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Файл:Английский язык в его национальных вариантах. Учебно-методическое пособие
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Ex. 3. Comment:
1. At first glance this might seem entirely incomprehensible to
you. There are only five words in the passage which have a form
which is the same as modern standard British English. These are:
God, and, to, wife and of. There’s at least one other word which
resembles a modern English word: paradisum looks a little similar to
paradise. But other than that the words mostly look distinctly alien,
and some of them even include letters which are no longer part of the
alphabet we use for modern-day English.
2. As you might have noticed, both these passages are
translations of the same section of the Bible, namely Genesis chapter
3, verse 1. The Middle English version is much closer to modern-day
English, and you were probably able to read a great deal more of it
than of the Old English version. However, there are still a few
features which differ from the language we now use. For example,
the character (known as yogh) is used in place of a y. Also, the
spelling of many words is rather different from how it is today. For
instance, in the first line the word ‘living’ is spelt lyuynge (y is used
instead of i, and u instead of v), and the word ‘beasts’ is spelt beestis.
Some of the vocabulary is also no longer regularly used in
contemporary English. The word “feller” in the first line, for
example, means “crueller” or “more ruthless”. It was still to be found
in Shakespeare’s time – for example, in the phrase “this fell sergeant,
Death, is swift in his arrest” in Hamlet – but is not in common usage
today (except in rather specialised contexts). All in all, though, you’d
probably identify this as being English.
3. The Early Modern English version is closer still to presentday English, although there are still a few features which mark it out
as archaic. For example, nowadays ye meaning “you” is only found
in certain dialects, and is no longer used in standard British or
American English.
4. From looking at the later translations, you can probably see
that næddre is in the equivalent position to “serpent”. If you separate
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the first letter from the rest of the word, you’ll perhaps be able to
identify a connection. The meaning has changed somewhat – the Old
English word was used to refer to snakes generally, whereas the
modern word is used for a particular type of snake – but the Old
English word is the original form of the modern word “adder”.
Moving on to oðre, if we replace the ð with a th, we can
recognize this as the word ‘other’. A similar shift in spelling
conventions can be seen in the word cwæþ, where we now use qu
instead of cw. If we then substitute th for þ in this word, we end up
with something which would be pronounced “quoth” – which we still
have in the modern form of “quote”. In the case of the word hwi, if
we simply reverse the first two letters of the word we get modernday “why”.
5. So we can see that there is indeed a fair amount of continuity
between Old English and Modern English, albeit that surface features
such as spelling conventions have changed quite considerably. It’s
also worth noting that one of the words we were able to identify from
the very beginning – “wife” – actually has a slightly different
meaning in this first translation from its modern sense. In all the later
translations of the passage it’s given as “woman”. This is because the
word’s meaning has narrowed since the tenth century. Nowadays we
use “wife” specifically to refer to a married woman, whereas back in
the centuries of the first millennium it simply meant “woman”. So in
conclusion, we can see that the language has changed considerably
over the last thousand or so years. It has changed in terms of its lexis
(vocabulary), its orthography (spelling) and its semantics (meaning).
And, although we haven’t commented on it here, it’s also changed in
terms of its syntax (word order). At the same time, however, we can
still discern a very definite line of continuity back through all the
passages, which justifies us in referring to them as being instances of
a single developing language.
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Ex. 4. Translation:
Naked as when the midwife slapped his bottom Georgie had a
leg in over the sink and a foot in the enamel basin, when, suddenly,
there was a knocking at the door. What a fright he got. But never
mind, he thought, he would not have to go to the door. His mother
was inside the house. She would go (away) to the door; and with him
in the state he was in, she would not let anybody in. He heard her
opening the door. “Oh, it's you Mr McKillop.” (The Presbyterian
Minister!) “Come in!”
What was she thinking about? Geordie yanked his foot out of
the basin, tugged closed the window curtains to hide all the stuff at
the sink, grabbed a tool for the press and his clothes off the Chair
and belted for all the was worth to the wardrobe in the far corner of
the living room; jumped behind it and pulled the curtain to just as
he saw the minister’s hat come round the door.
And there he dripped and shook while the minister and his
mother chatted about one thing and another: the church and the choir;
the family; the children and their school work. Geordie was quite able
to speak for himself but thought he maybe better not stick his head
round the bit of cloth hanging in front of him and say “I'm doing just
fine, thank you kindly.”
At last, the minister rose, said a prayer or two and went away
to give someone else a fright, Geordie’s mother, when she came back
into the living room, was completely astonished when she saw a nearnaked boy where nobody had been before. “I wondered what had
happened to your she said, “but I didn't have time to think too much
about it.”
It was a moment of revelation. Geordie wade up his mind that
such a thing would never happen again. “If ever I make a million”,
he thought, “I'm going to get myself a new mother.”
