Languages in Britain and the USA.

A) The English language. Britain’s other languages (the Welsh language, Irish and Scottish Gaelic).

English is the official language of the country. Apart from standard literary English there are many regional and social dialects. But they are not as numerous as in Italy or Germany, for example. The vocabulary of the dialects has died out, though the accents and few bits of distinctive grammar remain. It is the accent which gives visitors to Britain a problem. Some accents are so strong that they present problems for the British, too. The so-called RP (Received Pronunciation) systematically established through the Public School is the accepted dialect of the national elite. There are two kinds of RP: “unmarked” (the language of well-educated people, BBC radio and television) and “marked” RP (the language of high social class). The majority of middle class people speak a sort of classless, democratic version of RP, with a slight admixture of a local regional accent. People’s attitude to the various regional accents depends on a whole range of historical and social factors. The Birmingham is considered ugly, cockney is associated with criminals, Scottish is thought of as serious and sensible, Irish as poetic. Westcountry accent is identified with farm-workers, sometimes considered stupid by city folk. It is the Cinderella among accents, confined to comedy and gardening programmes.

English is the language predominantly spoken in all the four parts of the UK. Wales, however, is bilingual as a result of the long struggle of the Welsh to preserve their language. It is now spoken as a first language by more than 20 per cent of the population. It is used as a first language in an increasing number of schools and it is studied as a second language in all other schools in Wales. There are television and radio stations with Welsh-language programmes.

The Celtic language still exists as Gaelic in Scotland and inland. In Scotland some 100,000 people, mainly in the Highlands and western coastal regions and in the Hebrides, are able to speak the Scottish form of Gaelic. A few families in Northern Ireland speak the Irish form of Gaelic.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
B) The American national character	\|	B) American English

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.005 сек.