2015-09-06
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Local dialects are varieties of the English Language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form.
Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants.
In GB there are two variants: Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Nothern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.
Among the regional varieties beyond the borders of GB American English is the most important, as it has its own literary standards, i.e. its own generally accepted norms of speaking and writing. american English can not be called a dialect since it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, while a dialect has no litrary form.
Canadian, Australian and Indian English can also be considered regional varieties of English with their own peculiarities.
The differences between British English (BE) and American English (AmE) are observed in the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and spelling.
There is a number of differences between British and American lexicons. There exist words which belong only to American vocabulary and constitute its specific feature. These words are called Americanisms (the term was introduced by Sir John Witherspoon, rector of Princeton University). Among Americanisms the following major groups of words are distinguished: historical Americanisms, proper Americanisms and borrowings.The examples of historical Americanisms are the words: fall (autumn), to guess (in the meaning “to think”), sick (in the meaning “ill, unwell”). In BE their meanings have changed, while in AmE these words still retain their old meanings.
Proper Americanisms are words that are specifically American. They denote American realia, objects of American flora and fauna: ^ Congress, House of Representatives, District Attorney, forty-niner (золотоискатель 1949 года), prairie scooner (фургон переселенцев), jump a claim (захватить чужой участок), drugstore, blue-grass, catbird (американский пересмешник), bullfrog, etc. They are also names of objects which are called differently in the US and in GB: store – shop, baggage – luggage, subway – underground, railroad – railway, gasoline – petrol, department – faculty, etc.
AmE is rich in specifically American borrowings which reflect the historical contacts of the Americans with other nations on the American continent. Among such borrowings are Spanish borrowings (ranch, sombrero, canyon, tornado), Afro-American borrowings (banjo), German borrowings (lager beer and black beer, frankfurter) and especially Indian borrowings (the words wigwam, canoe, mocassin, tomahauk, racoon, skunk, names of places, rivers, lakes and states: Mississippi, Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky.
The differences between Canadian and BE are concerned mainly with intonation. As for the vocabulary, some words do not differ from their British counterparts while others are the same as in AmE: to guess (“to think”), rooster (“cock”)