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Ex. 5. Comment:
The question of whether we will end up with an English “family
of languages” does not have a single answer. The history of language
suggests that fragmentation has been a frequent phenomenon (as in the
well-known case of Latin), but the history of language is no longer a
guide. Today, we live in the proverbial global village, where we have
immediate access to other languages and varieties of English in ways that
have come to be available only recently, and this is having a strong
centripetal or standardising effect. With a whole range of fresh auditory
models becoming routinely available, chiefly through satellite television
and on the internet, it is easy to see how any New English could move in
different directions at the same time. The pull imposed by the need for
identity, which has been making New Englishes increasingly dissimilar
from British English, could be balanced by a pull imposed by the need
for intelligibility, on a world scale, which will make them increasingly
similar. At the former level, there may well be increasing mutual
unintelligibility; but at the latter level, there might not.
None of this disallows the possible emergence of a family of
English languages in a sociolinguistic sense; but mutual
unintelligibility will not be the basis of such a notion in the case of
New Englishes, any more than it has been in relation to intranational
accents and dialects. Although there are several well-known
instances of dialect unintelligibility among people from different
regional backgrounds, especially when encountered at rapid
conversational speed – in Britain, Cockney (London), Geordie
(Newcastle), Scouse (Liverpool) and Glaswegian (Glasgow) are
among the most commonly cited cases – the problems largely resolve
when a speaker slows down, or they reduce to difficulties over
isolated lexical items. This makes regional varieties of English no
more problematic for linguistic theory than, say, occupational
varieties such as legal or scientific. It is no more illuminating to call
Cockney or Scouse “different English languages” than it would be to
call Legal or Scientific by such a name, and anyone who chooses to
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extend the application of the term “language” in this way finds a
slippery slope which eventually leads to the blurring of the
potentially useful distinctions between “language”, “variety” and
“dialect”.
Topic 2.
Ex. 6. Comment:
Newman identifies certain linguistic features of the New York
dialect. He focuses particularly on pronunciation features, including
the /r/ sound identified in this chapter as non-prevocalic /r/ – a
feature I have discussed in relation to several other varieties. What
stands out in this case is the absence of non-prevocalic /r/, compared
to a US norm in which the sound is generally pronounced. By
contrast, in England non-prevocalic /r/ has disappeared from the
standard variety although it is retained in certain regional varieties.
Newman also refers to a number of distinctive lexical items,
including words introduced by successive waves of immigrants.
Newman points to the stigmatised nature of New York speech,
relating this to the attributes of its speakers. A person’s dislike of “rless” pronunciations, for instance, is a statement about the group of
speakers who use these, rather than reflecting feelings towards the
linguistic feature itself: Newman suggests that the association of this
pronunciation with working-class speakers in New York may have
affected people’s perceptions. For those who speak the dialect,
however, this is part of their identity as New Yorkers. This recalls
Asprey’s discussion of attitudes towards the Black Country dialect,
which is disparaged by those who do not speak it, but a source of
pride to those who do.
As well as this connection between dialect and identity and the
often negative attitudes this involves, other similarities between
Newman’s and Asprey’s readings are that they both describe living
and adapting urban varieties whose younger speakers are also
introducing innovations.
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Ex. 7. Hint:
1. under the hood, under the bonnet;
2. a gummer, a rubber;
3. the pavement, the kerbside;
4. via a subway, via a bypass;
5. lift, moving stair;
6. baby's nappies, baby's diapers;
7. the check, the bill;
8. crisps, French fries;
9. a soldier specialising in the construction of military works, an
engine driver;
10. a baby-bug, a pram.
Ex. 8. Comment:
Some parts of the task would be easy, in particular the lexical
differences such as grey/gray which are fairly well maintained. It
would probably be impossible to do the job completely, though,
since there is so much variation on both sides. Given <ize> in an
American text, it is not absolutely certain that it should be made
British by changing it to <ise> – not only because of words like
supervise, but because there is free choice in British English between
the two in words like naturalise. Since British spellers can write
biased as well as biassed, and American spellers can vary between
kidnaping and kidnapping, there is no simple way to get from “the”
British version to “the” American version or vice versa, unless you
are willing to be extremely prescriptive about what is permitted in
the output.
Topic 3.
Ex. 1. Comment:
The passage is taken from Terry Pratchett’s The Last
Continent. This is a fantasy novel, set in the Discworld version of a
continent very like Australia. The resonances of Australian English
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(boomerang, mate, tucker, beaut) are thus entirely deliberate. Yet the
passage is written by an Englishman, and could thus be said to be
written in the English of England. Alternatively, it might be claimed
that this is actually a representation of the English (or other
language?) of the Discworld. The point may appear trivial, but is not.
