English language outside UK

Contents

 

Introduction…………………………………………………………...2

1. Historical background of development of English outside UK……3

1.1 New Zealand………………………………………………3

1.2 Australia…………………………………………………...4

1.3 Canada……………………………………………………..6

2. Pronunciation differences in English language……………………..7

2.1 New Zealand……………………………………………….7

2.2 Australia……………………………………………………8

2.3 Canada……………………………………………………...9

3. Vocabulary peculiarities of the language…………………………...12

3.1 New Zealand……………………………………………….12

3.2 Australia……………………………………………………15

3.3 Canada…………………………………………………….. 16

Conclusion……………………………………………………………..26

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

English is part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. By year 1000, the English language consisted of approximately 40 000 words. Nowadays, the number has grown to more than 500 000. If we calculate the average of words created per century, this comes to 46 000. A great number of words found in the English vocabulary was borrowed from Latin, French, Low German, and the Scandinavian languages. We also know that some periods were more fertile than others: invasions, contact with other cultures, inventions, technological progress, music, fashion are some of the factors which have helped to enrich the language.

 

     British colonialism in the 19th century and American capitalism and technological progress in the 20th century were undoubtely the main causes for the spread of English throughout the world.

 

     From around 1750 to 1950 the British Empire covered about a quarter of the globe. It was one of the most powerful empires the world has ever known. The colonies gradually freed themselves but about fifty countries chose to keep a connection with Britain by belonging to the The British Commonwealth. English is spoken all over the Commonwealth either as a native or an official language, and the British monarch is the symbolic head of the association.

 

     The USA has played a leading role in most domains for the last hundred years. At the end of the 19th century and first quarter of the 20th, it welcomed millions of European immigrants who had fled their countries ravaged by war, poverty or famine. This labour force strenghtened American industries and development. The Hollywood film industry also attracted many foreign artists in quest of fame and fortune and the number of American films produced every year soon flooded the market. Before the Treaty of Versailles(1919), which ended the First World War between Germany and the Allies, diplomacy was conducted in French. However, President Wilson succeeded in having the treaty in English as well. Since then, English started being used in diplomacy and gradually in economic relations and the media. During the II World War, America intervened both militarily and economically to save Europe from chaos. From then onwards, the United States have consolidated their cultural, economical and technological power: inventions, rock and roll, the first man on the moon, the revolution of the Internet, the country's growing prosperity and commercial aggressiveness have contributed to the further expansion and importance of English in the world today.

 

 

 

1. Historical background of development of English outside UK

 

English spread all over the world. Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are English speaking countries. Why is English such an extended language in the world?

 

During the 17th and 18th centuries British navigators sailed across the seas with the aim of extending Britain's power and prosperity .They colonized new territories around the world, taking their language with them. The first New World settlement was established in Jamestown in America in 1607. Canada became half English-speaking in 1763, French left in Quebec. During the 17th century British rule was established in the West Indian islands of Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, St Kitts and Trinidad and Tobago. Australia and New Zealand were discovered during Capitan Cook's voyage in 1768. English was imposed as the official language of the new colonies; it was the language of education and administration.

 

English speaking countries are situated in different parts of the world and differ in many ways. The weather and climate of these countries, and the way of people's life differ. Each country has its own history customs, traditions, and its own national holidays. But they all have a common English language.

 

1.1 New Zealand

 

New Zealand English (NZE, en-NZ) is the form of the English language used in New Zealand.

 

The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. The most distinctive influences on New Zealand English have come from Southern England, Scottish English (see Dunedin), and the indigenous Māori language.

 

New Zealand English is close to Australian English in its pronunciation; there are, however, several subtle differences, many of which show the influence of Maori speech[citation needed]. One of the most prominent differences between the New Zealand accent and that of Australia is the realization of /ɪ/: in New Zealand English, as in some South African varieties, this is pronounced as a schwa.

 

A distinct New Zealand variant of the English language has been in existence since at least 1912, when Frank Arthur Swinnerton described it as a "carefully modulated murmur," though its history probably goes back further than that. From the beginning of the British settlement on the islands, a new dialect began to form by adopting Māori words to describe the different flora and fauna of New Zealand, for which English did not have any words of its own.

 

1.2  Australia

 

Australian English began diverging from British English shortly after the foundation of the Australian penal colony of New South Wales in 1788. British convicts sent there, (including Cockneys from London, came mostly from large English cities. They were joined by free settlers, military personnel and administrators, often with their families. However, a large part of the convict body was Irish, with at least 25% directly from Ireland, and others indirectly via Britain. There were other populations of convicts from non-English speaking areas of Britain, such as the Welsh and Scots. English was not spoken, or was poorly spoken by a large part of the convict population and the dominant English input was that of Cockney from South-East England.

