Varieties of English

Question 1

American English

Answer 1

-‘inner’ circle variety
-first permanent English colony in ‘Jamestown’ (1607)
-lots of ‘Americanisms’ today are actually Middle English words which eventually became obsolete in England but usage continued in America: ‘Fall’ for autumn and ‘faucet’ for sink-late Middle English

Question 2

Noah Webster(1806)

Answer 2

-wrote first American English dictionary
-he changed/simplified the spellings of several English words:
-‘-ize’ endings instead of ‘-ise’ (apologize)
-‘-er’ endings instead of ‘-re’ (center)
-‘-or’ endings instead of ‘-our’ (color)
-more simplified/easy for articulation

Question 3

William Labov’s New York ‘Department store’ study

Answer 3

• test whether the pronunciation of the (r) sound changed depending on social class
  -studied the speech of employees from 3 different department stores in New York, ranging from a budget, more working-class store to a high-end, middle to upper-class store
  -he asked for directions elicited a casual response of ‘fourth floor’
  -he then asked this to be repeated to get a more carefully emphasized response.
  -the results showed that the employees with higher socioeconomic status (in higher class stores) pronounced the rhotic /r/ more frequently than the employees with lower socioeconomic status

Question 4

Jamaican English

Answer 4

-‘outer’ circle variety
-during slave-trade period, West African people were forcibly shipped to the USA and Caribbean to work on plantations
-slave-traders divided the slaves from others who spoke the same language to prevent rebellions
-slaves and English speaking slavers developed a contact language to communicate -known as a PIDGIN language
-became a native language as children are born to the pidgin speakers
–developed into Jamaican creole, picks up wider vocab and its own conventions

Question 5

Jamaican Patois examples:

Answer 5

-no agreement between subject and verb in the present tense
-no forms of ‘be’ as an auxiliary verb (‘is’ and ‘are’) e.g. ‘she a nice person’
-verb may be brought to front of sentence for emphasis e.g. ‘A talk Mary talk she make trouble’
-nouns often don’t use -s to mark a plural e.g. ‘two book’
-used in English slang(MLE) e.g. ‘mandem’, ‘blud’

Question 6

Indian English

Answer 6

-‘outer’ circle
-British influence made an impact on India in the 18th century with the establishment of the British East India Company in Calcutta
-the British gradually assumed control over government, law and education, leading a division between those who saw English as the key to Western knowledge and those who wanted to preserve the local classical languages
-20th century saw independence from Britain in 1947 but English continues to be used and is seen as a symbol of identity
-variety includes differences in speech

Question 7

Indian English examples:

Answer 7

-Indian borrowings used in English e.g. ‘bungalow’, ‘pyjamas’
-Indian words ‘Achaa’, ‘Bas’ and ‘Yaar’
-compound words are created using ‘wallah’ (person associated with) creating a western/Indian mix e.g. ticketwallah
-‘no’ is often used as a tag e.g. ‘He went back, no?’

Question 8

Jennifer Jenkins (2006)

Answer 8

Five key characteristics of ELF:
1-used by speakers of different languages to communicate with each other
2-alternative to EFL as it is used as functional communication tool
3-may include innovations that might characterise local varieties of English as well as ‘correct’ English
4-linguistic accommodation and code-switching are seen as useful strategies in ELF
5-language of proficient ELF users tends to be used for description for purposes of possible codification