Standard Vs Non Standard English

STANDARD BRITISH ENGLISH The term Standard British English refers to a variety of the English language that is generally used in professional communication in Britain and taught in British schools. It is also known as “The Queen’s English”, “BBC English”, and “Oxbridge English”. Standard British English is sometimes used as a synonym for Received Pronunciation (RP). Received Pronunciation is the pronunciation of the British upper class. RP is the pronunciation model taught to foreigners, described in English dictionaries, and used at the oldest universities (such as Oxford and Cambridge). RP is associated with educated speakers and formal speech. It has connotations of Prestige and authority. NON-STANDARD BRITISH ENGLISH a) Estuary English: It is mainly spoken in the areas near the River Thames and its estuary. It is also known as London Regional General British English, term coined by the scholar Alan Cruttenden. An Estuary English accent has some features of Standard English or RP, and some features of cockney accent. Estuary English is spoken by young middle or upper-class people. Some RP speakers, who are typically of upper and upper middle-class origin, tend to adjust their language downward to Estuary English features. This happens in “particular interactions” (Wells, 19989 when they desire to blend in because Estuary English enhances their street credibility. This means that they will not be regarded posh by their interlocutors as Estuary English makes them sound “more ordinary and less privileged than they really are” (Coggle 1993:86). b) Cockney: It is a dialect of the English language traditionally spoken by working-class Londoners. Cockney is also often used to refer to anyone from London -in particular, from its East End. Cockney is famous for its rhyming slang, much of which is humorous such as “trouble and strife” = wife. Cockney also includes back slang, that is, words pronounced backwards. The most famous example is the Word yob = boy. Nowadays, yob is a synonym of hooligan. With the Cockney accent, there are lots of “global stops” and the “th” sound changed to an “f” sound. c) Midlands English: it is one of the most stigmatized varieties of English. Technically, it can be divided into east Midlands and West Midlands. The most famous of these dialects is Brummie (Birmingham English). It can be described as quite soft, elastic, and lumpy sounding. d) Scottish English: It includes the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. The Scottish dialect varies hugely from city to city, town to town, and becomes increasingly like the Irish accent in the Western Isles, and increasingly like Nordic languages in the islands to the far north. The more remote the area, the stronger the accent seems to become, so people from the Shetland Islands can be hard to understand at first. e) Welsh English, Anglo-Welsh, or English refers to the dialects of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people. f) Scouse also called Liverpool English or Merseyside English is an accent and dialect of English found primarily in the Metropolitan county of Merseyside, and closely associated with the city of Liverpool. It is very nasal and very hard to copy at first.