We recognise various items in this particular text as being
Australian, yet to the extent that it is written in Australian English at
all, it is written in a copy of Australian English. On the one hand this
relates to the nature of pretence (when film stars play roles where
they adopt an accent which is not their own, do they really speak the
variety of English which their characters are supposed to be
speaking?), on the other it relates to the nature of something like
“Australian English”: does Australian English exist except in the
actions of Australians? Is Australian English purely a matter of
vocabulary choice? Can we really distinguish Australian English
from English used to discuss Australia?
Topic 4.
Ex. 1. Comment:
Depending on the social and political conditions under which
the different speech communities come together, contact between
two or more languages can have a number of different linguistic
consequences. It is usual, though, for the languages to influence each
other in some form or another. This can be by means of the adoption
of loanwords, changes in pronunciation, and also grammatical
structure. The extent of the influence will depend on the length and
depth of the contact between the two communities, as well as the
political relationship between them.
Topic 5
Ex. 1. Comment:
The Africanisms refer to knowledge and practices the slaves
brought with them to Jamaica. They also show the vast ‘catchment
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area’ for the slave trade. The English at first preferred slaves from
the Gold Coast (now Ghana), but by the second half of the eighteenth
century most of the slaves came from further east and as far south as
Angola. When it is known that Ethnologue lists seventy-nine
languages spoken in Ghana today, it is possible to infer that the slave
traders hardly needed to ensure that slaves speaking the same
language were kept separate.
Ex. 2. Comment:
The names and the unmarked use of maganu seem to set this
in South Africa, but it is not clear that you would want to change
these things if the story were to be picked up by a newspaper in
another country. The use of long-haul buses might be a lexical clue,
and that could well be changed for consumption elsewhere. The
spelling centre simply marks the text as coming from outside the
USA. The use of brew might seem excessive, but is not impossible
elsewhere. There is no grammar to show that this is South African
English. This is a fairly typical situation: many (perhaps most) of the
markers of regional origin are no more than markers of the setting of
the story; extra glossing might be used if these were written about
outside that area.
Ex. 3. Comment:
Language policy makers would have had to weigh the
advantages and disadvantages of the status quo in regard to official
languages: Afrikaans was a reasonably effective lingua franca;
English was rarely used and not widely known. Retaining Afrikaans
as an official language and as the medium of instruction beyond
Grade 3 would have had the advantages of continuity, the ability to
use existing human and material resources, and the language’s
established status as a lingua franca. But Afrikaans had strong
negative associations among oppressed people because of the
repressive uses to which it had been put in Namibia and South
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Africa. In contrast, English was associated with the liberation
movement. Its retention could also be seen as tapping into the
advantages of a global language; for example, its facilitation of trade
and the exchange of ideas. Moreover, retaining English would not
privilege a particular ethnic group. It could be regarded as the most
ethnically neutral language in the country and could thus be seen to
be a unifying factor. However, it was not neutral with respect to class
– the few who did know English well constituted an elite, whether
members of the former ruling class, or the well-educated political
leadership who had been in exile.
Elevating an indigenous language to the status of co-official
language, or national language, or medium of instruction beyond the
lower primary level would have been problematic for political and
practical reasons. It would have favoured one ethnic group above the
others; and on the practical front, extensive corpus planning would
have been required, since no indigenous language had previously
served the functions of an official language or medium of instruction
beyond the third grade. Making English the main medium of
instruction in higher primary and secondary schools could be seen as
a way of fast-tracking increased proficiency in English. A vast array
of educational and other information resources had already been
developed in other countries and could be made available in
Namibia.
In practice, serious challenges emerged with the
implementation of the language policy:
1. Many delegates elected to the first parliament were unable
to participate in its discussions or study its documents because they
did not have the necessary proficiency in English. Although
theoretically other languages could be used in parliamentary debates,
in fact there was not adequate provision for interpreting and
translating to and from English.
2. Very few higher primary and secondary school teachers
were sufficiently proficient in English to be able to teach their
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subjects in English, or even to understand the specialist discourse of
the syllabi.
3. It was very difficult for learners to start using English for all
their academic work when they had only studied it as a subject at
school and had little or no opportunity to use it outside school.
In spite of the challenges, the prioritising of English in the
language policy for education has not been rejected by teachers.
Attempts are being made to provide support for its implementation.
For example, teachers’ views and the paucity of resources were taken
into account in the 1997 rewriting of the English syllabi. Teacher
advisers have been appointed. The 2003 revised policy allows for the
use of mother tongue ‘in a supportive role’ in higher primary classes
(Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture, 2003, p. 4).
Whether the scale and reach of the support is going to be sufficient
remains to be seen.
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