–​5 Peters, P. 134 Phillipps, Kenneth 43 Pickwick Papers, The (Dickens) 45–​6 pidgins and creoles 4, 5–​6, 157–​67; activity section 167–​71; grammar 159–​60, 164–​6, 168–​9, 170; Guyanese Creole 158–​9, 158, 167–​8; Tok Pisin party invitation 162–​4, 168, 170; word borrowing 166; word creation 160–​1, 166–​7, 169, 170–​1 Pilgrim Fathers 105–​6 plosives 64 Polybius 90 Poole, Thomas 24 Portuguese language 151, 166 Postlethwaite, Richard 16 prefixes 52, 191–​2 prepositions 16, 76, 115, 163–​4, 176, 183 prescription and proscription 14–​17, 25, 26–​7, 36–​7, 53–​4 Present Day English (PDE) 6, 23–​4; Germanic origins 189–​92, 191 present perfect tense 43, 61, 115, 149 present tense 43, 45–​6, 60, 66, 121 Prodromou, L. 177 pronouns: inclusive and exclusive ‘we’ 164–​5; instead of demonstrative determiners 5, 66, 76; non-​standard 66; plural forms of ‘you’ 98, 100, 117, 121; ‘thou’ and ‘you’ 83 pronunciation: American English 63, 64, 65, 73, 113–​14, 117, 198; Asian ELF 175; Australian English 68, 131, 132–​3, 138; Canadian English 121, 122, 125; Cockney dialect 17, 38, 45, 64, 65, 75–​6, 77, 88; Estuary English 79; Indian English 147–​8; Irish English 99; Multicultural London

226

English 78; New Zealand English 135, 140, 198; northern English dialects 82; Scottish English 97–​8; social class and 78, 117–​18; spelling mismatches 110–​11, 192–​3, 197; Welsh English 91–​2; West Country dialect 80–​1; see also consonant sounds; Received Pronunciation (RP); vowel sounds pronunciation guides: eighteenth century 16–​17; nineteenth century 38–​9 Puttenham, George 41 Pygmalion (Shaw) 38, 41, 77 questions: indirect 149; tag 61, 80, 92–​3, 121, 149, 175–​6, 197 Quirk, Randolph 200 quotatives 79, 118–​19 Raleigh, Sir Walter 42, 105 Rangarajan, S. 146 Rao, R. 153 Received Pronunciation (RP) 41–​2; diphthongs 63–​4, 76, 81, 82, 97, 113, 121; Estuary English and 79; rhotacism 63, 68; schwa sound 114; ‘th’ sounds 75; velar sounds 64; vowel sounds 73, 82, 113–​14; word stress 114, 132 reduplication 160 reflexive verbs 43 retroflexion 148 rhotacism 63, 68, 73, 81, 97, 113, 117, 118, 198 Romaine, S. 109 Ross, Alan 44 Royal Society of London 7 Rushdie, Salman 152–​3 Russian language 195, 197 Sanskrit language 144, 146, 150 schwa sound 114 Scotland 93–​4; Gaelic 71, 94, 95; Norn 94–​5; see also Scots/​Scottish English Scots/​Scottish English 4, 5, 74, 95–​8; consonant sounds 63, 65, 97–​8; dialect surveys 71; grammar 98; Orkney dialect 94; Scandinavian words 94,

Index

96–​7, 100–​1, 102; suffixes 133; vowel sounds 97 secret languages 47 Seidlhofer, B. 176, 185 sentence stress 148 Shakespeare, William 12, 19, 20, 23–​4, 25, 29, 33, 93, 113, 157, 193 Shaw, George Bernard 38, 41, 43, 76–​7 Shaw, P. 132 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 42, 194 shibboleths 36–​9 Skeat, Walter 50 slang 47, 55–​6 Slavic languages 50 ‘slipper English’ 42–​3 Smith, Charles William 38, 39 social class 43–​4, 78, 117–​18 social reform 34–​5 sociolect 78 Solomon Island Pidgin 4, 5–​6, 161 spam triggers 181–​2 Spanish language 50, 108, 123, 195, 201 spelling: American English 110–​13, 123–​4; Canadian English 122; history of English and 192–​3; Netspeak 179; pronunciation mismatches 110–​11, 192–​3, 197 split infinitive 36–​7 Sranan pidgin 160, 169 stative verbs 149–​50 Stormzy 78 stress-​timed languages 148 Strevens, P. 183 Strine expressions 133, 138, 140 strong verbs 7, 190–​1 suffixes 51–​2, 133–​4, 191–​2, 191 Survey of English Dialects (SED) 65–​6, 67, 70–​1 Sutherland, Walter 94 Svartvik, J. 70, 114–​15, 136, 147 Swadeshi English 147, 153 Sweet, Henry 198 Swift, Jonathan 1–​2, 11–​13, 21–​3, 24, 30, 203–​4 syllable-​timed languages 148, 175 synthetic languages 7

