5. Dialects and regional varieties of english

• 1) Give definitions to the terms: an accent, a dialect, a pidgin, a Creole language, a loanword, a sign language.

English has developed two educated native dialects which are considered to be standards in much of the world. The first dialect is based on educated Southern British and it is sometimes called BBC (or the Queen’s) English. It is known for “Received Pronunciation” which is the standard for the teaching of English in Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and other areas influenced either by the British Commonwealth or by a desire not to be identified with the United States.

The second dialect is based on educated Midwestern American. It is spread over most of the United States and much of Canada, is more typically the model for the American continents and areas (such as the Philippines) which have had either close association with the United States or desire to be so identified.

Aside from those two major dialects are numerous other varieties of English, which include, in most cases, several sub-varieties, such as Cockney within British English; Newfoundland English within Canadian English; and African American Vernacular English (“Ebonics”) and Southern American English within American English. All of them are mostly mutually comprehensible. Because of the wide use of English as a second language, English speakers also have many different accents.

• 2) Say if the statements are true or false:

a) BBC (the Queen’s English) is preferred in the USA.

b) Midwestern American is the second educated dialect of English which is spread over the USA, Canada, the Philippines and the Russian Federation.

c) People speaking Cockney English do not understand people speaking Ebonics.

d) Russian speakers of English basically speak with Southern American accent.

• 3) Answer the questions:

a) Do you study BBC English or Midwestern American English?

b) Have you ever spoken English with native speakers? Did you understand them? Did they understand you? Did you simplify your English then? What about the native speakers?

6. Pidgin english and creole english

• 1) Translate the first passage of the text into Russian.

Just as English itself has borrowed words from many different languages over its history, English loanwords now appear in many languages around the world. Several pidgins (simplified languages that develop as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade) and Creole languages (stable languages that originate as a nativized pidgin) have been formed on an English base, such as Jamaican Patois, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tok Pisin. Let’s have a look at the emergence of black Creole English.

During the early years of American settlement, a highly distinctive form of English was beginning to develop in the islands of the West Indies and the Southern part of the mainland, spoken by the incoming black population. The beginning of the 17^th century saw the emergence of the slave trade. Ships from Europe travelled to the West African coast, where they exchanged cheap goods for black slaves. The slaves were shipped in barbarous conditions to the Caribbean islands and the American coast, where they were in turn exchanged for such commodities as sugar, rum, and molasses. The ships then returned to England, completing an “Atlantic triangle” of journeys, and the process began again. Britain and the United States had outlawed the slave trade by 1865, but by that time, nearly 200 years of trading had taken place. By the middle of the 19^th century, there were over four million black slaves in America.

The policy of the slave-traders was to bring people of different language backgrounds together in the ships, to make it difficult for groups to plot rebellion. The result was the growth of several pidgin forms of communication, and in particular a pidgin between the slaves and the sailors, many of whom spoke English.

Once arrived in the Caribbean, this pidgin English continued to act as a major means of communication between the black population and the new landowners, and among the slaves themselves. Then, when children were born, the pidgin became their mother tongue, thus producing the first black Creole speech in the region. This Creole English rapidly came to be used throughout the cotton plantations, and in the coastal towns and islands. Similarly, creolized forms of French, Spanish, and Portuguese emerged in and around the Caribbean.