D Colloquial Words

Colloquial wordsare marked by their special emotional colouring. They are closer to neutral words both etymologically and structurally than to bookish words. However affixation (forming diminutives) is rather frequent,

– ie auntie, birdie

–y baby, granny, kitty

–ette kitchenette

–ish piggish

Hyperbolic expressions are also common here:

e.g. awfully nice, terribly sweet, unutterably exotic, etc.

Polysemy in general is a prominent feature here:

e.g. way, thing, take, set, give

(1) Dialectal words

Standard English is the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and TV and spoken by educated people. It is form of English which is correct and literary, uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken and understood.

Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words belonging to various local dialects. There are local dialects which are varieties of the English language, peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form and variants which are regional varieties possessing a literary form.

In Great Britain there are two variants - Scottish English and Irish English, and five main dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several dialects. One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. The OED‘s first recorded use of Cockney is dated 1776. But it has been suggested that a Cockney style of speech is much older.

Cockney exists on two levels:

1) as spoken by the educated lower middle classes. It’s a regional dialect marked by some deviations in pronunciation but few in vocabulary and syntax.

2) as spoken by the uneducated, Cockney differs from Standard English also in vocabulary, morphology and syntax. B. Show’s play “Pygmalion” clearly renders this level of Cockney. Professor Henry Higgins, the main character of the play, speaking about Aliza Doolitle, the flower girl, says: You see this creature with her curbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, in three months I could pass this girl off as a duchess. It requires better English.