Tasks and exercises

1. You answer the phone in your flat. What do you say in your own country? What do you say in Britain?

2. You want to ring Peter Walker at work. He is a sales manager at Harvest Industries. How does the telephone receptionist answer your call and how do you ask for Peter Walker?

3. You again want to ring Peter Walker at work, but he is not in the office. What does the receptionist say and what are your options?

4. You are in the office of someone who doesn't hear a knock at the door. What do you do in your country? What would you do Britain?

5. You ring a dentist because you need to have a tooth filled. What do you say?

6. You are writing to the following people. How would you address them? Begin 'Dear ...' and replace the Mr. or Ms. with the proper title, as appropriate.

• Mr. Raj Singh (medical doctor/physician)

• Mr. William Bond (dentist)

• Ms. Jennifer Simmons (medical doctor, surgeon)

7. What do you say in your country when:

• someone offers you more coffee but you don't want any more?

• when you hand something to someone?

8. What would you say in these situations in Britain?

• You go out for a drink with two friends, to a place called 'The Bull and Bush' which doesn't look too crowded. You are the first to enter. What typically happens next?

• You decide to go and visit a friend and her family who live in a cottage in Kent. They have said they won't mind at all if you drop in when they are having their evening meal. What time might that be?

Summary exercises

1. Do the library and online research and make a presentation on the historical background of the United Kingdom.

2. Do the library and online research and make a presentation on the interdependence of culture, language, and history. Give examples of British every day encounters. What linguistic behaviour is peculiar of the British nation?

3. Use any reference books to define the following shibboleths of the UK:

a) Give definitions:

Tartan	Mersevside
shepherd's pie	question time
Double-pleated kilt	cubbing
marmalade	Whip
the Magna Charta	Teller
Westminster	Whitehall
the order of the Garter	St. Patrick's day
the Household Guards	the Derby
Trooping the Colour	the Chancellor of the Exchequer
the Mansion House	Regent's park
Boxing Day	Albion
Stock Exchange	John Bull
Welsh rarebits	cockney
Yorkshire pudding	the Briton
alderman	Lord Snooty
Salvation Army	the Notting Hill Carnival
the Union Jack	the Speakers' Corner
No.lO Downing Street	the Brixton riot
Threadneedle Street	Guy Fawkes' night
snob	Lochs
Bloomsbury	bagpipes

b) Match the abbreviations listed below with their meanings in the right-hand column.

QC	1.	Member of Parliament
MB	2.	Trade Union Congress
MSc	3.	Royal Air Force
NHS	4.	Queen Council
JVC	5.	Bachelor of Medicine
HMS	6.	General Practitioner, Grand Prix
RAF	7.	National Health Service
RN	8.	Maestro of Science
GP	9.	Her Majesty's Ships
MP	10.	Royal Navy

c) Fill in the gaps with any appropriate word:

To be , to have a separate , means being rather mysterious to outsiders. Some appear to be more mysterious to outsiders than others. Every nation seems to feel the to create its own cultural ' ' — test words, things which outsiders, especially when are trying to be insiders. The name is from a story in the Bible (in the book of Judges, ch. 12, v. 5 and 6). After the battle in which Gileadites had Ephraimites, some of the were trying to across a river, but the Gileadites were strangers and making them 'shibboleth'. pronounced the word as 'sibboleth' and betrayed their . Knowing the cultural shibboleths may not always you from , but, for people who wish to easily in a second , it is an important way to the culture and at least reduce their chances of getting into a trouble.

4. What would you do and say in the following situation:

1. You are in your home country, talking to a friend at a party. This friend is there for the first time and doesn't know anybody. Someone comes up to you and interrupts your conversation by greeti ng you. As she does so, she looks at your friend, a new face, expectantly. What happens next?

2. You walk into a shoe shop in your home town and look for a shop assistant. The assistant sees you, smiles and says what? What would the assistant say in a British shop?

3. You move into a new neighbourhood. What is the first contact that you would expect with your new neighbours in your country? What would you expect to happen in Britain?

4. Your watch has stopped and so you stop a stranger in the street to ask the obvious question. What do you say?

5. Someone junior to you at work addresses you very formally and respectfully. You would like them to be more informal. Would you say anything to them in your own country? What could you say in the same situation in Britain?

5. Translate the following texts into English:

а) В англійській мові незабаром з'явиться ювілейне слово

Англійська мова відзначить цього року своєрідний 'ювілей' – у її лексиконі має з'явитися мільйонне за рахунком слово.

Такий прогноз американського лінгвіста Пола Пеєка опубліковано у недільному номері канадської газети 'Globe and Mail'.

За оцінкою керованої ним авторитетної дослідницької служби 'Global Language Monitor', на сьогоднішній день англійський слов­ник, який активно поповнюється, нараховує 986 тис. 120 лексем. Філологи гадають, що 'слово-ювіляр' з'явиться в мові, якою розмов­ляють приблизно 1,5 млрд. жителів планети, у жовтні-листопаді.

Що це буде за слово, спрогнозувати ніхто не береться, сказав Пеєк. Можливо, воно прийде з так званих 'чайнглішу', 'хінглішу' або 'спенглішу' - гібридів англійської з китайською мовою, мовою гінді та іспанською мовою відповідно. Не можна-виключати, що мільйонна лексема буде підхоплена демократичною англійською мовою з надр молодіжної субкультури або веб-жаргону, які щодня активно її збагачують.