 

In 1827 Peter Cunningham, in his book Two Years in New South Wales, reported that native-born white Australians of the time—known as "currency lads and lasses"—spoke with a distinctive accent and vocabulary, with a strong Cockney influence. The transportation of convicts to Australia ended in 1868, but immigration of free settlers from Britain, Ireland and elsewhere continued.

 

The first of the Australian gold rushes, in the 1850s, began a much larger wave of immigration which would significantly influence the language. During the 1850s, when the UK was under economic hardship, about two per cent of its population emigrated to the Colony of New South Wales and the Colony of Victoria.

 

Among the changes wrought by the gold rushes was "Americanisation" of the language—the introduction of words, spellings, terms, and usages from North American English. The words imported included some later considered to be typically Australian, such as dirt and digger. Bonzer, which was once a common Australian slang word meaning "great", "superb" or "beautiful", is thought to have been a corruption of the American mining term bonanza, which means a rich vein of gold or silver and is itself a loanword from Spanish. The influx of American military personnel in World War II brought further American influence; though most words were short-lived; and only okay, you guys, and gee have persisted.

 

Since the 1950s the American influence on language in Australia has mostly come from pop culture, the mass media (books, magazines and television programs), computer software and the internet. Some words, such as freeway and truck, have even been naturalised so completely that few Australians recognise their origin.

 

One of the first writers to attempt renditions of Australian accents and vernacular was the novelist Joseph Furphy (a.k.a. Tom Collins), who wrote a popular account of rural New South Wales and Victoria during the 1880s, Such is Life (1903). C. J. Dennis wrote poems about working class life in Melbourne, such as The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915), which was extremely popular and was made into a popular silent film (The Sentimental Bloke; 1919). John O'Grady's novel “They're a Weird Mob” has many examples of pseudo-phonetically written Australian speech in Sydney during the 1950s, such as "owyergoinmateorright?" ("How are you going, mate? All right?") Thomas Keneally's novels set in Australia, particularly The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, frequently use vernacular such as "yair" for "yes" and "noth-think" for "nothing". Other books of note are "Let Stalk Strine" by Afferbeck Lauder – where "Strine" is "Australian" and "Afferbeck Lauder" is "alphabetical order" (the book is in alphabetical order) – and "How to be Normal in Australia" by Robert Treborlang.

 

British words such as mobile (phone) predominate in most cases. Some American and British variants exist side-by-side; in many cases – freeway and motorway, for instance – regional, social and ethnic variation within Australia typically defines word usage.

 

Australian English is most similar to New Zealand English, due to their similar history and geographical proximity. Both use the expression different to (also encountered in British English, but not American) as well as different from.

 

Words of Irish origin are used, some of which are also common elsewhere in the Irish diaspora, such as bum for "backside" (Irish bun), tucker for "food", "provisions" (Irish tacar), as well as one or two native English words whose meaning have changed under Irish influence, such as paddock for "field", cf. Irish páirc, which has exactly the same meaning as the Australian paddock.

 

Australia adopted decimal currency in 1966 and the metric system in the 1970s. Australians have measured temperatures in degrees Celsius since 1972, road signs were metricated in 1974, and goods of all kinds have been measured in litres and kilograms ever since that time. While the older measures are usually used and understood by those born before 1960, younger Australians rarely use pounds, ounces, stones, degrees Fahrenheit, yards or miles[citation needed]. Some imperial measurements persist in popular usage, such as feet and inches for people's height, along with pounds and ounces for newborn babies and pints for bee.

 

1.3 Canada

 

The term "Canadian English" is first attested in a speech by the Reverend A. Constable Geikie in an address to the Canadian Institute in 1857. Geikie, a Scottish-born Canadian, reflected the Anglocentric attitude prevalent in Canada for the next hundred years when he referred to the language as "a corrupt dialect," in comparison to what he considered the proper English spoken by immigrants from Britain.

 

Canadian English is the product of four waves of immigration and settlement over a period of almost two centuries. The first large wave of permanent English-speaking settlement in Canada, and linguistically the most important, was the influx of British Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, chiefly from the Mid-Atlantic States – as such, Canadian English is believed by some scholars to have derived from northern American English, and is nothing more than a variety of it. The second wave from Britain and Ireland was encouraged to settle in Canada after the War of 1812 by the governors of Canada, who were worried about anti-English sentiment among its citizens. Waves of immigration from around the globe peaking in 1910 and 1960 had a lesser influence, but they did make Canada a multicultural country, ready to accept linguistic change from around the world during the current period of globalization.

 

The languages of Aboriginal peoples in Canada started to influence European languages used in Canada even before widespread settlement took place, and the French of Lower Canada provided vocabulary to the English of Upper Canada.

