ENGLISH PHONETICS and DICTION I

IFD N 5 J.E.Tello
Ms Aldorino
2010

Read this text in groups of two or three and make a synopsis/ summary of the content
Suggestion: to understand this text better, use a world map and locate the regions mentioned
here

VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

20th-Century English
In Great Britain at present the speech of educated persons is known as
Received Standard English (Received Pronunciation). A class dialect rather than a
regional dialect, it is based on the type of speech cultivated at such schools as Eton
and Harrow and at such of the older universities as Oxford and Cambridge. Many
English people who speak regional dialects in their childhood acquire Received
Standard English while attending school and university. Its influence has become
even stronger in recent years because of its use by such public media as the British
Broadcasting Corp. (BBC)
Widely differing regional and local dialects are still employed in the various
counties of Great Britain. Other important regional dialects have developed also; for
example, the English language in Ireland has retained certain individual peculiarities of
pronunciation, such as the pronunciation of lave for leave and fluther for flutter; certain
syntactical peculiarities, such as the use of after following forms of the verb be; and
certain differences in vocabulary, including the use of archaic words such as adown (for
down) and Celtic borrowings such as banshee. The Lowland Scottish dialect, sometimes
called Lallans, first made known throughout the English-speaking world by the songs of
the 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns, contains differences in pronunciation also,
such as neebour ("neighbor") and guid ("good"), and words of Scandinavian origin
peculiar to the dialect, such as braw and bairn. The English spoken in Australia, with its
marked diphthongization of vowels, also makes use of special words, retained from
English regional dialect usages, or taken over from indigenous Australian terms.
American English
An important development of English outside Great Britain occurred with the
colonization of North America. American English may be considered to include the
English spoken in Canada, although the Canadian variety retains some features of
British pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary. The most distinguishing differences
between American English and British English are in pronunciation and vocabulary.

ENGLISH PHONETICS and DICTION I

IFD N 5 J.E.Tello
Ms Aldorino
2010

There are slighter differences in spelling, pitch, and stress as well. Written American
English also has a tendency to be more rigid in matters of grammar and syntax, but at

the same time appears to be more tolerant of the use of neologisms. Despite these
differences, it is often difficult to determineapart from context whether serious
literary works have been written in Great Britain or the U.S./Canadaor, for that
matter, in Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.

Celtic Languages
Subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages: Geographically and
historically, this subfamily is divided into a Continental group (now extinct) and an
Insular group. On linguistic grounds the Insular languages fall into two groups: the
Brythonic (or British), including Breton, Cornish, and Welsh; and the Goidelic (or Gaelic),
including Irish, Scottish Gaelic (or Erse), and Manx. Until the 5th century, Continental
Celtic languages, among them, Gaulish, were spoken throughout Western Europe, but
little information survives about them. Only the Brythonic and Goidelic groups survive,
limited to the British Isles, Bretagne, and some North and South American
communities.
The rules of pronunciation in all the Celtic languages are extremely complicated;
the spelling generally does not correspond to the pronunciation, and initial consonants
change according to the final sound of the preceding word. For example, in Irish, fuil is
"blood," but "our blood" is ar bhfuil. In Welsh tad ("a father") becomes fy nhad for "my
father,"ei thad for "her father," and i dad for "his father."
All modern Celtic languages use the Roman alphabet. They have only two
genders, feminine and masculine; adjectives usually follow nouns. Like some non-IndoEuropean languages they use verbal nouns instead of present participles, always begin
sentences with the verb, and express agency by means of the impersonal passive.
CORNISH
Once the language of Cornwall, Cornish has been extinct since the late 18th century,
despite recent efforts to revive it. It survives only in a few proper names and certain
words in the English dialect spoken in Cornwall.
WELSH
Welsh, called Cymraeg or Cymric (from Cymru,"Wales") by its speakers, is the native
language of Wales and the most flourishing of the Celtic languages. It is spoken in

ENGLISH PHONETICS and DICTION I

IFD N 5 J.E.Tello
Ms Aldorino
2010

Wales (where the majority of its users also speak English) and in some communities in

the United States and Argentina. Organizations such as the Society for the Welsh
Language have saved the language from dying out and are working to assure its official
status along with English. Several schools in Wales now use Welsh as the medium of
instruction, and television and radio broadcasts are made in the language.
Welsh has discarded case endings for nouns; verbs, however, are elaborately inflected.
The alternation of consonants, called mutation, plays a role, as in all Celtic languages.
Welsh spelling is phonemic, representing unambiguously the pertinent sounds. In most
cases Welsh speakers will know how to pronounce a word they have never seen before.
The letter w can represent either a consonant or a vowel, however, and y stands for
two vowel sounds. The consonant f has the sound of English v; f of f; dd of th, as in
then; and th of th, as in thin. Popular attempts to describe pronunciation of double l (ll)
all fail. It is a voiceless lateral fricative, and facile comparison to English thl is invalid.
Welsh words are accented on the next to last syllable and have a characteristic
intonation.
Scholars recognize three periods of Welsh: Old (800-1100), Middle (1100-1500), and
Modern (from 1500). Old Welsh survives only in isolated words and names, plus a few
lines of verse. Welsh has borrowed words throughout all these periods from Latin,
Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, and extensively from English, but it still has a large
native vocabulary of Celtic origin. Forty dialects have been identified in Wales. Standard
Welsh has both a Northern and Southern variety.
IRISH
Irish, or Irish Gaelic, is the oldest of the Goidelic group of Celtic languages. Originally a
highly inflected language, Irish retains essentially two noun cases, nominative and
genitive, with the dative surviving in the singular of feminine nouns; the language has
only two verb tenses in the indicative mood. It is chiefly spoken in the western and
southwestern parts of the Republic of Ireland, where it is an official language, and to
some extent in Northern Ireland. In the past century, the number of Irish-speaking
persons has declined from 50 percent of the population of Ireland to less than 20
percent.
SCOTTISH GAELIC
The alphabet of Irish and Scottish Gaelic is identical, consisting of 18 letters. Scottish
Gaelic employs four cases of nouns: nominative, genitive, dative, and vocative. Like

ENGLISH PHONETICS and DICTION I

IFD N 5 J.E.Tello
Ms Aldorino
2010

Irish, the accent is on the initial syllable. Scottish Gaelic exists in two main dialects,

Northern and Southern, roughly geographically determined by a line up the Firth of

Lorne to the town of Ballachulish and then across to the Grampian Mountains, which it
follows. The Southern dialect is more akin to Irish than is the Northern, and is more
inflected. The main difference is the change of the sound, which is eu in Northern
dialect and ia in Southern. Thus, the word for "grass" is pronounced feur in Northern
and fiar in Southern. Scottish Gaelic also has a few thousand speakers in Nova Scotia.

Bibliography

Adapted from Celtic Languages. Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99. 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.