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Standard English
In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone codification to the point of being socially perceived as the standard language, associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service announcements and newspapers of record, etc. All linguistic features are subject to the effects of standardisation, including morphology, phonology, syntax, lexicon, register, discourse markers, pragmatics, as well as written features such as spelling conventions, punctuation, capitalisation and abbreviation practices. SE is local to nowhere: its grammatical and lexical components are no longer regionally marked, although many of them originated in different, non-adjacent dialects, and it has very little of the variation found in spoken or earlier written varieties of English. According to Peter Trudgill, Standard English is a social dialect pre-eminently used in writing th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English-speaking World
The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English language, English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, making it the List of languages by total number of speakers, largest language by number of speakers, the List of languages by number of native speakers, third largest language by number of native speakers and the most widespread language geographically. The countries in which English is the native language of most people are sometimes termed the Anglosphere. Speakers of English are called Anglophones. History of Anglo-Saxon England, Early Medieval England was the birthplace of the English language; the Modern English, modern form of the language has been spread around the world since the 17th century, first by the worldwide influence of England and later the United Kingdom, and then by that of the United States. Through all types of printed and electron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capitalization In English
Capitalization or capitalisation in English is the use of a capital letter at the start of an English word. English usage varies from capitalization in other languages. History of English capitalization Old English did not always make a distinction between uppercase and lowercase, and at best had embossed or decorated letters indicating sections. Middle English capitalization in manuscripts remained haphazard, and was often done for visual aesthetics more than grammar; in poetry, the first letter of each line of verse is often capitalized. With the development of the printing press in Europe and England capitalization of initial letters and proper nouns became more regularized, perhaps partly to distinguish new sentences in a time where punctuation remained sparse and irregularly used. The plays of Shakespeare show capitalization both of new lines and sentences, proper nouns, and some significant common nouns and verbs. By the era of Early Modern English, with the influence o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjacent Islands of Scotland, islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. To the south-east, Scotland has its Anglo-Scottish border, only land border, which is long and shared with England; the country is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the north-east and east, and the Irish Sea to the south. The population in 2022 was 5,439,842. Edinburgh is the capital and Glasgow is the most populous of the cities of Scotland. The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the 9th century. In 1603, James VI succeeded to the thrones of Kingdom of England, England and Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland, forming a personal union of the Union of the Crowns, three kingdo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 20th century. It is also commonly referred to as the Queen's English or King's English. The study of RP is concerned only with matters of pronunciation, while other features of standard British English, such as vocabulary, grammar, and Style (sociolinguistics), style, are not considered. Language scholars have long disagreed on RP's exact definition, how geographically neutral it is, how many speakers there are, the nature and classification of its sub-varieties, how appropriate a choice it is as a standard, how the accent has changed over time, and even its name. Furthermore, RP has changed to such a degree over the last century that many of its early 20th-century traditions of transcription and analysis have become outdated or are no long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British English
British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the United Kingdom taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English. Tom McArthur (linguist), Tom McArthur in the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective ''wee'' is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England And Wales
England and Wales () is one of the Law of the United Kingdom#Legal jurisdictions, three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is English law. The Welsh devolution, devolved Senedd (Welsh Parliament; ) – previously named the National Assembly for Wales – was created in 1999 under the Government of Wales Act 1998 and provides a degree of Self-governance, self-government in Wales. The powers of the legislature were expanded by the Government of Wales Act 2006, which allows it to pass Welsh law, its own laws, and the Act also formally separated the Welsh Government from the Senedd. There is currently no Devolved English parliament, equivalent body for England, which is directly governed by the parliament and government of the United Kingdom. History of jurisdiction During the Roman occupation of Britain, the area of presen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anglosphere
The Anglosphere, also known as the Anglo-American world, is a Western-led sphere of influence among the Anglophone countries. The core group of this sphere of influence comprises five developed countries that maintain close social, cultural, political, economic, and military ties with each other: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although extended definitions do include non-Western and developing countries that were once part of the British Empire and retained English influence and common law upon independence, such as those in the Indian subcontinent, the Anglosphere is a distinct grouping that is not simply synonymous with countries in which the English language has official status. Anglosphere countries are generally aligned with each other on global issues and collaborate extensively in matters of security, as exemplified by alliances like Five Eyes. The core countries of the Anglosphere were collectively the leading powers of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standardization
Standardization (American English) or standardisation (British English) is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization can help maximize compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, efficiency, and quality. It can also facilitate a normalization of formerly custom processes. In social sciences, including economics, the idea of ''standardization'' is close to the solution for a coordination problem, a situation in which all parties can realize mutual gains, but only by making mutually consistent decisions. Divergent national standards impose costs on consumers and can be a form of non-tariff trade barrier. History Early examples Standard weights and measures were developed by the Indus Valley civilization.Iwata, Shigeo (2008), "Weights and Measures in the Indus Valley", ''Encyclopaedia of the History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflexive Pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously named noun or pronoun (''myself'', ''yourself'', ''ourselves'', ''themselves'', etc.). English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. Different languages have different binding domains for reflexive pronouns, according to their structure. Origins and usage of reflexive pronouns In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, some distinction exists between normal object and reflexive pronouns, mainly in the third person: whether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Trudgill
Peter Trudgill, ( ; born 7 November 1943) is an English sociolinguist, academic and author. Biography Trudgill was born in Norwich, England, and grew up in the area of Thorpe St Andrew. He attended the City of Norwich School from 1955. Trudgill studied modern languages at King's College, Cambridge and obtained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1971. Before becoming professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Essex he taught in the Department of Linguistic Science at the University of Reading from 1970 to 1986. He was professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1993 to 1998, and then at the University of Fribourg, also in Switzerland, from which he retired in September 2005, and where he is now professor emeritus of English Linguistics. He is an honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England. On 2 June 1995 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Dialects Of English
Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, and other aspects of grammar. For the classification of varieties of English in pronunciation only, see regional accents of English. Overview Dialects can be defined as "sub-forms of languages which are, in general, mutually comprehensible." English speakers from different countries and regions use a variety of different accents (systems of pronunciation) as well as various localized words and grammatical constructions. Many different dialects can be identified based on these factors. Dialects can be classified at broader or narrower levels: within a broad national or regional dialect, various more localised sub-dialects can be identified, and so on. The combination of differences in pronunciation and use of local words may make some English dialects almost unintelligible to speakers from other regions without any prior exposure. The major native dialects of English are often divided ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Markedness
In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant default or minimum-effort form is known as ''unmarked''; the other, secondary one is ''marked''. In other words, markedness involves the characterization of a "normal" linguistic unit against one or more of its possible "irregular" forms. In linguistics, markedness can apply to, among others, phonological, grammatical, and semantic oppositions, defining them in terms of marked and unmarked oppositions, such as ''honest'' (unmarked) vs. ''dishonest'' (marked). Marking may be purely semantic, or may be realized as extra morphology. The term derives from the marking of a grammatical role with a suffix or another element, and has been extended to situations where there is no morphological distinction. In social sciences more broadly, markedness ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