 

 

 

 

2. Pronunciation differences in English language

2.1 New Zealand

 

Vowels

The short front vowels

The short-i of KIT is a central vowel around [ə] or [ɘ]. This sounds somewhat similar to (although not quite as open as) a short-u in other forms of English, and contrasts sharply with the [i]-like vowel heard in Australia. Because of this, some New Zealanders often claim that Australians say "feesh and cheeps" for fish and chips while some Australians conversely claim that New Zealanders say "fush and chups".The New Zealander's short-i is not phonologically distinct from the schwa /ə/.

The short-e /ɛ/ of DRESS has moved to fill in the space left by /ɪ/, and it is phonetically in the region of [e]. It sounds like a short-i itself to most other English speakers.

Likewise, the short-a /æ/ of TRAP is approximately [ɛ], which sounds like a short-e to most Northern Hemisphere English speakers.

 

Documentary films from the first half of the 20th century featuring both Australian and New Zealand voices show that the accents were more similar before the Second World War and they diverged mostly after the 1950s.[citation needed] Recent linguistic research[who?] has suggested that the short, flat "i" heard in New Zealand comes from the dialects of English spoken by lower-class English people in the late-19th century. It is, however, also encountered in Scottish English, and given the higher level of Scottish emigration to New Zealand than to Australia, this may[citation needed] also be an influence. The pronunciation of English vowels by native Māori speakers may[citation needed] also have influenced the New Zealand accent. (However Maori has [i], the "Australian" sound, but not /ɪ/ or [ə] the "English (RP)" and "New Zealand" ones respectively, making this seem unlikely) - There is also a Māori accent distinct from the accent of native English speakers.

 

Conditioned mergers

The vowels /ɪə/ as in near and /eə/ as in square are increasingly being merged, so that here rhymes with there; and bear and beer, and rarely and really are homophones. This is the "most obvious vowel change taking place" in New Zealand English. There is some debate as to the quality of the merged vowel, but the consensus appears to be that it is towards a close variant, [iə].

Before /l/, the vowels /iː/:/ɪə/ (as in reel vs real), as well as /ɒ/:/oʊ/ (doll vs dole), and sometimes /ʊ/:/uː/ (pull vs pool), /ɛ/:/æ/ (Ellen vs Alan) and /ʊ/:/ɪ/ (full vs fill) may be merged.

 

Other vowels 

/ɑr/-/ɑː/ as in start, bath, and palm is a near-open central-to-front vowel [ɐː] or [ɐ̟ː]. The phonetic quality of this vowel overlaps with the quality for /ʌ/ as in strut. The difference between the two is entirely length for many speakers.

 

Consonants

New Zealand English is mostly non-rhotic (with linking and intrusive R), except for speakers of the so-called Southland burr, a semi-rhotic, Scottish-influenced dialect heard principally in the Southland and parts of Otago. Among r-less speakers, however, non-prevocalic /r/ is sometimes pronounced in a few words, including Ireland and the name of the letter R itself.

/l/ is dark in all positions, and is often vocalised in the syllable coda. This varies in different regions and between different socio-economic groups; the younger, lower social class speakers vocalise /l/ most of the time.

Other consonants

The distinction between /w/ as in witch and /hw/ as in which, retained by older speakers, now seems to be disappearing.

The intervocalic /t/ may be flapped.

 

2.2 Australia

Australian English is a non-rhotic accent and it is similar to the other Southern Hemisphere accents (New Zealand English and South African English). Like most dialects of English it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.

 

The vowels of Australian English can be divided into two categories: long and short vowels. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, mostly correspond to the lax vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation. The long vowels, consisting of both monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to its tense vowels and centring diphthongs. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction: that is, certain vowels differ only by length.

 

The following linguistic features of Australian English are generally employed by people with lower standards of education and socio-economic background, and those with higher economic and/or educational standards speak in a manner which does not compress, shorten or remove these features.

Many speakers have also coalesced /dj/, /sj/ and /tj/ into /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and /tʃ/, producing standard pronunciations such as /tʃʉːn/ for tune.

The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced identically.

Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realised as [n] or [ɾ̃], which can make winter and winner homophones. Interesting will sound like inner-resting. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/, it is accompanied further by nasalisation of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that V/nt/ and V/n/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalised, and is followed in cases where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entails.

 

New Zealanders will often reply to a question with a statement spoken with a rising intonation at the end. This often has the effect of making their statement sound like another question. There is enough awareness of this that it is seen in exaggerated form in comedy parody of working-class / uneducated New Zealanders. This rising intonation can also be heard at the end of statements, which are not in response to a question but to which the speaker wishes to add emphasis. High rising terminals are also heard in Australia, but are said to be more common in, and possibly originating from, New Zealand..

In informal speech, some New Zealanders use the third person feminine she in place of the third person neuter it as the subject of a sentence, especially when the subject is the first word of the sentence. The most common use of this is in the phrase "She'll be right" meaning either "It will be okay" or "It is close enough to what is required". This is similar to Australian English.