'Global Language Monitor', яка розташована в Каліфорнії, має 'спостерігачів' чи не у всіх точках світу, де звучить мова Шекспіра і Ньютона. Вони уважно стежать за появою будь-яких неологізмів, скеровуючи свіжі дані до центрального офісу служби. Наприклад, недавно було 'прийнято на баланс' таке слово, як 'снепараці' (люди, які використовують мобільний телефон із вбудованою фотокамерою для зйомки знаменитостей).

З Китаю надіслали словникову статтю на 'дрінкті', що означає перерву на чаювання в невеличкій крамниці.

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b) Для звичайної ділової зустрічі цілком годиться короткий уклін - так би мовити, на всі випадки життя. Але за особливо урочистих обставин, — скажімо, під час завершення ділових переговорів — схід­ний уклін, виконаний за всіма правилами, з усіма нюансами та гра­даціями, може виявитися єдиним способом спілкування між вами й високопоставленим японським партнером. Чому? Ось як це пояснює один нью-йоркський банкір, ветеран американо-японських ділових зв'язків: «Нашому братові, західному бізнесменові, краще не говорити японською нічого, крім найпростіших слів. Що ж до японців, то чим вище їхнє станови ще в діловому світі й чим солідніший вік, тим менше шансів, що вони розуміють англійську. 1 взагалі вони з'являються особисто не для того, щоби прийняти конкретне рішення, - воно на той момент уже прийняте на нижчому, виконавчому рівні». У чім же сенс їхнього виходу на сцену? «Головним чином у тім, щоби самим поглянути на людину, з якою матимуть справу». А коли так, то будь-кому ясно: форма на таких зустрічах часто-густо важливіша за зміст.

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. Characteristic features of American English

Some of the features of American English have already been discussed in the Introductory Unit. This section will describe in more detail the phonological features that set American English apart from British English and outline the dialect areas of the United States on the basis of phonological data. There will follow some comments on other levels of linguistic structure and their distribution in the dialect areas.

Only two features are needed to account for the bulk of the differences that give American English its vast difference in flavour from British English. First, most dialects of American English are 'r'-pronouncing. Second, the starting point for a short 'a' in American English is in low front position, and in many dialects, some or all of the allophones of short 'a' have been raised and tensed as well. These points will be explained in detail below.

2.1.1. 'R'-pronouncing

As a linguistic variable in English, r-vocalization (or V'-lessness) refers both to Y preceding a consonant, with or without a following syllable boundary, and to Vpreceding a word boundary. Thus 'card', 'person', and 'her' are all candidates for '/-'-vocalization in English. On the other hand 'raven', 'break' and 'merry', all with a vowel following the 'r', never show V-vocalization in standard English, not in the US or anywhere else. Thus the '/-'that is of interest in distinguishing varieties of English should properly be termed 'pre-consonantal andpre-pausal 'r'.

TT-lessnesswasnotan indigenous feature of English in North America. It developed in Britain in the late eighteenth century and was subsequently adopted as a prestigious import from London in all the major seaports of the United States, with the exception of Philadelphia (The City of Brotherly Love was founded and dominated by Quakers with few social ties to England and with a less numerous and less prominent population of Loyalists. The influence of London was much weaker there than in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston and Savannah.)

The case of New York City is one that has been examined systematically. Well known study of three department stores in New York showed that V was a strongly socially stratified variable, with significantly more constricted '/-'produced by sales people and other staff in Saks Fifth Avenue, the most prestigious store, than by those in Macy's, a middle-level store. The staff in Macy's, in turn, consistently produced more constricted 'r' than those in S. Klein, a discount store.

Labov's fieldwork was conducted in 1962. In 1986 Joy Fowler completed a detailed replication of Labov's study [Labov 1994; Labov, Ash, Boberg 1997], with results that strongly confirmed the intricate pattern of effects of age, social class and stylistic variation (casual emphatic) found by Labov. She also found that the use of constricted V had increased in the 24 years that had elapsed. The increase was small, only 10 per cent or less. These findings corroborate every casual listener's impression of New York, that it is still strongly '/"'-vocalizing, although, clearly, change is taking place.

Changes are found to be taking place in the south, too: a rapid increase in constricted 'r' in Anniston, Alabama, for instance. There, V-vocalization has always been stratified along class lines, as is suggested above. The large landowners were of the original English stock of settlers, and they had maintained close ties to England. The working class had a heavy concentration of the less affluent Ulster Scots immigrants, who settled the Piedmont and gradually moved into the cities, and they had brought constricted Y with them from their homelands. Upper middle class Anniston speakers have been V-less for generations, but this is now changing. Younger speakers in Anniston use constricted Y much of the time, joining their working-class peers.

One may ask: ' What difference does it make if you do or don't vocalize 'r'?' The answer is that it makes a huge difference. If Y is vocalized, vast numbers of homonyms can be generated, such as 'sauce' and 'source', 'card' and 'cod', fared' and fed'.

The list clearly could go on for a long time, since Y. is a very frequently occurring phoneme. Intervocalic Y can also be involved in the merger of preceding vowels. In Philadelphia, most native speakers have a merger or a near-merger of the vowels in 'merry' and 'Murray', so you might hear someone talking about going on a furry' boat ride. In the Midwest and West, speakers merge 'Mary', 'merry' and 'marry'. These mergers are a rich source of misunderstandings among speakers of different dialects f Feagin 1990: 129-146].