tag questions 61, 80, 92–​3, 121, 149, 175–​6, 197 Tamils 146–​7 Tasman, Abel 128, 135 Tatler, The 11–​12 Taylor, Bayard 51 tenses: complexity of English 195; continuous aspect 23–​4, 149; historical present 45–​6; passive 24; passive-​ continuous 24; past participles 7, 66, 115–​16; past tense 7, 43, 66, 115–​16; perfect infinitive 43; present perfect 43, 61, 115, 149; present tense 43, 45–​6, 60, 66, 121 t-​glottalisation 64, 75, 78, 79, 97 Todd, L. 162 Tok Pisin 161–​7; activity section 168–​71; grammar 164–​6, 168–​9, 170; party invitation 162–​4, 168, 170; vocabulary 163–​4, 166–​7, 169, 170–​1 Tottie, G. 115 transitive verbs 43 Trench, Richard 37, 39 Trudgill, P. 60, 61, 62, 67–​8, 198 T-​shirt language 196 Twain, Mark 5, 65, 66 U/​non-​U 44 Upton, C. 46, 72–​3, 85–​7, 86 Upton, John 25 usage guides see grammars and usage guides variation attractors 62–​7; grammar 65–​6; sounds 63–​5; vocabulary 67 Vaux, James Hardy 131 velar sounds see alveolar substitution verbs: auxiliary verbs 60–​1, 62; irregular verbs 66, 115–​16; reflexive verbs 43; stative/​dynamic distinction 149–​50; strong verbs 7, 190–​1; transitive verbs 43; see also tenses Verma, S. K. 147 Vikings 73, 87, 94, 96–​7, 104, 160–​1 vocabulary: American English 114–​15, 124; Australian English 3, 4–​5, 127–​8, 131, 133–​4, 137–​40; Canadian

227

Index

English 122; contractions 12, 13, 134; eighteenth century 12, 24–​5; Germanic origins 192; Indian English 150–​1, 153–​5; New Zealand English 136; Newfoundland dialect 121; nineteenth century 47–​8, 48, 49–​52; pidgins and creoles 160–​1, 163–​4, 166–​7, 169, 170–​1; Scottish English 94, 96–​7, 100–​1, 102; social class and 44; variation attractors 67; words for ‘adder’ 72–​3, 72; words for ‘flea’ 85–​7, 86; words for ‘left-​handed’ 67; see also word borrowing; word creation voicing 73, 75, 80–​1, 99 vowel sounds: American English 73, 113–​14; Australian English 132; Canadian English 121, 125; Cockney dialect 76, 77; complexity of English 195; diphthongs 63–​4, 76, 81, 82, 97, 99, 113, 121, 132, 135, 140; Great Vowel Shift 7; Irish English 99; long vowels 63–​4, 82; New Zealand English 135, 140; northern English dialects 82; Received Pronunciation (RP) 73, 82, 113–​14; schwa sound 114; Scottish English 97; Welsh English 91–​2; West Country dialect 81 Walker, John 16–​17, 27–​8, 41 Waltzing Matilda 3, 4–​5 Warburg, J. 14 Warburton, William 15 ‘we’, inclusive and exclusive 164–​5 Webster, Noah 19, 110, 111–​13, 124, 198 Weinreich, Max 59 Wells, H.G. 200 Wells, John 73, 76, 130–​1, 132, 148

228

Welsh English 74, 91–​3 Welsh language 91, 92, 93, 195–​6 West African Pidgin English (WAPE) 161 West Country dialect 74, 80–​1, 87, 120; see also Dorset dialect Whewell, William 34 Widdowson, J. D. A. 46, 72–​3, 72, 85–​7, 86 Wilberforce, William 32 Winchester, Simon 40 word borrowing 49–​50; American English 50, 107–​9, 123; Australian English 50, 127–​8; Indian English 150–​1; Middle English 7; Tok Pisin 166; worldwide borrowing of English words 172–​4, 184–​5, 186 word creation: affixation 7, 51–​2, 133–​4, 191–​2, 191; Australian English 133–​4; clipping 133; compounding 7, 51, 160, 169, 170–​1, 192; functional shifts 51; nineteenth century 49, 51–​2; paraphrases 160, 166–​7, 169, 170–​1; pidgins and creoles 160–​1, 166–​7, 169, 170–​1; reduplication 160 word stress: American English 114; Australian English 132; complexity of English 195; Germanic origins 190; Indian English 148; Received Pronunciation (RP) 114, 132 World Standard Spoken English (WSSE) 200–​1 Wright, Joseph 46, 70 Yiddish 108–​9, 123 yod coalescence 79 ‘you’: plural forms 98, 100, 117, 121; ‘thou’ and 83 Yule, Henry 150–​1