 

2.3 Canada

 

Perhaps the most recognizable feature of CanE is Canadian raising. The diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are "raised" before voiceless consonants, namely /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, and /f/. In these environments, /aɪ/ becomes [ʌɪ~ɜɪ~ɐɪ]. One of the few phonetic variables that divides Canadians regionally is the articulation of the raised allophone of /aʊ/: in Ontario, it tends to have a mid-central or even mid-front articulation, sometimes approaching [ɛʊ], while in the West and Maritimes a more retracted sound is heard, closer to [ʌʊ]. Among some speakers in the Prairies and in Nova Scotia, the retraction is strong enough to cause some tokens of raised /aʊ/ to merge with /oʊ/, so that couch and coach sound the same, and about sounds like a boat (though never like a boot, as in the American stereotype of Canadian raising). Canadian raising is found throughout Canada, including much of the Atlantic Provinces. It is the strongest in the Inland region, and is receding in younger speakers in Lower Mainland British Columbia, as well as certain parts of Ontario.

 

Many Canadians, especially in parts of the Atlantic provinces, do not possess Canadian raising. In the U.S., this feature can be found in areas near the border such as the Upper Midwest, although it is much less common than in Canada; raising of /aɪ/ alone, however, is increasing in the U.S., and unlike raising of /aʊ/, is generally not noticed by people who do not have the raising.

 

Because of Canadian raising, many speakers are able to distinguish between words such as writer and rider—a feat otherwise impossible, because North American dialects turn intervocalic /t/ into an alveolar flap. Thus writer and rider are distinguished solely by their vowels, even though the distinction between their consonants has since been lost. Speakers who do not have raising cannot distinguish between these two words.

 

The low-back merger and the Canadian Shift

 

Almost all Canadians have the cot-caught merger, which also occurs in the Western U.S. Speakers do not distinguish /ɔ/ (as in caught) and /ɑ/ (as in cot), which merge as [ɒ], a low back rounded vowel. Speakers with this merger produce these vowels identically, and often fail to hear the difference when speakers who preserve the distinction (e.g. speakers of Conservative General American and Inland Northern American English) pronounce these vowels. This merger has existed in Canada for several generations.

 

This merger creates a hole in the short vowel sub-system and triggers a sound change known as the Canadian Shift, which involves the front lax vowels /æ, ɛ, ɪ/. The /æ/ of bat is lowered and retracted in the direction of [a] (except in some environments, see below). Indeed, /æ/ is further back in this variety than almost all other North American dialects; the retraction of /æ/ was independently observed in Vancouver and is more advanced for Ontarians and women than for people from the Prairies or Atlantic Canada and men. Then, /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ may be lowered (in the direction of [æ] and [ɛ]) and/or retracted; studies actually disagree on the trajectory of the shift. For example, Labov et al. (2006) noted a backward and downward movement of /ɛ/ in apparent time in all of Canada except the Atlantic Provinces, but no movement of /ɪ/ was detected.

 

Therefore, in Canadian English, the short-a and the short-o are shifted in opposite directions to that of the Northern Cities shift, found across the border in the Inland Northern U.S., which is causing these two dialects to diverge: the Canadian short-a is very similar in quality to the Inland Northern short-o; for example, the production [maːp] would be recognized as map in Canada, but mop in the Inland North.

Most Canadians have two principle allophones of /aɪ/ (raised to lower-mid position before voiceless consonants and low-central or low-back elsewhere) and three of /aʊ/ (raised before voiceless consonants, fronted to [aʊ] or [æʊ] before nasals, and low-central elsewhere).

 

Unlike in many American English dialects, /æ/ remains a low-front vowel in most environments in Canadian English. Raising along the front periphery of the vowel space is restricted to two environments - before nasal and voiced velar consonants - and varies regionally even in these. Ontario and Maritime Canadian English commonly show some raising before nasals, though not as extreme as in many American varieties. Much less raising is heard on the Prairies, and some ethnic groups in Montreal show no pre-nasal raising at all. On the other hand, some Prairie speech exhibits raising of /æ/ before voiced velars (/ɡ/ and /ŋ/), with an up-glide rather than an in-glide, so that bag sounds close to vague.

 

The first element of /ɑr/ (as in start) tends to be raised. As with Canadian raising, the relative advancement of the raised nucleus is a regional indicator. A striking feature of Atlantic Canadian speech (the Maritimes and Newfoundland) is a nucleus that approaches the front region of the vowel space, accompanied by strong rhoticity, ranging from [ɜɹ] to [ɐɹ]. Western Canadian speech has a much more retracted articulation with a longer non-rhotic portion, approaching a mid-back quality, [ɵɹ] (though there is no tendency toward a merger with /ɔr/). Articulation of /ɑr/ in Ontario is in a position midway between the Atlantic and Western values.