Sprechen Sie English?
A
REMINDER
CULTURE: The sum total of a group of people’s ways of living
Sociofacts
Mentifacts
Artifacts
Social expressions…
Value expressions…
Material expressions…
Political Forms
Economic Forms
Religious Forms
Philosophic Forms
Food and Possessions
Clothing and Shelter
Culture
Language, along with
religion and ethnicity, make
up a culture’s Mentifacts…
its collection of beliefs and
values.
FOR
STARTERS
Language is a system of communication through speech.
A literary tradition is a system of written communication that often couples a
language, and orthography is the art of writing words with proper letters according to
standard usage.
A person who speaks a single language is called monolingual and a person who speaks
two languages is called bilingual.
An official language is the one a country’s government adopts as the language for
laws, reports and public objects (signage, money, stamps, etc.).
A common language is considered a centripetal force for a country, a force that brings
unity and helps create a common sense of cultural identity.
A plurality of languages spoken in a country can act as a centrifugal force, a force that
leads to division and strife in a country’s population.
FOR
STARTERS
Like the traits of material culture,
language has a hearth (a place of
origin) and a method of diffusion
(the way in which a trait
spreads).
ORIGINS
OF ENGLISH
English originated in the British Isles.
Although the Isles had been inhabited for thousands of years, we know little about the language(s)
spoken there until the arrival of the Celts c. 2000 BCE.
C. 450 BCE, invaders from mainland Europe pushed the Celts into Northern and Western Britain
(Cornwall, Scotland and Wales).
The Invaders were Germanic speaking tribes:
Jutes from northern Denmark
Angles from southern Denmark
Saxons from northwestern Germany
As a group, they are called the Anglo-Saxons.
The name England comes from Angle’s Land (spelled Engle’s)
The Angle’s language was called Englisc.
Modern English has derived from the language of the Anglo-Saxon languages.
Other groups then invaded the isles over the years and added elements of their language to AngloSaxon.
Viking tribes from Norway conducted a series of raids starting in the 9th century. Many returned
home, but some stayed and blended languages.
In 1066, French speaking Normans from the Normandy region of France invaded and conquered
England.
Modern
English
I mean…
Modern
English
French was the official language in England for the next 300 years.
England lost control of Normandy in 1204 and fewer and fewer English wanted to speak French. In
1362, the English became the official language back to English.
Modern English is the blend of the pre-invasion Anglos-Saxon with French.
INVASION
ROUTES
DIFFUSION
Like traits of material culture (artifacts), language diffuses over space. It
does so primarily by relocation diffusion, migration of its speakers.
The British colonized all over the world and took their language with
them to their colonies.
The Americas in the 17th century.
Ireland in the 17th Century
South and Southeast Asia in the mid 18th century
South Pacific in the late 18th and early 19th century
Africa in the late 19th century
DIFFUSION
The United States has been responsible for diffusing English more recently, especially to the Philippines.
English today is spoken in over 100 countries.
DIALECTS
A dialect is a regional variation of a language.
Dialects are made distinct by:
Vocabulary
Spelling
Pronunciation
When speakers migrate to a new location and remain
there in relative isolation, new dialects may develop.
This pattern accounts for the differences in American
and British English.
English also varies by region within English speaking
countries.
In a language with multiple dialects, a Standard
Language is the dialect recognized as the most
acceptable for government, business, education and
mass communication use.
Much of the English speaking world recognizes the
English of upper-class Britons in the London area as the
standard language. It’s called British Received
Pronunciation (BRP).
DIALECTS
The book will go into detail about the
development of numerous different
dialects of English in England in
different time periods.
Today the three main dialect groups:
Northern
Midland
Southern
Please read about them.
WHY DON’T
THEY SPEAK
AMERICAN?
Pansy!
English was brought to the Americas as the British
colonized the Eastern Seaboard of the US.
American dialects developed so distinctly due to
isolation…
1. Before revolution, most communication with
the colonies was in writing, not by voice
2. After revolution, well… no communication
Therefore, English developed separately in the two
places during the 18th and 19th centuries with
three primary differences:
Poofter!
Vocabulary
Spelling
Pronunciation
Due to difference of experience. New:
Lexicographers like Merriam and
Webster wanted to distinguish American
national identity through spelling
Exchanges between colonists and the
mother country were written
Animals (chipmunk, moose, raccoon)
Objects (canoe, moccasin, squash)
Different names for inventions
bathroom/Water closet, elevator/lift,
flashlight/torch, trunk/boot
Honor/honour, color/colour,
theater/theatre, shop/shoppe,
calender/calendar, defense/defence
Soft versus hard A
British dropping of R before consonants
American emphasis of unaccented
syllables
AMERICAN
ENGLISH
Differences in US dialects emerged due to the dialectical differences between the
original settlers.
New England States: settled almost entirely by English settlers. 2/3 were puritans
from East Anglia (SE ENGLAND) .
Southeastern Colonies: only ½ the settlers were English; those also came from
southeast England BUT with variety of socio-economic backgrounds.
Middle Atlantic colonies: settlers were diverse, English, Scotch, Irish, German,
Dutch, Swedish. Non-English speakers learned English from their neighbors and
the Mid-Atlantic dialect varied greatly from New England and the Southeast.
Major dialectical differences still exist in the US today, primarily along the East
Coast.
The dialect regions are determined by studying the diffusion and use of certain
words.
Every word that is NOT used nationally has some limited geographic extent of use.
Some words, therefore, have boundaries.
An ISOGLOSS is the geographic boundary of a word’s use; various word’s
isoglosses join to form regions. There are 3 main US dialect regions.
NORTHERN
MIDLANDS
SOUTHERN
pail
brook
bossie
spider
bucket
run
sookie
skillet
bucket
branch
wench
frying pan
US DIALECT
MAP
This map of US dialects was made by mapping and then categorizing the isoglosses of a number of different words.
ARE YOU A
REBEL OR A
YANKEE?
NPR Interview with Robert Beard
Hey, ya’ll,
wochiss.
Dr. Beard’s Website and Test
Hey, youse
guys, check
this out.
ISOGLOSS
An isogloss is the geographic extent to which any given word is used (a word’s formal region).
“needs washed isogloss” (As in, “My car needs washed.”